As someone who just had a micro SaaS acquired I can say most of this video is accurate, although he downplays the competitiveness. The ceiling on my tool was probably 200-500k ARR at absolute most and yet I had a competitor and 2 more who started working on their own tools who had much more brand power/money to compete. I ultimately took an acquisition offer from 1 of the two cause they wanted to beat the other to market. My thought going in was "its too small of a market, no one will even care enough to compete with me" ... well, that's actually nonsense. If there's money to be made, you WILL have competition and quite likely significant competition from established players in the niche.
Creating a successful micro SaaS on a mature marketplace like Salesforce is no easy task. Usually you have to be part of that industry first to get the right ideas and network to pull it off.
Yes, having some industry knowledge does help, but I would push back on having to be part of the industry. The nice part about the marketplaces is that you can see what people do and don’t like about existing apps, and don’t have to create the demand for your product from scratch. The marketplaces can provide a decent amount of traffic to get your app/plugin in front of.
I have observed many founders building an audience on social media especially on twitter through which they reach a lot of potential customers , It's just my observation, Of course there are a lot of other ways to reach customers before building a product .
Use social media as the person suggested but to test if your idea has any traction you can also make a mock-up product page where you advertise and explain your software with a *buy now* or *notify me* button which collects potential customer emails and sends them updates about your product. You can do that as soon as you want but probably best after you have a prototype.
I've been binging multiple videos of MicroConf from 2014 conferences and they're amazing. Thank you for the free content! I'm struggling with idea generation and I feel like when I'm thinking about problems to solve its close to creating problems that don't exist. Are there any resources you have or books you recommend that help with finding ideas? or is that feeling normal and that's why you have to validate it?
Hey Alros, have been in a similar position before. It can be super hard! Validation is the absolute key. Couple of tips I've found that have helped - Look at recently funded SaaS startups (series A or B that now have product market fit) and see if you can find a sub audience / market that is a niche of what they're doing. I.e Startup that's just raised £20M to build an AI powered CRM, could you then niche this into a CRM for Art Galleries? By niching you can make sure you positioning is super tailored to them too. There's thousands of startups you can look at and do just this. Niches are the KEY! And then of course must validate (good validation too i.e. get them to commit early on to paying!) Good luck, I'm sure you'll smash it. Feel free to stay in touch (drop me an email: milesmcaul@gmail.com)
I'd say generally it's best to have experienced a major problem first hand, or have nearly first hand experience/knowledge of a problem that needs fixing. It becomes far easier to validate when your peers can be your first customers.
Could you please make a technical video to explain about how to convert an existing web application as SaaS and database set-up, how automatically new instance to be created when new customer created an account and etc.
Definitely enjoyed it as well as your other talks 👍 quick question: the picture on the viewers left (pink teardrop) was the inspiration from the millennium falcon on the right? Thanks Rob 😁 P.S. I didn’t see rocketgems in the comments..
Hmmm…I had my first in 2009. But I think it became more popular and overtook the fervor of desktop and mobile app development probably around 2013/2014.
rocketgems.com/blog/saas-marketplaces/ has a good list to start considering. The best for you will depend on your industry experience, technical background, and interests.
If it works for saas products it will work for micro saas products in the same ecosystem. In that case you can try to sell your micro saas to the same companies as the saas product which your software is complementing. In the worst case scenario you'll just have your own micro saas. Also I would recommend you to learn at least some basic computer science and at least one programming language. My recommendation would be Javascript or Python, preferably both. You really need to be a one man army if you want to get into indie development of any sort.
I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. If your talent is sales you might want to double down on that. Rather than trying to build software you could consider selling your knowledge through ebooks, courses, etc.
@@MicroConf There are plenty of white label saas opportunities available that allow one to personalize their product with custom colors and logos. You've never seen these opportunities?
yeah right, like someone will abandon that kind of income with micro SaaS. YT started to be a place with all sorts of mumbo jumbo idiots all around.....
Hi Michael, I sold Hit Tail as my next business started to take off. I owned HitTail for about 4 years You can hear the full story in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hxkpTJvRSuA.html
I sold Hit Tail as my next business started to take off. I owned HitTail for about 4 years You can hear the full story in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hxkpTJvRSuA.html
Hi Cen Sura, it looks like HitTail has shut down. I sold the business back in 2015 while it was still profitable. For more of that story, check out this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hxkpTJvRSuA.html
