Re:Ask HN: What are secrets to making money with SaaS?
by sirspacey on Thursday June 06, 2024 @08:52PM
(#40604193)
Most products that make money had a very long journey to get there, AirTable being a good example.
SaaS is a product for a person in a role that does a job.
Even no code tools like AirTable are mostly sold to internal ops team members and consultants.
If your product enables someone to get a promotion or solve a problem with less friction, you’ve got a shot.
Flatfile is a good example of “search > solve” pipeline products. If you can own top listing for a common challenge for knowledge workers, you can create a brand and then become the tool everyone mentions when solving a problem.
Don’t be too discouraged. Often there are 1,000s of products built to solve a problem but only one becomes “the” product for that problem.
Products are just packages for meeting the needs of a market you can connect with. If you need ideas on products to build, start by offering a service. If people will pay for the service, you’ve got a great chance there’s a market to pay for a product.
Another approach is to crawl web forums for popular products and build a niche solution for a user that complains without response. I’ve been stunned to see that the same startups are launched all the time (like digital notary) and grow very quickly to $10M even though there are well-know products in that space already. Loops is another great example.
SaaS is a product for a person in a role that does a job.
Even no code tools like AirTable are mostly sold to internal ops team members and consultants.
If your product enables someone to get a promotion or solve a problem with less friction, you’ve got a shot.
Flatfile is a good example of “search > solve” pipeline products. If you can own top listing for a common challenge for knowledge workers, you can create a brand and then become the tool everyone mentions when solving a problem.
Don’t be too discouraged. Often there are 1,000s of products built to solve a problem but only one becomes “the” product for that problem.
Products are just packages for meeting the needs of a market you can connect with. If you need ideas on products to build, start by offering a service. If people will pay for the service, you’ve got a great chance there’s a market to pay for a product.
Another approach is to crawl web forums for popular products and build a niche solution for a user that complains without response. I’ve been stunned to see that the same startups are launched all the time (like digital notary) and grow very quickly to $10M even though there are well-know products in that space already. Loops is another great example.