
Ask HN: How to get started with SaaS? - otto_ortega
I&#x27;m Computer Science Engineer and have worked as freelancer developer for the past 4 years. My life goal is to make a living running a SaaS business.<p>Ever since I learnt how to write code my dream has been to have my own SaaS business, however I struggle on finding how to get started with it.<p>Specially on what regards on finding a viable idea to convert into a SaaS platform.<p>Any advice on how to get started?
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navanit
Alright, so here's how you go about it. I'll first give you the general
approach, then an example.

1\. Find a demographic that you care about. Someone you want to help from the
heart (not just intellectually). This will keep you going through the dark
times.

2\. Find an online forum or vertical where a critical mass of this demographic
hangs out. This could be a specialized forum, a subreddit, or twitter.

3\. Read through their posts and find pain points and existing _businesses_
that solve these pain points.

4\. Create a SAAS that helps these businesses you found above. Typically you
can help them become more efficient at something. They will most appreciate a
SAAS that helps them book more customers.

Here's the example I promised:

1\. Let's say you care about pets and pet owners

2\. Spend time on /r/pets and /r/aww and find their major pain points

3\. You'll see that vets (veterinarians) and animal shelters come up a lot.

4\. Look at Vet websites and animal shelters and see how you can make them
better and offer differentiated services for these vets and animals shelters
as a SaaS (note, these are businesses and you're thus a B2B SaaS).

That's how you come up with a good first part of the founder/product/market
fit equation :)

Execution is a whole different ball game and then there's the marketing. If
you've done your research right, then feedback and early customers should come
from the very forum that you discovered the pain point at.

Your motivation will come from knowing that by improving the services offered
by the vets and animal shelters (even if it's in the billing department),
you'll be helping a lot of kitties and puppies at the margin.

This is the only way I know to do meaningful work and make some decent money
at it.

TL;DR: Find a demographic you care about; climb one or two nodes up the tree
until you hit a business that serves this demographic; create
products/services for these businesses.

Edit: clarified B2B and added TL;DR

~~~
mtmail
Funny coincidence, a friend of mine will launch
[https://www.pawsquad.co.uk/](https://www.pawsquad.co.uk/) this month. I don't
know if he looked on /r/pets for inspiration though.

~~~
leesalminen
Howdy-

I'm the founder of a SaaS for dog daycare, boarding, grooming and training
businesses. Have a few customers in UK/Ireland and they may be interested in
chatting.

My email is on my profile here if interested.

------
michaelbuckbee
Is there anything from your freelance development projects that jumps out as
potentially worthwhile? Many of the best bootstrapped SAAS businesses I've
seen have come from problems people encountered while freelancing or working
on other things:

Tyler Tringas created StoreMapper based upon freelance work he was doing:
[http://tylertringas.com/storemapper-store-locator-
bootstrapp...](http://tylertringas.com/storemapper-store-locator-bootstrapped-
to-50k/)

Andrew Culver created ChurnBuster after repeatedly running into credit card
renewal problems for clients:
[https://www.churnbuster.com](https://www.churnbuster.com)

I built ExpeditedSSL -
[https://www.expeditedssl.com](https://www.expeditedssl.com) \- after getting
fed up with adding SSL to client sites.

Josh Pigford built BareMetrics -
[https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com) after getting frustrated
with trying to understand his metrics from other SAAS projects.

In general freelancing is a great spot to be in to observe what pains
businesses have that are sufficiently difficult that they'll shell out actual
amounts of money to deal with.

~~~
otto_ortega
There are a few things that have some potential, but then I enter in the
ethical part of if its OK to take something I have been paid to built as a
base for my own business.

Specially because those few things that might be interesting enough are
projects that I developed to give some competitive advantage to a specific
client on a specific area, so If turn it into a SaaS I burn them.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
You definitely can't take code you wrote for other people, but attacking
similar problems is usually fair game. Even better, I've seen a few instances
where a freelancer agreed to tackle something for a reduced rate with the
express agreement that they would also be re-using, reselling that portion of
their work.

This struck me as very clever as it was a way to keep cash flow up by
continuing to freelance, but also to get that crucial first paying customer
who can help guide you in building a product.

------
ghuntley
[http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-
metrics-2/](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) and
[http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-
constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-
contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

~~~
otto_ortega
The SaaS metrics guide is very complete and interesting. thank you so much for
sharing.

------
piyushmakhija
This article by a16z is very insightful.
[http://a16z.com/2014/05/13/understanding-saas-valuation-
prim...](http://a16z.com/2014/05/13/understanding-saas-valuation-primer/)

