I am making a saas app but it seems that I am stuck in infinite learning loop.

I've been there. My advice: Check your mindset. You're starting from the wrong side.

Your customers don't care.

In fact, I'd venture a guess that you don't have any, because you're too focused on tech.

Tech is tempting, I know the road you're walking. It's fun. You can get lost in it for hours or days or weeks or months at a time.

I spent years walking that road.

Stop walking that road.

Turn around.

Find your customers.

What can you do to serve them, or to get closer to serving them right now?

Do you need to find some potential customers in the first place to validate your idea?

Do you need to create a rough mockup of your grand vision so you can get feedback from the first real customers you've identified?

Do you need a landing page to start collecting info from interested people?

Do you need to take one or two people, and manually do what your product will do in order to validate that people will actually pay for it?

Notice nothing I said is about learning or picking a tech stack.

There's lots of great advice in other comments on this page for stuff that's easy to get running with.

Pick whatever will get you helping your customers the fastest. And that might mean no tech stack at all, at first.

I hope this helps. Like I said, I spent too long being stuck where you are now - Always learning, never getting closer to serving real customers. I'd love to be able to save you from my mistakes, or at least give you a little nudge in a better direction.

I wish you much success! You've got this :)

At the end of the day it doesn't matter which tech. you are using to build a product.

Focus on building stuff whatever you learned so far. You are going to learn on the process anyway.

There are so many profitable (nomadlist etc.) businesses that don't use any fancy tech stack. Especially for MVP, you don't need anything crazy.

One programming language, sql or non-sql DB, HTML and CSS.

I deploy on Heroku with one line of command. No Docker, no Kubernetes. Once I move to my own server, I will look into those techonolgoies.

Things don't change. After the launch, you will need to learn marketing and sales. If successful, you will need to learn how to hire. And so on.

You are always learning when you are trying to launch your thing. This is one of the main benefits of not being an employee.

Heya, I am not a developer by trade, but I built all of my app (https://www.hindsights.io) myself, including all of the back end to the front end. I wouldn’t consider myself an “expert” in any of the bits and pieces (jQuery, Bootstrap, AWS, Django, NLP, or Python generally) that I used though.

My approach was to start building, work out what I needed to do (whether it was in pseudo code or outline), and figure out how to do that. If I was to “learn” a tool until I considered myself an expert at that before I started to implement it, I’d have taken forever.

FWIW I started building the Web app around August.

Here you go: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/938707166508154880?s=19

Plain PHP and a single Linode box if I recall correctly.

(@levelsio)

Why?

If you're working on a startup or a new side-business, why do you need react redux saga? Why do you need docker or kubernetes? Uber scaled to a $10B with neither.

Is your goal to add buzzwords to your resume so you can search for a job at a huge company or to release a V1?

Oh man, I feel your pain here - I too am someone who wants to "master" something before using it for something real. I feel "icky" if I launch something but I don't truly understand how it works.

But in a side business, the only thing that matters is if a customer will "hire" your product to perform some "job" (in the Jobs to be Done parlance).

My advice? If you're trying to build a business, use what you already know! Don't use new things if it's going to be business critical.

But if you want to learn a new technology, find a day or two and build the SIMPLEST thing you can with that technology. Treat it as a throwaway. Think of this as a hackathon/experiment. If you found it useful, you'll be able to incorporate this learning into your business. If it was a waste of time, or you don't "get it", abandon it - fast!

At SpaceTime, we've done this well with GraphQL and SwiftUI. We've done this unsuccessfully with Neo4j and AWS Lambda (where we made Lambda business critical, but later reverted back to running on EC2 - and for Neo4j, we're still using it and happy with it so far, but MySQL might have been a good choice as well).

TL;DR - Use what you know! But you should also evaluate new tech from time to time (but not too often). When doing this - treat that as a fast experiment, not a commitment.

Focus on less things, you don’t need to know docker or kubernetes. You honestly shouldn’t even need React or Redux. The most important thing when BUILDing a business is to stay focused on the main focus, which is building a product your customer wants.

It probably doesn’t matter if your product is built in React or not. If you already know express, you can do a lot with just HTML views. Depending on you MVP and product you shouldn’t need to even code.

If your goal is do build a software BUSINESS and not software, then the technology you use doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is your customers, the problem your solving and the solution you might build for that customer. If you figure this out, you will be able to exchange your potential solution for money and hire someone who wants to build software to figure out what technology to use.

You don't need to be an expert to use a hammer. Just take a hammer, read a short instruction, find what you need and use it.

If you are building an MVP there is no way it will be anywhere clean and robust under the hood. So, don't worry about using tools in the wrong way 🤓

Some of the things seem like rational others are a bit irrational

1. Why did you learn these skills? For example, did you learn Mongodb because someone convinced you that you needed it or because you didn't know any database system so this felt like a good start?

2. I don't think you need to learn Docker or kubernetes for a mvp, you can build the first few versions manually, if you're using Create react app then all you need to do is to write "Npm build" and you'll have a completed build that you can manually put online using FTP, or just automate the process using bash scripts? Why do you need Redux saga? Redux should be enough, shouldn't it?

I don't code, but made an exercise app. Wanted it for myself. Googled my way to success. Used the simplest things to get an mvp. I didn't need to become an expert to code. Would it help? Sure, but then you run the risk of not shipping until it's "perfect".

Unless you have an existing audience, nobody cares. Nobody but the few you share it with will see it. That allows you to tweak it, make it better and polish it up before showing more people.

I'm all for rapid prototyping. Getting parts of ideas created. If it's a physical thing, I'll create cardboard/paper mockups. Or 3D print quick models to test out. Digital things get many versions as I make it better.

I have the picture in my mind of whatever I'm making in its perfect form. But I know that I can't even get close to a version like that before I've made a bunch of terrible ones first.

You are not making a Saas app. You are learning new technologies. Focus on the value you want to provide then use whatever tech you already know that gets you there the fastest.

Hey @iAmPizza - I have this conversation with so many friends that are in the same boat. I give them all the same advice - don't focus on the stack - focus on the experience.

Of course, your mvp needs to 'work' but let that be defined by how people use it versus some amazing container deployment & framework. No one sees that part and they don't really care. Start with the part that people use. Then scale your tech with people's needs.

Disclaimer: I am a designer before I am developer ;)

You don't need to know everything to get started. There will always be something to learn. Pick something you're comfortable with that can solve the problem.

You will learn much faster if you just go for it and make a lot of mistakes!

Also please don't learn Kubernetes to deploy your first app. Docker may be valuable (mostly for development in my opinion) but not necessary to start. Think of how many apps were released while these technologies didn't even exist!

You can go a long way with a simple technology like Node.js or Python or Go and deploying to Heroku (which is not the cheapest platform but the easiest to work with in my opinion).

Best of luck! Also happy to hear of any SaaS ideas if you have any cool ones to share :)

And if you have specific questions feel free to keep asking them here! We're happy to help!

According to StackOverflow statistics, 60% people don't use kubernetes/docker for deployment.
If you want to move fast, always plot out the requirements or a blueprint of what you want to build and start working on achieving the end goal instead of being an expert in one field.
Incremental approach is better.

If your goal is to build a SaaS and not learn new tech then you definately don't need to learn all of these things to launch, especially not docker and kubernetes. If you don't understand or have the problems that kubernetes is solving then you don't need it, same goes for redux saga. Node, express and mongodb should be enough to get an MVP out.

Does you idea need to have React for the MVP? If not just use express and templates.

Deployment wise just find a good node boilerplate free or paid like https://usegravity.app/

You still have a lot to learn on marketing and sales as well so the learning never stops.

You don't need all that crap. Forget the buzzword hype driven development. You can get pretty far with nothing but PHP and a single Linode server.

My startups app has reasonably high technical requirements and it all runs on 4 VM's. No docker, no kubernetes. Keep it simple.

I have been facing this problem and decided to work on it..

see my post
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/idea-feedback-learn-production-level-implementation-in-group-from-a-practicing-expert-49f95763ae

Let me know what do you think..