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I really think that the most important and critical part of founding successful startups is the idea-finding and validation part. The execution needs to be perfect too, but only when you find the "good" Idea.
💡 The only good idea
Here is how you get to the “good” idea :
Step 1: Generate multiple ideas e.g. 30 ideas —> There are several methods to do so (Brainstorming, observing trends, ready-to-use ideas… ).
Step 2: Navigate and filter your ideas. Make a shortlist of 4 to 5 ideas.
Step 3: Pick an idea and start validating it. If you fail, go back to Step 2.
If none of your shortlist’s ideas get validated, go back to Step 1.
Today, we dig deep into Step 1 and Step 2.
Step 3 will be discussed in the next release.
🧭 How to navigate ideas?
Three aspects that you need to keep in mind while navigating ideas, which will define the “good” one: Product/ founder fit, your selling price, and your type of customer.
This is my take on defining a good idea for myself
Product/ founder fit:
This can be defined by your interests, as it shows the compatibility between you as a founder and your idea.
My interests are:
IT, cloud, Expat in Germany, Berlin, SaaS enthusiast, Football, Rap music, podcasts, worked in a startup with an exit, had equity before, investment, etc…
Price points:
What is your end goal? how much earning do you want to achieve?
My pricing point:
I want to achieve $5k/mo, this means that I have three opportunities to do this :
100 subscriptions at $50/mo
or 200 subscriptions at $25/mo
or 2500 subscriptions at $2/mo
So, in my next project I will probably code it by myself. Since I have basic sales knowledge, it means that $25/mo is the best opportunity for me.
Customer type:
Choosing the right sort of consumer to deal with is an important step in your path. This decision has a variety of implications, including the amount you may charge, the number of clients required to meet your monthly goal, and the length of the sales process.
My type of customer:
I would choose “small business” as I am willing to sell for $25 a month. I also want low churn and low conversion rate. I can deal with the onboarding time and the extra hustle of sales but I can’t deal with the high churn rates and the low conversion rates.
The good thing about B2B or small businesses is once the customer is onboarded then there is no need to think about churn rates or raising prices. If I would choose Consumer or Prosumer instead, then I would need a much larger traffic and a lot of freemiums.
For a deep dive, here is a video from Rob Walling: B2C vs B2B
Before moving forward with this article, take a moment to think about these three aspects. Also, feel free to reach out to me by simply replying to this email, So we can have a discussion about your interests, your final earning goal, your pricing points, and your type of customer.
🧲 Where to find ideas
There are several ways to deal with this. You can be looking into ready-to-use ideas, try the alternative funnel or micro-SaaS marketplaces
Ready-to-use ideas:
You can find some on these platforms:
Nugget.one: There are multiple ideas here, where most of the time the user addressing the problem is also detailing the issue and suggesting a way to fix it. Although the website has not been updated for 2 years, but the ideas are still exclusive and are definitely not outdated.
Microconf: Rob Walling is an expert in the field, he selects some ideas and gives some insights, which helps guide on how to navigate them.
Twitterbot: This is really cool as you can find directly some prospects asking for products, that they are willing to pay for. This means that some validation has been already done.
There are also Newsletters that dump ideas into your inbox:
The alternative funnel
Now let's say you want to go through a completely different funnel, which is "alternatives". An alternative solution usually serves the same purpose or performs similar functions as the original SaaS, but somehow it better meets some specific needs or requirements.
These are the things that you could be looking into to come up with alternatives:
We will be calling this List A
X, but marketed at niche Y
X, but tailored to industry Y
X, but available in country Y
X, but tailored toward the legal and cultural requirements of country Y
X, but more user-friendly
X, but without features Y and Z (don't pay for features you don't need, easier to get started with, don't get bothered by UI for features you don't need)
X, but with integration for other service Y
X, but mass market instead of enterprise pricing
X, but with better customer support
X, with pay per use pricing only instead of monthly tiers
Let's do the exercise together :
First of all choose a software that you like or best fits your product-fit e.g. Microsoft Teams
Then, download a keyword tool like "Keywords everywhere" and start looking for stuff like :
I hate Microsoft Teams … Microsoft Teams sucks… Do not use Microsoft Teams … etc …
Once you document the flaws of Microsoft Teams into a list called List B,
Go check these three websites :
and extract all the competitors of Microsoft Teams in a List C
Finally, you compare List C with both of A and B Lists. You will most likely come up with a couple of things not touched in A and B that you can combine and put into a software. I summarized the whole process into the following graph
Micro-SaaS marketplaces:
Micro-SaaS is easier than SaaS. It will spare you the extra hustle of advertising, SEO, hosting etc ... It is about building plugins and add-ons, directly into the platform, so your only competition is ranking up in the software marketplace.
These are 68 Marketplaces for which you could create plugins and/or add-ons: Rocketgems
Here, I would find maketplaces that I used before like: Slack, Google Chrome, Wix or Stripe and find what is missing as integration in those platforms.
Here is an example with slack :
Marketplace: Slack apps
Raw problems: from the website “I fucking hate slack” you can retrieve some problems like “slack’s huddle” or distraction in slack.
My point of view: These are bigger Problems that can’t really be solved in the form of a micro-SaaS. Since we are not trying to build a new slack, and we just want to create a new extension, I would look for other minor problems that I could fix and build a micro-SaaS for.
An example of a success story: Pull reminder for Slack
Bonus:
Matterport is not mentioned in the marketplaces, but this is really a gem as it has a big following, a new marketplace, a niched down business and most importantly only three micro-SaaS inside, so there is a big room for innovation.
📑 Conclusion
Can you do me a favor? Don’t just read this article, you need to get to work!
Write down your “Filters” :
Product/founder fit
Type of customer
Pricing point
Choose a way to find ideas:
Ready-to-use
Alternatives
Micro-SaaS
Your best chance is to combine everything together, so look into ideas to get inspired, check marketplaces for micro-SaaS, and run lists. What if there is a piece of software that can generate ideas and do all of this work 🤔? I would definitely buy it!