I'm working on my second startup... Here's what I won't do this time 👀

Heyho folks! I am working on a new startup and thought you might be interested in my thought process in finding a new idea to work on. My approach is a little different this time: Here are the goals I don't want to achieve 👇

💡The Background

First things first, I'm Dom and I been running a successful bootstrapped and solo run B2B SaaS for the past 3 years :)

I want to start diversifying my product income streams. Betting on only one horse might work for some people but my gut tells me the time is right to start betting on another one.

I spent a lot of time automating the heck out of HelpKit processes so that I have a good chunk of time and mental capacity free for something new.

That's great, 👐! Well... but what do I actually want to work on?

🤔 What are anti goals?

Anti goals are the things you define as your worst possible “no way!” outcome with how you spend your day. It's inspired by Andrew Wilkinson and I think it's easily applicable to startup ideas that align with the product-founder fit concept.

I want to work on a business I actually enjoy working on day by day. Given this is not my first rodeo, I'm very well aware that there will be days you don't enjoy working on your startup, so having clearly defined anti goals feels even more important to me.

Here are my eight anti goals for what my new startup should not be:

🚫 Be in the B2C space. While I really want to one day work on a B2C app, we all know that the chances of success are 0.01% and it's practically not manageable as a solo founder. I don't want to drown in support requests for a user that pays me $3.99/month.

🚫 Be an info product. Info products are hard to be acquired. I eventually might want to sell my startup for a good amount of $$$. I started experimenting with some info products such as Nomadkit and while I definitely enjoyed building it, it didn't really feel as fulfilling. I'm itching for building a valuable SaaS.

🚫 An idea I wouldn't use myself. The classic scratch your own itch. I only want to work on things I actually use myself and know about the market already.

🚫 Focus on too many things at once. I don't want to build a swiss-army-knife-type of product. I believe in focusing on one single thing and doing that better than the competition.

🚫 Working on a non validated idea. I been there. I built a product for 3 months that in the end nobody even needed. The idea should already be validated. That way I know there are people willing to spend money to solve their problem and I can focus on iterating on the flaws of already existing solutions.

🚫 Be high touch. I don't want to have an obscure pricing model that you only unlock after an onboarding call. Demo calls are fine but everything should be self-service and easy enough for users to do everything themselves.

🚫 Help improve insignificant metrics. I want to work on an idea that helps companies either make more money or save bunch of time. It's an way easier value prop selling something that will help companies make more money than improving a random intangible metric.

🚫 Be mission critical. This is a catch 22, I know. If your product is super critical it's logically more valuable but... HelpKit runs help centers for companies 24/7. If it goes down hell breaks loose: My heart rate go 🆙 My mood go ⬇️ I already have HelpKit to run so for the sake of my mental sanity I don't want work on something that has similar demands.

So these are my eight anti goals. I will try my best to (not 😉) follow them with my new idea.

After pivoting low quality ideas for the past few days I think I finally hit something that aligns with my anti goals 👀

More on that soon 😉 Sorry for the cliff hanger.

What are your anti goals?