
I'm building a SaaS for just one person - elliotbnvl
https://elliotbonneville.com/blog/seven-day-saas-retrospective/
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LaundroMat
Haha, I'm working on my second SaaS for one person :)

The first is drfreezr.com , something I built for a friend who manages a
bioresearch lab and had trouble enforcing diligent bookkeeping about what
samples are stored where in what freezers.

He and his lab colleagues are very happy with it, and they use it on a daily
basis. But now I have to start marketing it. So the typical thing I do is
optimize the code/UX/data model instead of finding more customers.

And now I'm working on a small-scale CRM for my wife (prototype phase) and her
colleague who's she's started a consulting business with :)

~~~
kindly_fo
Did your friend know that 50%+ of saas can be replaced with speadsheets
(google/Microsoft)?

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LaundroMat
Good question, but yes, he did. Their main issue with spreadsheets was the
lack of roles and permissions. The tool makes it easy to allocate fridge space
to users, which in turn makes it easier for the users to keep track of things.
Also, users can't touch other users' stuff.

Also, the data per fridge cell itself is more complex than what fits in a
spreadsheet row.

All this adds up to a much more user-friendly (and manager-friendly)
experience, which leads to higher uptake among users and ultimately cleaner
data.

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christiansakai
I'm really really amazed how creative and productive someone can be. Meanwhile
I can't even find one ideas. It doesn't help that I'm not an app user. I keep
my digital stuff minimal.

~~~
jmstfv
> Meanwhile I can't even find one ideas.

Here's the cheat code for you: look at what businesses are _constantly_
spending money on, and you will find plenty of business ideas. There will be
competition, most likely a lot of it, but don't let that deter you.
Competition means there's money to be made in the market, and people are
already aware of the problem so that you don't have to educate them on why
they need a solution (you will have to clearly communicate why your product is
better, though).

When going after existing markets, you basically swap an _idea validation
challenge_ with a _sales and marketing challenge_. Before launching my
business, I had a misconception that if you're already solving a problem, you
don't have to do much marketing and sales - WRONG! You still have to get in
front of existing customers, repeatedly.

Going after an existing market doesn't mean you have to launch a carbon copy
of an existing product. You can differentiate by a price (probably not a good
idea), by a combination of features, or by having a polished UI/UX/Developer
experience. If your competitors suck, you can differentiate by virtue of not
being broken (e.g. "Product X just works" can be your shtick). You can also
out-market your competition ( _here 's the one thing they don't want you to
know_: better products don't usually win over better-marketed products).

Why _businesses_ you might ask? Because they're not reluctant to part with
their money if you can either save or make them money. You will have a higher
average revenue per user (ARPU), which means you can spend more money on
acquiring customers (CAC is the term-of-art) than if you were in B2C. You will
also need fewer customers to reach your revenue goals, which will translate
into less support.

If your goal is to build a sustainable business, I think this is the most
optimal approach to take. Just make sure you're not in the winner-takes-all
type of market.

~~~
freedomben
Thanks for your post. If you're launching a new product, how do you compete
with products that have loads of features?

At a previous startup I worked for we wrote tax software, which was a well
established and entrenched market. Our big thing was really cloud-based, but
acquiring customers was often really hard because we were always missing that
one feature that people really cared about (and it's never the same feature).

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
By doing the one feature people care about well. Don't look at huge products,
look at really small niche ones.

e.g., there are lots of small businesses that need to write up bids for work
and email the resulting quote as a pdf. That's it!

A lot of the competition is stuff like Salesforce or JobBoss or other ERP
tools that are gross overkill for the 20-person welding shop, not to mention
way outside their budget.

Or, as I found out from browsing commercial lawn care forums, people want
scheduling apps that can take before and after pictures of lawns to email to
the homeowner. There's another fairly small project that's useful and
saleable.

You'll find that if you go down this path, the biggest challenge is going to
be marketing and customer acquisition, not building the product. I'm always
tempted to build small apps like this, but I keep going back to embedded work
because it's more fun!

~~~
elliotbnvl
Great info here.

What's embedded work, and why is it so fun?

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HeyLaughingBoy
What icebraining said :-)

It's fun because I like controlling the real world through software,
especially making things move. I have my fingers in three motion control
projects of various levels of complexity as we speak.

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bobblywobbles
I appreciate people like you, who see a need that someone has, and takes the
initiative to help them.

The project matters, but less so. Being a person who is willing to help others
is what makes the world go round.

I have no need for BI software myself, but I appreciate the fire you have
inside of you and wish you good luck if you take this further.

~~~
elliotbnvl
Thank you. I sincerely appreciate it!

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elliotbnvl
tl;dr: I built a glorified spreadsheet app called Bicycle
([https://usebicycle.com](https://usebicycle.com)) in seven days. Now I'm
refining it for one user's needs based on principles from Do Things That Don't
Scale by Paul Graham and the 1000 True Fans theory.

Also, working 90hrs in a week is draining.

~~~
bobblywobbles
Only 90 hours? /s

If part of a test project, are you spending the time to fit within the
guidelines or are forced to for some reason?

~~~
elliotbnvl
Haha right? I seriously don’t get how Elon Musk pulled 120/hr weeks on the
regular. Well, actually I guess I kind of do, a little... if you are super
passionate and invested that makes a big difference.

Anyway, I did this as part of my Seven Day SaaS Challenge
([https://sevendaysaas.com](https://sevendaysaas.com)), where the goal is to
constrain the amount of time behind a keyboard coding in order to force real
world interaction with potential users, alongside marketing and the businessy
(aka critical!) parts of building a SaaS. But, I’m an overachiever and I had
high goals for this app, hence cramming a lot into one week. :)

~~~
fitzn
Agreed that 90+ or 120 are just insanely difficult to do on the regular. I
think I could have 1 such week per month, maybe once per quarter. One thing
that might be a bit different in your example is if all 90 hours were for the
same product. It might have been tougher for you to pay some time context
switching between the two. Whereas, Elon Musk is doing all his hours for the
same task. (Well, actually he's a terrible example because he probably has 100
tasks he does for 1 hour each week, but you get my point for the general
case.)

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duck
This looks great, but just wondering if you have looked at something like
Airtable ([https://airtable.com/](https://airtable.com/)) to solve this? I had
a couple custom tools that were similar, but I've been able to replace them w/
Airtable and it has been nice to not maintain those anymore.

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zolland
This is awesome! I'm working on a very similar mission. When do you plan on
monetizing the product?

Also, a bit off topic but how much time do you allocate for your blog?

~~~
elliotbnvl
Ideally, ASAP. If I can find people that are willing to pay, I'm happy to
sell. If I can't, then I'm going to toss this idea.

Hmm, I'm trying to post maybe twice a week right now, so I guess probably five
or six hours a week?

