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In this article, I’ll share my experiences in building SaaS products, focusing on the lessons learned from my missteps rather than celebrating successes. I believe that failure can provide more substantial insights than success.
It all started 5 months ago when I embarked on a journey away from my well-paying job, leaving behind a 12-year career as a full-stack web developer. On February 1st, my new journey began. I was set on building products, experimenting with audience building, teaching web developers coding, and making a living out of this. Sounds so cool in theory. What can go wrong, one might ask? There is so much potential!
01
of 04The Beginning of my SaaS journey
Initially, I needed clarification about the direction I wanted to follow.
The journey began with an aspiration to establish an audience and generate a profit, inspired by successful entrepreneurs on social media. I started crafting web development tutorials to sell courses based on them eventually.
However, after dedicating a few months to this project, I realized it needed to be more fulfilling. I was really bad at it 👀. I am a much better programmer than I am with words.
I was viewing social media humans as $ bills surfing the internet. Looking back, it was so stupid of me, and from now on, I promise not to view people from this perspective again.
02
of 04My First Product: The Errors and Learnings
The hype around AI was reaching new heights in March, prompting me to launch my first-ever product – a ChatGPT UI, intended to be superior. However, it did not garner much attention due to the lack of marketing, strategy, and the way the market was evolving – ChatGPT UI was constantly improving, and a mobile app was being developed. The product’s value proposition wasn’t clear or missed; why would someone pay for it?
While the product’s underperformance did not dishearten me, I also did not stubbornly persist with it. I acknowledged its lack of value and the need for a marketing plan and positioning strategy.
As a result, I temporarily suspended the project. At present, I am the primary user. I plan to revisit it after a month or so, post the launch of the subsequent product.
My significant mistake was developing a product without an apparent problem to solve, a defined market segment, or a strategy. It was destined for failure, and it would have been naive to expect otherwise! Luck is critical, but you can only sometimes rely on it. When you are lucky, ensure you can take advantage of it! This means you have to educate yourself: learn some business and marketing, and don’t rely entirely on luck.
Another learning for me was that a polished product doesn’t necessarily have a competitive edge, nor does it matter what technologies were used or if it has implemented unit tests.
Marketing and sales proved to be much more important than the technical aspect of my code stack. It’s beneficial to use something reusable that allows for swift delivery and pivoting, such as authentication or headless CMS, rather than aiming for perfection.
Instead of trying to perfect your product, channel your energy towards driving users to your app; if it proves helpful, they will overlook bugs. Not only this, but they will help you fix them by providing valuable feedback!
03
of 04Revisiting the Project
Now, I plan to reevaluate this project’s direction and pivot towards a new type of AI application, identify the problem it can solve, and gauge whether I would use personally use it.
If it proves a viable solution, I’ll identify the market segment (position the product for users encountering the problem) and define its functionalities (from Phase 0 → beta, Phase 1 → …).
I’ll begin developing once these aspects are clearly defined and documented. I’ll aim for an early validation by launching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with a substantial discount or a lifetime offer, provided it aligns with my business plan.
04
of 04The Second Product
While waiting to revisit my AI product, I plan to launch another product that’s in a more advanced stage, developed using my 12 years of experience.
The product is a SaaS boilerplate with CICD, authentication, automated deployments, headless CMS integrated, and a single configuration file for the backend, frontend, and a mobile app in Flutter. It’s based on impressive technology.
However, I repeated my previous mistake when I started developing this product.
I did not consider the following:
- Who is the target audience?
- Is the market sufficiently large?
- Are many developers using NestJs or ExpressJs for their backend?
- How many developers are relying on NodeJs for their backend? What about AngularJs or ReactJs?
- What does the user profile look like?
- Have I interacted with any potential users?
- Am I part of their communities?
I was unable to answer any of these questions!
But how am I applying what I learned and failed to do before with this product? We don’t truly advance if we don’t apply what we learned from our failures and errors.
The ideal approach is to identify a problem and then develop a solution. At least I got this one right! I faced the issue of redundancy and time wastage in developing similar elements for different apps. Hence, I devised a solution for it.
Firstly, I define the problem and explain my product’s solution in writing. Next, I will identify and analyze the market size. If it’s in millions, I will segment it and focus on one particular market segment.
Defining a clear market segment helps in tailoring content and messages for that audience, like SEO articles, learning material, videos, etc.
Attempting to target everyone is a mistake.
That’s how I plan to approach this new product, and I’ll keep you informed about future insights and learnings on Twitter and my Newsletter, where I discuss Coding, Marketing, and Business. Please consider following me.
My recent direction in content creation is about something other than teaching web development. I realized I didn’t enjoy it, mainly because I wasn’t proficient at it.
I prefer writing about my experiences, failures, and insights on my journey toward becoming a better entrepreneur.
What are your recent insights and mistakes?