How did you find the problem you wanted to solve?
I have been trying to figure out a problem that I can solve (with a SaaS) for sometime now. So far, without any success. I am an engineer working in a large super-app (ride hailing, food delivery, payments, etc. with 30 million+ MAU) company. I tried talking to few colleagues in engineering & product. But I couldn't find anything there. I am starting to feel like may be the approach I am taking is wrong.
I have read a lot of "how to find ideas" articles. But I feel like hearing some actual examples would be really interesting. I would like to hear about your SaaS, what was your background before starting and how did you find that particular problem to solve for?
Hi Shivaprasad,
before we started building era.sh, we were looking for a reliable, fast, and professional note-taking tool. Something that is easy to use, where you can jump into it and start writing documentation and store your code snippets.
We checked out various tools, but none of them were satisfying us. They were over-engineered, had too many features, were slow, web-only, or stored your sensitive data on some cloud, even if you did not want that.
We asked ourselves if there's any alternative that is made for developers. Our colleagues and co-workers also struggled the same as we did. No one was happy with their current solutions.
So we came up with the idea of ERA - The Markdown Note-Taking Tool For Developers.
To create something according to the developers' needs.
We started to talk to devs around the globe, through Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord Communities, etc. Devs of all ages and all tech stacks and industries. 90% of the asked people said, that they are not happy with their current note-taking tools.
That's how we started with our first MVP. Even if the first version was poorly designed and lacked important features, the feedback was positive and many users appreciated it already.
Now we are slowly moving towards the end of our public beta, the desktop app is maturing fast and it's getting better and more efficient.
Conclusion: Look at your professional environment. Listen to the people. What do they really need to be solved? Maybe you struggle the same way as they do.
Confirm it, build it, solve it.
Thanks for responding!
There are so many tools for note-taking/organising and yet this remains a big problem for a lot of devs including me. The existing ones always felt like they are missing something or there is just too much. In fact, I ended up building something on my own - Connote - It's really just an organiser with bring-your-own-editor model.
Looks like era.sh has the simplicity of apple notes with all the nice things from markdown. I like the idea, will try it out.
Are you an engineer by profession as well?
Hey Shivaprasad!
My partner and I owned a logistics company for ecommerce businesses. Eventually we realized 2 things:
So we decided to build https://insupply.co/ to help with sales forecasting so they can have the right amount of inventory on hand 🤠
My suggestion to you:
Good luck!
Yep, "something that is costing money/time" - this is definitely the key.
Thanks for great suggestions.
Lessons I have learned -
(1) think of a problem in the areas you are already familiar with
(2) think of who you are, what you value in life, what you want your legacy to be - and then narrow down the target areas based on that (life too short to work in areas you are not interested in)
(3) think "what and why" before "how to".
(4) Money will not flow unless you are dedicated to your venture - so better to ensure dedication before dreaming of money
(5) Learn not to be mad at people who criticize (sometimes harshly) your ideas. Thank them for caring enough to respond.
(6) dramatically increase networking and see what types of problems others are solving. Talk to as many intelligent, smart, honest (there are too many hucksters out there) people as you can.
Question to the community: is this too "motherhood and apple pie" stuff or have you also learned similar general lessons?
I started making android apps as side projects but it turned out profitable eventually. I am not solving a big problem. I allow users to make invitation cards and greeting cards using drag and drop interface.
This is my playstore account.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=7745505689067808097
Nice! How are you monetizing this ? Through ads or there are purchases?
Hey sorry for delay in replying. I run ads and in-app purchases as well. Majority of earnings are from ads though.
No worries. Thanks for the reply.
what kind of purchases do you have? Purchasable templates, etc.? or some limitation based approach (e.g., beyond 10 cards you need to pay) ?
No all my templates are free. But they will have a watermark at the bottom. They can either watch an video ad to remove it or pay a dollar per month to remove it (10$ a year if paid all at once).
ah okay. got it. Thanks 🙂
Don't look for the SaaS tool you want to build. But look for the tool that you can sell.
Trust me, as a developer, you can build anything you want. But it all comes down to market accepting your SaaS tool.
Yep, I agree. I am looking for a problem (for which a solution will sell). Being an engineer, I have this constant urge to just start building whenever I feel I have an idea. But right now, I am holding off on it and trying to validate before.
Totally. I call it programmer diarrhea. Whenever a cool idea strikes, we want to discharge it with lines of code, with our favorite IDE, our favorite IDE theme and framework. Feels like cool wind in hair... and as we type - it feels like creating a dent in the Universe.
Don't even look at the problem. Look at the solution that's already selling in the market. Then look for the improvements you can make. Then ship it out as a new product.
Thank me later.
"programmer diarrhea" -- good one 😄. Yea, that's exactly the feeling when I am churning code trying to build some "cool" idea (usually not a useful one).
Yep, I am looking at some existing SaaS solutions and trying to figure out improvements I can make through review sites, etc.
Thank you for your question! I completely understand how you feel - it can be very frustrating when you're trying to solve a problem and not making any progress. I'm glad you're reaching out for help and advice.
Finding the right problem to solve is definitely key, and it sounds like you may be approaching it from the wrong angle. Instead of talking to colleagues in engineering and product, try talking to your target market - your potential customers. See what problems they're facing that they wish they had a solution for. Once you've identified a problem that people are actually willing to pay to have solved, then you can start thinking about how to create a SaaS that will address that problem.
For more tips on how to find ideas for your SaaS, I recommend checking out our website: churnfree.com. We have a whole section devoted to helping people find the right problem to solve with their SaaS.
Since I directly work with mainly other engineers or product folks, I tried to choose them as potential customers and tried talking to them to figure out problems they have.
I will check out your website. Thanks!
I think one of the best things to do is ask yourself "what are you curious to keep learning about?"
Then as other people mentioned, find ways to automate manual tasks. But before you can do that, you have to know what people can trust you to get done.
I write more about it here in my playbook to help upcoming entrepreneurs find the right idea for them. https://www.findapath.us/live-free/intro
Hi Shivaprasad,
I am building - virtlly.com - Tool to generate Blog content from idea in minutes using AI.
I started this as I saw people including myself having a hard time in thinking about getting outline or content for their blogs. So with the current undergoing wave of AI, I tried to automate it to generate blog content that would help bloggers write content faster.
We are launching the trial version soon. Sign up at virtlly.com to get notified about the launch. Trial users would get discounts/offers on the upcoming premium versions.
Thank you
Hey, do you have an example of what a published blog looks like? Might also be a good idea to show what the finished product looks like on your landing page.
Hii, Thanks for your suggestion. Yaa I'll soon be creating a video of that and would put it up on the landing page. Although our current aim is to generate raw quality content and not publish it on any of the blogging platforms, we hope to include that in future.
Thanks for responding!
That sounds great! I have wanted to write as well but always struggled with it. I will definitely check it out.
There are loads of people on the marketing side of things here on indie hackers that cant build and are looking for devs with great ideas just waiting to be built. You would get an idea you could decide on (or pass) and then get partnered with someone who could turn it from an app into a business, get customers, and get it into the market. Why not consider that approach?
I have never thought about this approach (i guess i was just focused on building something solo). But I think it's worth a try. There are dedicated groups/threads for partnering up in IH itself. I will check it out.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I built https://buildgrowth.co because in a previous company I needed to find investors and didn't have time. Then, I noticed that what I really was in need of was to be in the big journals (CNN, TechCrunch, etc) mostly because they would give excellent backlinks to my older startup + "free" advertisement.
So I create a platform that easily shows to me the investors or journalists I want to contact.
Thanks for responding!
Are you an engineer by profession? (Just trying to understand how you personally ran into the particular problem of finding investors)
A few things I look for :
I also think it's easier in B2B than B2C. A problem for the masses is very often solved quickly and is very recognizable whether a specific business problem might not be seen by many.
Final trick... talk with people. More. More and more. Asking the right questions is important, but it helps tremendously if you know how to do it.
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Because you asked for it, at edusign.fr, we were signing a paper attendance sheet for a course.
The problem was easy to see, people just "accepted it" as normal and never questioned it. I dug a bit and found that the problem was actually quite big and important for schools (not just students).
We digitized the process and automated a lot of tasks (not just attendance) for the schools. Now over €1.2m in ARR after 2.5 years.
Good research :)
Thanks for responding!.
Congrats on the 1.2m ARR. That's amazing!.
I think this is the case for lot of things.. If you ask people "do you have any problems" directly, in most cases, they won't be able to talk about something. Everything they go through daily is normal for them. Only when someone introduces a way to do the same thing better, they realise.
I think i definitely need to improve on the questions I ask them.
Hi Shivaprasad 👋
I started building ShopNote because I wanted to create an affiliate marketing blog and was frustrated with the existing options out there.
I needed something that would allow me to write blog posts, but also add in affiliate links and track their clicks.
There wasn't really anything out there that did all of this out of the box.
And the go to recommendation in this space, Wordpress with a whole bunch of plugins, wasn't ideal either. In the past I’ve found Wordpress frustrating to work with and didn’t like that updating plugins could break your site.
So that’s exactly the problem I hope to solve with ShopNote. A simple blogging tool with the necessary functionality baked in for affiliate marketing.
Thanks for responding!
ShopNote sounds interesting. It sounds like this was "scratch your own itch" kind of approach. Few questions:
It was definitely a scratch my own itch kind of approach! To answer your questions:
Nope! This is my first time trying affiliate marketing. I’m enjoying working on something I know nothing about though. It’s helping me to learn new skills like SEO, writing content etc.
I’ve done some research so far to validate a few hypotheses. More specifically:
Is this a market that exists, and at what scale?
I looked online to see if other people were selling products/services to this market. Turns out there are quite a few! PrettyLinks for example had over 4.8M downloads! And there are a handful of Udemy courses on how to get started with Affiliate marketing, some with thousands of students.
Do people find creating their first affiliate marketing site difficult?
Again, I searched online. I found numerous Reddit threads, forum posts, and Quora posts asking about how to get started with affiliate marketing and how to create a website for it.
Are people interested in my solution?
I did two landing page tests. The first was to see if anyone was interested in the idea by adding an email sign up.
In the second test, I added pricing to the page to see if people were clicking to start a trial (and signing up to the mailing list).
Although the numbers were modest, and the sample size small, I saw enough to take the risk. As I’m designing and building it myself, the only risk was time, and seeing as this was a problem I wanted to solve for myself, I decided to go for it.
I’m still keen to talk to users though and is something I’m planning to do in the coming weeks!
This is exactly the kind of information I wanted!. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write!
All the best with your product 🙂
One thing I say in my bootstrapper's guide is that is better to start with finding an audience you like. For me, it was indie makers but it can be anything (ex: food, volleyball, etc...). After identifying your target audiences, spend some time figuring out where the fans hangout and start interacting with them. Eventually you will start identifying challenges and problems to solvve