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You can still finish a project and earn income with an idea that has been "done before." That describes a super-majority of the entire economy. "Being a denti

by patio11 11y ago

You can still finish a project and earn income with an idea that has been "done before." That describes a super-majority of the entire economy. "Being a dentist" has been done before. Most of my friends have SaaS products for which there exist other options; that is in no way a total impediment to getting to, say, $10k a month in sales. (In fact, if you ran down a list of the fairly lucrative small software businesses I know, the ones with the highest numbers are the ones with the most competition -- probably because they're competing in big markets. Email marketing is a lot bigger than e.g. bingo card generation -- my buddies doing email marketing do pretty well for themselves with market shares which are probably not tenths-of-a-percentage-point.)

newsingletoned 11y ago
Hi Patrick ! Thanks for the reply. As someone who is starting first time in SaaS field what is your advice for making product salable. Should I try to differentiate myself by adding more features or should I go with standard offering and compete on price ? Thank you !
- sebg 11y ago
  Compete on providing the most value you can with the smallest feature set possible. Really figure out what the core issue is and then solve that. That's what will make a product salable - that you fix the most important problem for the person who is looking at your offering. Standard offerings or price don't matter if you don't solve their most pressing problem. Same the other way, if you solve their most pressing problem a business will pay way more than you as an individual would consider feasible.
- patio11 11y ago
  Don't compete on price, unless it is by raising it. You do not have to compete on number of features to make your product saleable. Most customers do not buy most products because they have more features than competitors. There's some minimum quanta of utility your product has to have. Almost all SaaS entrepreneurs overshoot on that -- by lots in many cases. I'd suggest, broadly, finding a take on the market that your competitors don't have yet, whether that is a use case, a customer group, a channel, etc that they haven't utilized, and build that. Strong recommendations that you a) try soliciting customers for your eventual software before it exists to see whether you're able to find customers for it, b) not build any software you cannot find customers for, and c) pick something with a price point which gets you to at least $50 a month and hopefully as far above that as you can. This is from ~10 years of experiencing the brutal, brutal math of trying to count to $10k in increments of $30.
  - shubhamjain 11y ago
    > You do not have to compete on number of features to make your product saleable. Most customers do not buy most products because they have more features than competitors. Although it seems logical that people would be willing to pay for something that provides value but won't they (at least try) to see similar alternative before they start paying? I listened to a podcast by Rob Walling, in which he speaks how there was considerable churn because people weren't able to differentiate his product (Drip) from Mailchimp. Surely, I can't put myself in the shoes of a non-technical buyer, but first thought seems to suggest me that if you start building a A/B testing software for a niche segment, first question you will have to answer to potential customers is how is it different from VWO or Optimizely.

by patio11 11y ago

newsingletoned 11y ago

Hi Patrick ! Thanks for the reply. As someone who is starting first time in SaaS field what is your advice for making product salable. Should I try to differentiate myself by adding more features or should I go with standard offering and compete on price ? Thank you !

sebg 11y ago
Compete on providing the most value you can with the smallest feature set possible. Really figure out what the core issue is and then solve that. That's what will make a product salable - that you fix the most important problem for the person who is looking at your offering. Standard offerings or price don't matter if you don't solve their most pressing problem. Same the other way, if you solve their most pressing problem a business will pay way more than you as an individual would consider feasible.
patio11 11y ago
Don't compete on price, unless it is by raising it. You do not have to compete on number of features to make your product saleable. Most customers do not buy most products because they have more features than competitors. There's some minimum quanta of utility your product has to have. Almost all SaaS entrepreneurs overshoot on that -- by lots in many cases. I'd suggest, broadly, finding a take on the market that your competitors don't have yet, whether that is a use case, a customer group, a channel, etc that they haven't utilized, and build that. Strong recommendations that you a) try soliciting customers for your eventual software before it exists to see whether you're able to find customers for it, b) not build any software you cannot find customers for, and c) pick something with a price point which gets you to at least $50 a month and hopefully as far above that as you can. This is from ~10 years of experiencing the brutal, brutal math of trying to count to $10k in increments of $30.
- shubhamjain 11y ago
  > You do not have to compete on number of features to make your product saleable. Most customers do not buy most products because they have more features than competitors. Although it seems logical that people would be willing to pay for something that provides value but won't they (at least try) to see similar alternative before they start paying? I listened to a podcast by Rob Walling, in which he speaks how there was considerable churn because people weren't able to differentiate his product (Drip) from Mailchimp. Surely, I can't put myself in the shoes of a non-technical buyer, but first thought seems to suggest me that if you start building a A/B testing software for a niche segment, first question you will have to answer to potential customers is how is it different from VWO or Optimizely.