Experience as a Solo Founder building a SaaS product
As a solo founder, what were the biggest obstacles you faced while launching your SaaS product, and how did you overcome them?
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As a solo founder, what were the biggest obstacles you faced while launching your SaaS product, and how did you overcome them?
so far, it's been building the right product, getting necessary feedback about the product when I don't have an audience eager to test everything I put out.
a few things that have been helpful:
doing things that don't scale. reach out to people. make individual connections. be the audience I wish I had by giving feedback for people who need it. count 1 person giving me feedback as a win. just because I asked for help yesterday doesn't mean I can't ask again today and keep asking until I've gotten what I need. all the while of course giving more than I get back.
use money. run ads. run polls. these can tell you a lot about the response to your product and aren't so expensive when you just need a few thousand views.
Thanks for sharing your strategies, @scottPlusPlus ! It sounds like you’ve embraced the grassroots approach to building and refining your product. Your emphasis on direct engagement and using ads for quick feedback is insightful.
Have these strategies helped you pivot or refine any specific features significantly? Also, how do you balance the cost and return on ad spend when you're just looking for initial reactions?
definitely. ValidateMySaas is my 4th "product" after 3 landing pages didn't get any traction. And I was able to move on from them fast because I got feedback before actually building.
VMS itself was originally a "product finder", but thanks to user feedback helped pivot towards solving this particular problem.
the ROI on initial adspend is the insight. You don't have a product people can buy yet, so there will not be financial gain. Just ask how much would you pay to get some signal that your idea is going to work or not, BEFORE you build it.
@scottPlusPlus, your approach with ValidateMySaas sounds very pragmatic! It’s great how user feedback helped pivot the project effectively. For the ads, your perspective on using them for validation rather than immediate ROI is enlightening. How do you determine the right amount to spend on these initial ads to get meaningful feedback? Any tips on optimizing ad spend for validation purposes would be incredibly helpful.
Currently, I am a great developer but 0 at marketing.
As a solopreneur, we don't have a blue print, after launching your product where should I promote it.
I need different type of marketing strategies we can can apply, either it could be paid or free.
Recently, I have launched my product downloadnests this is my new project where I am too niche and solving a specific problem in the market
Thanks for sharing, singhajagtar0290! It’s great to hear about your new project, Downloadnests. Since you're looking to explore marketing strategies, both paid and free, here are a couple of suggestions: For free strategies, consider content marketing, especially technical blogs that highlight the unique aspects of your solution, and SEO to enhance your organic reach. For paid options, targeted ads on platforms where your niche audience frequents could be effective. Have you tried exploring partnerships or collaborations within your niche to boost visibility?
In a recent few years from a full time dev job, I managed to launch a few side-projects, from free tools to now paid SaaS from which I made first sales.
I was building while working 9-5, it helped me to learn so much, and now let me deliver greater products with every new launch.
As an obstacle for a Solo Founder tech-oriented, I'd say doing everything by yourself is the biggest issue.
I'm great at coding, okay at designing a page, making a landing page good for conversion (by learning from others).
But I struggle with marketing and creative work, how to make a great marketing copy, headline that catches attention, etc.
Nevertheless, with each launch I feel more confident at marketing, and it affects the conversion - e.g. StartupUtils is my newest project and brought the best results. With next project I will improve even more, so it's only road to the moon :)
Thanks for sharing your journey, @przybytniewski! Balancing development with marketing is indeed a challenge many tech founders face.
It’s inspiring to see how you've evolved with each project. Since you mentioned the challenge with marketing and creative work, I’m curious—what specific marketing strategies have you found most effective?
Also, if you’re open to it, I’d love to discuss how we could potentially collaborate to enhance your marketing efforts for even better conversion results.
Seems like marketing is a pain point for most engineers (myself included). How are you and @przybytniewski tackling this?
Besides product hunt, betalist and hackernews, how are you sharing this?
I was thinking facebook groups, reddit threads etc.
@leondo writing openly about the projects on Twitter, Reddit, IndieHackers.
Tried SEO, didn't work well, as I'm non-native English and it's hard to write good, high-quality articles.
Also tried groups on facebook, discord but they seem not moderated and full of spam. Posted valuable content, got like 3 likes, 0 comments, don't see value there.
idea: Marketing SaaS for indie hackers. Marketing for low budget proof of concept projects.
Also @przybytniewski did you find an audience first then build or build then find audience?
Marketing can indeed be challenging, especially for those with a tech focus. @leondo, your idea for a marketing SaaS for indie hackers sounds promising given the common pain points you both mentioned. @przybytniewski, it's tough when spam drowns out valuable content in groups. Have you considered leveraging platforms like Medium or seeking collaborations with other non-native English tech bloggers to improve reach and content quality? Also, was finding an audience before building more effective for you, or did you refine your target audience post-launch?