How I found my SaaS Idea

The Struggle

Like most people in the IH community I too struggled with finding an idea. I felt the ideas I came up with were not good enough or didn't have a place in the market. Looking back I was flooded with self doubt and a lack of confidence in my ability and is something that I am working on daily. I recently had a breakthrough though and found a SaaS idea and a client that committed to subscribing once the software is built.

What happened?

I received a message from someone in my network recommending me to build a website for a local business in the area. I hopped on the phone with the prospect and was talking and we decided on the best path forward which was to build the website closer to opening day (this was a local accommodation company so a website without cabins built just did not make sense at this time).

We started talking about their other business and building a website for that. They expressed the dislike they had for their current management system they use to take in appointments for dog boarding and doggy daycare. I then offered to build them a program on the condition that they would work with me to create it how they wanted, allow me to resell it, and they would commit to subscribing. We agreed to the terms and now we have almost finished the MVP.

Motivation

I found that by getting an idea from someone with a problem they needed solved and working on that brought me much more motivation then me blindly searching for ideas and attempting to do Product Market Fit. When I do PMF I always second guess myself but when you find someone with the problem and they express their network has problems with the current solution then to me the PMF has been validated.

The Lesson

I am naturally extroverted. I love talking to people and learning about people in my area and in other parts of the world. I leveraged the strength of my love of people and talking to people I was able to find a problem that I really did not even know existed. THE LESSON, get out there and talk to people in an industry. Find out what their problems are and how you could solve them with software.

Renewed

I feel like this breakthrough that I have had has turned me from just lurking and dreaming about creating a SaaS into actually doing it. It has started to fuel my desire and my soul with motivation to create. Even if I only get one user, I will still consider it a win because the lessons that I have learned along the way.

In life you can take failure, as a reason not to push forward or you can take it as a learning experience and translate it into the reason to push forward because of the knowledge you have that you didn't.

I hope that everyone liked this article and was able to gain something from it. If you want to be notified when I post and updates on my building in public journey then follow me on X, https://twitter.com/blakerunyon_io.