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Say you are looking to start a SaaS platform. What research can you do other than look at web traffic estimates of competitors? It'll be obvious who is big + w

Say you are looking to start a SaaS platform. What research can you do other than look at web traffic estimates of competitors? It'll be obvious who is big + who is small, but it doesn't help understand... "are these companies actually profitable? What's retention like?"

gvidon 7y ago
I don't think someone will be totally honest to you while saying if they are profitable or not. Before launching SaaS first thing I would do would sell it to someone even before the product is ready :)
bluetwo 7y ago
You start with the root of the problem and work from there. Know that while competitors might have it right, they also might have it wrong. Talk to people.
tmaly 7y ago
I like the approach Seth Godin talks about in his book This is Marketing. He uses a 4 quadrant chart to plot two qualities of a product. Then plots where competitors fall on those two qualities. For instance cost and durability. Some competitors could be positioned differently say expensive and durable and perhaps there is no competitor that fills the cheap part of the graph. Its a nice way to visualize potential opportunities
hogu 7y ago
There isn't a good way to know for sure that something is going to work, but there is alot of research you can do that will give you good information. 1. Cold email/linkedin message then speak to 100 potential customers. Attempt presales. You don't actually have to get presales, but that process should give you a good indication for willingness to pay / desired functionality, how people are currently working on the problem, and what language they use to describe their pain (quoting that back to customers is good marketing copy) 2. Build a landing page, run facebook / google ads, find out how much it costs to acquire an email address. Your real CAC will be higher of course, but this is a good starting point. I'm a founder of https://www.saturncloud.io/ https://www.saturncloud.io/. I started with #2, and found it cost 70 cents in advertising revenue to get a click, ~7$ for an email address, and ~$100-$200 to get someone to signup. When we started we were attempting a low touch sales model. Since then we've started focusing on enterprise sales, because the willingness to pay is much higher. We did #1 when moving towards enterprise sales, but should have done that in the beginning.

gvidon 7y ago

I don't think someone will be totally honest to you while saying if they are profitable or not. Before launching SaaS first thing I would do would sell it to someone even before the product is ready :)

bluetwo 7y ago

You start with the root of the problem and work from there. Know that while competitors might have it right, they also might have it wrong. Talk to people.

tmaly 7y ago

I like the approach Seth Godin talks about in his book This is Marketing. He uses a 4 quadrant chart to plot two qualities of a product. Then plots where competitors fall on those two qualities. For instance cost and durability. Some competitors could be positioned differently say expensive and durable and perhaps there is no competitor that fills the cheap part of the graph. Its a nice way to visualize potential opportunities

hogu 7y ago

There isn't a good way to know for sure that something is going to work, but there is alot of research you can do that will give you good information. 1. Cold email/linkedin message then speak to 100 potential customers. Attempt presales. You don't actually have to get presales, but that process should give you a good indication for willingness to pay / desired functionality, how people are currently working on the problem, and what language they use to describe their pain (quoting that back to customers is good marketing copy) 2. Build a landing page, run facebook / google ads, find out how much it costs to acquire an email address. Your real CAC will be higher of course, but this is a good starting point. I'm a founder of https://www.saturncloud.io/ https://www.saturncloud.io/. I started with #2, and found it cost 70 cents in advertising revenue to get a click, ~7$ for an email address, and ~$100-$200 to get someone to signup. When we started we were attempting a low touch sales model. Since then we've started focusing on enterprise sales, because the willingness to pay is much higher. We did #1 when moving towards enterprise sales, but should have done that in the beginning.