
Ask HN: How would you validate an idea for SaaS product? - vsolanki19
I&#x27;ve heard of many SaaS companies building the products first and then try to sell it only to fail later due to lack of demand and customers. My question is how would you validate an idea for SaaS is worth pursuing with enough demand and interest from customers?<p>Not asking for a complete strategy but a general idea of where to start at.
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jason_zig
In my experience the best ideas come from scratching your own itch. Is there
something that you want but can't find a suitable solution for? Build it for
yourself. Once it solves your problem, you will probably be happy to find that
other people also had that problem.

~~~
vsolanki19
Totally! That's pretty much why got thinking about the idea in the first
place.

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jppope
1\. Start with an Idea.

2\. Go sell it to someone and have them pay you to build it.

3\. This will look mostly like a service at first, very custom.

4\. Now go and sell part of the thing you just built, or the whole thing to
someone else.

5\. Build this second one using as much of the first thing as possible. Add
whatever features the second company/person wants so long as you can sell it
back to person/company #1 or a third company.

6\. By this point you should have talked to a bunch of people... you should
know generally what people actually want. Take the stuff you built, generalize
it, refine it, test it, and then sell it to people in person.

7\. for the last step you don't need my advice or anyone else's... you have a
product and people are paying you for it. You now know what to do.

~~~
seektable
> 2\. Go sell it to someone and have them pay you to build it.

This sounds good, but unfortunately this approach doesn't work for may kinds
of products - especially if you idea is not niche B2B service.

~~~
jppope
which products?

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rahimnathwani
I would follow the steps in Disciplined Entrepreneurship, which I've just
started reading, after seeing it recommended multiple times, here and
elsewhere.

[https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-Successful-
Startup-ebook-dp-B00DQ97TWO)

~~~
vsolanki19
Thanks dude. Link didn't work but I'm adding it here:
[https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Entrepreneurship-Steps-Successful-
Startup/dp/1118692284/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=disciplined+entrepreneurship&qid=1558626388&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

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mindcrime
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=validate%20idea&sort=byDate&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=validate%20idea&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
vsolanki19
Thanks. I looked into this but many of these threads are very old with very
few comments.

~~~
mindcrime
Try this:

[https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-
Step/dp/0984999302)

and/or

[https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-
Visionaries...](https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-
Challengers/dp/0470876417/)

and/or

[https://www.amazon.com/You-Build-Will-They-
Come/dp/047056363...](https://www.amazon.com/You-Build-Will-They-
Come/dp/047056363X/)

and this:

[https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/dp/1492180742/)

~~~
techsin101
First book will take a year to finish

~~~
mindcrime
It's worth it though. :-)

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mapster
I suggest 'scratch your own <business> itch'. I found these by working in new
industries and finding major inefficiencies that could be solved with code :)

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vebu
General idea is to make MVP webapp and then give free user accounts till you
get traction.

