How to find B2B SaaS ideas
Hello, everyone says to find a problem you can solve to come up with a SaaS idea, and in order to find problems, you should know where your potential customers hang out. But, in the case of businesses they generally don't hang out anywhere, and even if they do, they are usually in a private slack group. It's not possible to get in contact with them and ask about their problems because they might be too busy and won't have the time to be a part of an interview. How did you find ideas in this situation? What strategies one can use in order to find problems in B2B space?
Thank you :)
This may seem like an unpopular opinion, but I also think you could look at a SaaS company you really admire and approach the same problem it's solving from your own unique angle.
I have been writing about this for the last 2 years at Micro SaaS Ideas
Lots to unpack in your question, so I will do my best to break it into chunks.
+++++++ IDEA DISCOVERY +++++++
Ideation is a repetitive process, so you need to be obsessed with finding the truths.
Speak to people around you. Understand how they do things. Improvements come in two forms, operational improvements (better mouse traps) or new tools to replace the status quo (car > horses)
Structure your conversations to dig deep and then listen intently, with the sole intention of understanding the existing ways of doing things.
Speak to people from diverse industries and seniorities. You can reach out to people on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Listen to podcasts that have guests explicitly talking about their existing solutions, problems etc. GetLatka & My First Million are two podcasts I highly recommend
Ultimately identify ideas that pique your interest.
+++++++ IDEA VALIDATION +++++++
So you found some exciting idea(s). Before you start building your product, initiate lines of enquiry to find out how many more people have the same problem and are happy to pay you $$$ monthly for your solution. You can test the market for price, need, competition etc.
You need to be ruthless.
You want to weed out the "Vitamin" (good to have) ideas from the "pain killer" (need to have) ideas.
You want your solution to be the "pain killer" for your customer's problems.
+++++++ BUILD +++++++
Now comes the fun part, build the most miniature functional product (MVP), ship, and keep improving with customer feedback.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I have over-simplified here a fair bit, but hopefully, you can develop your framework from this.
Good Luck!
Thank you so much for sharing :)
Talk to people, not businesses, and start with people you know (for example, pick a specific role in a specific type of company)
However, it's always better if you solve a problem you had yourself in a previous experience.
Even without talking to anyone, you can get ideas just by browsing the web. For example:
Thank you so much :)
Agree with this entirely, where do the people at the company hang out
While what you say makes sense for large businesses, it's not necessarily true for small ones (could be making millions though). For example, there are countless business owners in the numerous WordPress communities on different social media. You will see many plugin owners, freelancers, and others with some product/service to sell, active in those communities. I think it's an example of a great place to understand needs and pain points and get ideas.
They say, don't think up ideas but discover new ideas. Still don't know who they are!
Sorry, can you please explain more
This question basically comes up every week on indiehackers. One idea that came up last week was the idea of finding 10-15 business owners in your network (can be on indiehackers, IRL, on facebook or whatever) and asking them if you can send them a survey once per week for 4 weeks and in it you ask them about the biggest pain points for their business that they feel are unaddressed by current tools or services.
Thank you so much for answering,
But that seems like the same problem, they generally don't like to signup for such surveys
If you can't find 10 people in your network that run businesses and are willing to help I'd be incredibly surprised - them being busy just means you haven't asked enough people yet. I'll be your first survey participant if you like :)
@blunicorn Thank you so much, how can I get in touch with you?
You can email me using the email address on my IH profile :)
@blunicorn can I please contact you too?
yes of course :)
may i take you up on your offer to @Remy_Oswalt
Sure, jut send me an email on the address on my IH profile :)
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Hi! I'm 5 months into building-- all I've done is customer research. My successful B2B founder friends repeatedly have cautioned against building before you've validated the problem, so your train of thought seems really healthy.
This is something that worked for me:
You could start out by identifying functional spaces or end user within a company (e.g., consider each function of a company: Sales, Marketing, Finance, Infrastructure, Engineering, Product, etc.). It makes sense to think through a space you know well, or a problem you've experienced first hand (naturally).
Then, canvas the broader market to understand the PROBLEM existing providers are serving (not the solution they're taking, but rather, the problem they're solving).
Afterwards, and this was the big unlock for me-- consider plotting the different problems in a 2x2 axis of 'how well served is this problem' (least to most) x 'how impactful is this problem (i.e., to the end B2B user)' (least to most)?
Then just pick the problem that is highest impact and least served :)
Obviously this is just a rough template.... but it's a great way to do some arm chair research and land on a problem space that is ripe to solve!
---
Ultimately, you'll have to talk with people if you're serious about building this full time.
For months, I tried to cultivate new relationships w/ potential customers, simply by reaching out to individuals COLD on LinkedIn. Sales development representative style. For every 100 emails I sent (and these were highly personalized, so they take some time), I received may ~15-20 responses? Which is pretty darn good, in my opinion.
I went into each conversation highly prepared with interview guides to do problem space / market research. Now, I'm revisiting those conversations and treating them as customer leads. Hoping to land a design partner soon.
Best of luck!
Hello Remy, something that worked out for me is that I got a partner with a lot of corporate experience, you need to remember that business are managed by people and at the end you will sell to a person, the thing is, it is really important to know who will be your internal customer. At the end, it does not matter if it is a big company, people will make the decision to buy or not to buy, big companies will have contests and a big list of requirements though...
Even that we are a small company we are working with customers that have between 10 to 100,000 employees and have presence in about 10 countries (they use our tool in all their locations)
In my case, my partner has been in the governance and compliance business for more than 25 years and understands a lot of problems that his customers have, there is an age gap of 26 years between us, this has been a great advantage for me because as a technical founder I did not had much insight of the industry we were starting our SaaS in, in the other side, it is of great value for him to bring young talent that uses modern technologies to solve old problems and partnership is important because both parts need to have the same interest.
We partnered up after we had simple version of the software, we analyzed how much time it would take to have a full featured version and sales projections, we started talking about a partnership after that. (Nothing will come out as planned but hey, you can work together during this time and check out if there is enough chimestry)
I know it might sound a little bit hard to find people with this profile, but you can start thinking of your network and reach out to consultants, business owners and other people that have been in different niches for a while, you will be surprised how many people might be interested in building something but cant put the money or time to start it, a small presentation might be enough for them to validate with their costumers and a MVP might be enough for them to sell. (If i can give you an advice here is to find someone that is a business man, consultant etc + speaker, the speaker part is important, they have a lot of contacts)
I am currently looking for a B2C SaaS, B2B is great but it is full of complex requirements and complicated timelines.
Have a great one, hope it helps in some way.
Thank you so much cesar for this valuable advice,
How did you find your co-founder? I have some B2C ideas, but not sure how to make them profitable from day 1. Do you have some advice regarding B2C space too?
Hi Remy, I basically worked for him before this happened (per hour), I analyzed the time, effort and money the project would take to be created with the budget he had to pay for my services and how I could shrink time and money efforts for him, then I made an appointment and spoke with him about this.
Honestly, I was not sure this was going to work (but I was convinced the idea was really good and that both parts had way to much value to provide, I had quit my job some months before because I really wanted to be my own boss, also, the project I was working on at the time wasn't going to be ready as fast as I needed), during the meeting he said; You know what, I've tried to convince engineers to partner before and they did not want to do this, I really like the idea.
At the end of the meeting we shook hands and started a series of negotiation meetings. I can tell you it has been an awesome experience for both sides.
I would say you let the guys who know the customers firsthand build stuff. All you have to do is build the same with your own spin on it if you see they're making a lot of money, that saves you a lot of time because they've found a problem that you never knew existed and validated the problem for you.
but that may consider copying others?
Whether you consider it copying or not, someone is going to do it if not you. Every product ever existed has competitors.
get a job. and if you can't get in front of them because they're too busy then your messaging is off or you wont have an easy path to sell them whatever solution you dream up
I'm creating something for that. I hope you don't mind I'm promoting it here but it feels very relevant. https://yep.so/p/painkiller
One way we figured out ours was working with digital Health companies as a software agency. We uncovered a challenge that a lot of these companies were facing
There are answers on some fourms