How do you come up with good SaaS ideas in saturated markets?
Most SaaS markets nowadays are saturated. How do you come up with good SaaS ideas within those markets?
Most SaaS markets nowadays are saturated. How do you come up with good SaaS ideas within those markets?
Don’t start from looking for “an idea”.
Start from things you wish existed and have tried to buy (either for yourself or at work). Believe me, there are all kinds of tasks that people and companies would gladly spend money to handle.
Instead of “what can I make?”, it’s “what are people looking for?”
Exactly.
When I launched my idea there were already a range of products on the market and yet customers were coming to our office asking for help to build and/or maintain their sites (they mainly came with WordPress)
It took me a while, but I kept creating bowwe.com as an answer to the question, "what are people looking for?" "What do they expect/need etc.?" I talked to them a lot and created the whole product by continuing to work with them and implementing the solutions they were looking for.
I think it's a good start. If people complain about something, it means that the market still has potential and room for your solution.
I am not saying that you should enter into saturated markets but don't ignore those as well because they are saturated for a reason - There is money.
People thought that Form Builder market was saturated but Tally was able to hit $10K MRR recently in Form Builder market. This is almost in last 12 months.
People thought that Twitter scheduling market was saturated but TweetHunter hit $50K MRR. This is almost in last 12 months.
People that Website builders are saturated. Softr recently got $13M in funding. This is almost in last 12 months.
These could be exceptions but you never know until you try that. Again, I am not saying that you should enter into saturated markets but don't ignore those as well because they are saturated for a reason - There is money.
This is one of the problems I am solving for Micro SaaS builders at Micro SaaS Ideas. Having a single view of all profitable Micro SaaS markets will give users a better picture of what is growing and who is making money. I am also working on building a community around this for Micro SaaS builders.
For starters, what makes you think a market is "saturated". I think you need to apply some first principles thinking here and look closely at the assumptions.
One could have easily argued that the market for website builders was saturated 5 years ago. Yet, since then, hundreds more have popped up all over the place and a good number of them seem to be doing well (simply going by the fact that they are still around 2-3 years later).
The above goes to show that, honestly, very few markets are truly saturated. Once that appear to be, often have plenty of niching opportunity: building a version of the tool for a smaller subset of the market, that often has specific needs that aren't always properly addressed by the existing players.
If you have a market you're interested in, start by doing a deep dive into the existing players and the market itself. Find out where the users can be found, either online or offline. Talk to a bunch. Try and get a feel for common issues that pop up, ideally for a certain type of user. Start building out your idea this way.
This is so relatable. I am building Leansence for content creators who also want a website.
Its a subset of the entire market that I am going after.
Saturated markets prove that there is money and needs in the market.
If you use some products in that space you will definitely see their flaws and issues.
Check appstore reviews and see the pain points of users. Use products heavily and see what they are lacking. Then start iterating and talk to users
Even this simple question is packed with some wrong assumptions. Starting with questions like these is fine, but to really answer them you need to start by removing the assumptions and figuring out what you're really asking.
You're assuming that most SaaS markets are saturated. How do you know that? What does it even mean to be saturated? Just because there's 3 coffee shops down the road doesn't mean you can't open another coffee shop. People will still buy coffee wherever it's most convenient.
You're assuming the goal is to look for good SaaS ideas. But what defines a good idea? How will you know when you've got one? If I need to mow my lawn, a good idea might be to go and buy a lawn mower. Another idea might be to hire a guy to do it for me. Notice, the idea comes after the problem, not the other way around.
The last assumption is more subtle. You mentioned "those markets", but which markets are important to you? There are many thousands of markets and within those markets there's sub-markets. Figuring out what market you want to be in is a pretty good place to start. That will depend on what you're good at or interested in.
Super easy! ( happy to partner with you on one microSaaS now)
I would argue that StandupWizard exists in a somewhat saturated market, but what worked for me was differentiating from the others. In my case, I had used a variety of Slack standup bots through work over the years and they all felt like they were missing something, so I ended up creating StandupWizard to solve my own issues and thankfully customers have felt the same. I don't think there's any harm in entering a saturated market since it comes with some validation as others have mentioned, but the key is to be able to differentiate yourself in a sea of other products.