I'm a programmer with a really good SaaS idea.... What Now?

While your idea may be amazing, it's very difficult to know that for sure if you haven't validated it. There are varying degrees of validation, but the gold standard is that customers are actually paying you money for it, and they're doing so for the reasons you've predicted. At the extreme other end of the spectrum is putting a product out there that nobody cares to use or pay for. Somewhere close to that pole is having nothing but a vague sense of confidence that your idea is amazing.

All of this is to say: your next step should be to validate that your idea is worth working on. For example, if it's a B2B product, take one of your potential customers out to lunch and try to pre-sell them the product. (Btw, I highly recommend sticking to B2B if you can help it. Consumers are fickle, stingy, and tough to reach.)

Also, defensibility is important. If your idea is any good at all, you can bet that you will have well-funded clones get to work the day after you launch. If the only defense you have is a short head start, you're probably in trouble. Secrecy is rarely sufficient defense. That's why most of us are okay sharing our ideas openly. Some examples of good defenses:

• Network effects in a winner-take-all market. Who's going to join a Facebook clone when all their friends are already on Facebook?
• Execution advantages. The ability to move faster and more effectively. At the risk of sounding a bit arrogant here, there are dozens of Indie Hackers clones. The vast majority never got beyond a few interviews. None that I know of have a community.
• Looking like a bad idea. A lot of the best startups looked like such terrible ideas when they started that nobody big really tried to copy them. For example, Airbnb.
• Picking a tiny niche/market and growing from there. This is a relative of looking like a bad idea. Bigger players can't afford to compete with every single small fry.
• etc.

There's no substitute for simply getting your hands dirty. To that end, just getting started is the best thing to do.

Don't fall into the trap of coding whatever you believe is a good "MVP". Following the MVP methodology is not about building a watered down version of your idea and see if you can find people who want to pay for it. It's a process used to validate your most risky assumptions. Hence starting ought to be about defining what those assumptions are, followed by an experiment to see if the assumption turn out to be correct.

In the early phase of your project, coding something up is often not a good idea. At this point, you want to be thinking about potential customers, how you position your product/services and talking to potential customers to see whether or not you really have a good idea. Interviews are good, surveys are good, etc.

I'd try to validate as many assumptions as you possibly can before doing any coding work. You'll thank me later, I promise. Although you might think right now you know what needs to be built, there's a very good chance you're wrong. And you want to rule out that option as much as possible before diving into the code.

I'd also urge you not to put too much stock into your idea. Not being willing to talk about it is likely going to hold you back. Trust me, people have no interest in your idea. Consider sharing the idea with the world before doing any work as it might help out issues with the initial idea that aren't obvious to yourself but are to an outsider.

Here is my logic:
I don't build SaaS for anyone but myself. I don't build anything for anyone but myself. All of my products were built because I wanted to build them. I found them useful and used them everyday. So I shared them with the world -- sometimes the service remained free and other times I monetized it.

I won't build anything based on a "great idea" or "awesome domain" -- it starts that way, but all ideas then go through the process of being written out -- and very importantly: am i going to use it? It gets crossed my best friend, my wife, my brother, my sister.. and a few others, if it passes on, "wow that actually sounds like a great idea." than I usually get started on it.

Build something, get user feedback, iterate.

Just to start if you're afraid of talking about what you're idea is your life is going to be a lot harder.

There are two mindsets when it comes to actually getting started. First is to just pick a subset of features you can launch with and start coding. This is my preferred method since I'm a coder and it's fun for me. But I'd definitely build a lot of things that were never used by anyone but myself.

The other way is to try to find customers and validate your idea first to make sure it's a good one then once you find the customers you start building.

Here is my advice based on my experience:

Do not write a single line of code... yet!

Why? As a developer what I have normally done in the past its start building the product right away, then get caught in the excitement of building and spending 2-3 months on it.

Then once launched discovering I have no idea how to sell it, or who are my customers, and once I found them they told me most of what I build sucks, because their real problem it is not Y but X. Then having to rebuild it almost from scratch based on their feedback.

I would say, talk to potential customers first (at least 30 of them) and once you have a few interested in giving it a go, start building the MVP.

After coming up with the idea, what are my next logical steps?

Just start building it, there's nothing more to it.

Any answer longer than that one line is unnecessary.

Ideas are easy. Building is easy. Reaching customers is not as easy. This tweet is good advice, imo. Especially at this early stage.
https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge/status/970908668156813313

Share your idea. If nobody has done it before, somebody very likely will.

Just start! Starting, IMO, is the hardest part. Finishing is next. But just start. And what would the point of a cofounder be? If it’s your idea and you’re going to build it, you can learn to market it as well. Don’t sell yourself short

Just like what Courtland has written you need to validate your idea. I would add to this that you need to validate the riskiest core assumption that you would need for the idea to work. A good resource as you go down this road: https://www.leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/

Get out and test that it is a problem and one that people would pay for before you go all in and put down money and time to build it out.

"when do I look for investors?"

...do you need to? Or do you just think you need to? There are major trade-offs to consider with bootstrapping vs. taking outside money. Giving up equity in exchange for cash changes the dynamic.

"do I need a co-founder?"

...do you have, or do you have the aptitude to acquire, all the capabilities necessary to fully execute on the idea? Alternatively, can you partner with someone that actually brings real value to the team in terms of skills, available time or connections?

If you already run a consulting business i'd say you're likely in a pretty good place if that means greater flexibility with your time. The Lean Startup is a good book to pick up if you want to go more in-depth on some of the ideas that the guys are suggesting here. MicroConf is on in Vegas early May which is a great opportunity to connect with people from the bootstrapping community and ask all these kinds of questions!

If you take the mvp instead of validation route, you might save some time with https://anvil.works/

1. Validate idea...
2. Build MVP.
3. Get first customers (even if non-paying) to get feedback about what works and what does not.
4. Adjust offering accordingly.
5. Figure out product market fit.
6. Grow your audience based on the people who like it.
7. Market to that audience.
8. Keep refining product, keep growing audience, and keep refining marketing efforts. Double-down on what works.