A few thoughts on the minimal set of user stories for a Micro-SaaS MVP
https://andinfinity.eu/post/2022-06-06-whats-part-of-an-mvp-for-a-micro-saas/
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What did I miss?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What did I miss?
This is a pretty cool idea. What's your plan exactly? Create like a boilerplate repo? What language would you use? Backend only or frontend as well?
Thank you!
Yes, but a private one for now, as it might be viable to sell it later on.
data: postgres
user auth: ory kratos
backend: golang, gin gonic, gorm, gqlgen/graphQL
frontend: sveltekit, typescript, apollo for the graphQL client
I really like the stack so far, as it's very easy to move fast, especially in the backend.
Sweet.
If you want to turn it into a product, the tech stack will play a huge role. And to be honest, yours might be a bit too cutting edge for that ;)
With a more common stack I could see the idea working though as an open source project with some additional saas/support services.
You are a 100% correct, it would be a fringe offering. I think these technologies are solid choices but might not represent the skillset out there. But I will never ever use the node ecosystem if I don't have to. And go, graphQL are easy to learn, especially if the plumbing is already made.
I figure if I decide to sell it, it wouldn't make me rich, but I get to work on it for (a small amount of) money. We'll see. For now, I'll try my own ideas ;)
Thank you for your thoughts, appreciate that!
That’s a great list! Back when I use to MVP from the ground up I’d find myself on day 4 of building the most robust authorization framework I could and would burn out before even building the core features.
I was surprised to see you didn’t mention a hosted solution for authentication, which seems so common nowadays. I’m much more on team DIY as well. Was curious what your reasoning behind that was?Edit: I missed the mention of Ory Kratos. How do you like them compared to a DIY solution?
Thank you! Yeah, I know that. I was CTO of/co-founded three startups, and that's what gave me the idea 2-3 years ago. I was always busy with the same stuff before you get to the part that really matters.
That's why I'm a big fan of Ory Kratos/Keycloak actually! I don't give much thought to this and I'm also interested in infosec, so that's important to me. Especially Ory is taking this very serious (and they sometimes take very long to release new features, if at all due to this), but this means that I didn't have to deal with vulns yet. So I fully recommend it.
Personally would approach it from a different angle.
For the first micro-saas - try to outsource everything you can (user management, sub management) to other services, so you can focus purely on your small product.
That will reduce your time-to-market to a minimum - potentially few days only.
Take the learnings. If the saas has mild/barely any/no traction, there's a good chance that the outsourced services you used will be close to or fully free.
My example stack for a micro-saas:
Nextjs + serverless-nextjs frontend
Supabase for backend
Clerk for user auth
Stripe for payments
Can be setup in less than one day. After that, the time is 100% spent on the product.
Do note that this is not the best stack, but the one I'm comfortable with using & have used previously in multiple other projects.
In my personal projects I avoid everything that takes too much time (subjective, I know) and tend to go only for options that have a wealth of guides & discussions online - I don't want to waste time while I'm highly motivated to build something, digging into a new sparsely documented technology I don't truly care about. What I want is to build something, not to learn yet another tool.
Going back to your point of user stories - the nice part of "outsourcing" is that you don't need to think about the user stories behind the outsourced part, just tick off checklist items as "done" :)
Thank you for your comment which does not agree with me, absolutely valuable! And thank you for sharing your approach ... and finally, welcome to IH ;)
I agree with your take a 100%, it's just not for me. Imho when I have finished my boilerplate (which is absolutely minimal) I can deploy products on a weekend as well. I have lots of experience with these tools, be it firebase/supabase or anything automagic. You hit the wall with these things quite quickly and then you have to reimplement it. Not a big fan of that. Also, one of my ideas that made it through the meat grinder would not be possible without supabase.
I do as well, but in a different way. That's why I use user stories. If I wouldn't, I would just start coding and building with no end, but I want to have a) a clear goal and b) a clear motivation why, attached to ROI.
I'm building "proper" SaaS startups for over 7 years now, with all the hassles it brings. Management, funding etc. And my biggest take-away was time and time again: what sets you apart is spending time and money wisely, ergo: what's the return I get for building feature X vs. feature Y. So I want to nail that. I want to know why I'm building something and what I'm gaining from it. That's why I like to use user stories (and frameworks like "The Mom Test" etc.), even for very basic things. It stops me from succumbing to feature creep or building something no one would use.
Wish you all the best on your journey!
I'ts awesome!!
I actually was about to start working on something similar, I'd add sharing and invites functionality especially as a boilerplate to SAAS MVP in order to get more traction.
I also thought about the UI itself.
If you agree to team up with me, in order to create something amazing
I'd be really happy.
just DM me
Well thank you! I can only encourage you to do it and try it with proper products to see what the essentials are. The UI is also included of course, both frontend and backend.
Currently I'd like to continue alone, but if I want to change that, I'll let you know.