The Most Important Lesson
I Learned From Building 8
SaaS Businesses in 4 Years
I got into the SaaS world 4 years ago back when I was in college. I fell in love with the idea of using my skills as a developer to build something people would use and pay for.
So I built my first app, a price comparison website that lets users find the best deals for their favorite products. 6 months later that business failed because it required a lot of expenses for a college student so I shut down the project.
4 years and 8 SaaS businesses later, here I am sharing the number one most important lesson I learned during the journey.
But before I start, please don’t assume I’m a SaaS millionaire because out of those 8 apps, I only made money from 2 of them (not too much money). And I’m currently building a new SaaS called Dymolab which helps founders like you build interactive product tours.
The number one most important lesson I learned from my journey as a SaaS founder is:
Marketing is what will move the wheel
As developers, we love building new features but feel uncomfortable when doing marketing or talking to customers. Unfortunately, talking to customers and hearing that our product sucks is what will move the wheel for a SaaS founder, right?
Founders who do marketing and founders who don’t do marketing both have products that suck at the beginning. The only difference is that the first founder knows that their product is bad and knows how to fix it, while the other founder is busy building new features and doesn’t want to hear the truth.
Let’s be honest, every SaaS founder is scared of hearing the truth. We’re like a mother of an ugly baby who doesn’t want to hear from people how ugly her baby is. She wants to believe that her baby is beautiful but she can’t avoid the weird looks of people in the street.
However, in the case of the mother, whether people love or hate how her baby looks doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that she loves him from all her heart.
But in the case of the founder, it’s a whole different story. In fact, it’s the opposite case. Whether you think your app is good or bad doesn’t matter, what matters is what potential customers think. So hiding yourself in your room adding one feature after another to your little baby won’t take you anywhere.
You need to hear the truth from customers. You need to get punched in the face by those rude Reddit users. You need to hear the feedback of someone else besides your mother or your wife.
At the end of the day, the only SaaS businesses that will succeed are those that solve a problem for users. People won’t buy your app because you have dark mode or you have a beautiful button with rounded corners of 24 pixels that do a cute animation when hovered. They will pay to solve their problem.
We often build the wrong solution for the user’s problem, and that’s okay, many successful startups built the wrong solution at the beginning. For instance, Slack started as a video game then they became a messaging app for businesses. So don’t be hard on yourself when you build something nobody wants because you can always iterate or pivot.
But again, you can’t know if you’re building the right or wrong solution until you talk to customers.
Good luck with your journey.
If you want to create interactive product tours for your SaaS check out dymolab.com
