Need advice: tiny SaaS vs productized service for calm solo income?
I’m a dev with 20+ years experience (currently a startup CTO) looking to build a small, low-stress side business. I don’t need big numbers — my goal is ~£2–3k/month with ~30 hours/month effort.
I’ve had good success recently building internal AI tools (“vibe coding”), and I’d love to keep things async, calm, and solo — ideally with recurring revenue.
Torn between two paths:
1. Productized AI automation service — talk to folks, build small one-off tools manually, then maybe templatize into SaaS
2. Pure SaaS — do interviews, validate a narrow problem, build a small tool, and collect waitlist signups before shipping
Main concern: I don’t want new bosses, scope creep, or emotional debt — just want to build useful stuff and get paid for it.
Which path would you pick in 2025 if you were in my shoes? Or is there a third I’m missing?
Hi, I think the first one, because you can continue selling the templates on a recurring basis.
Either on a landing page where you continually receive visitors, either because you have optimized SEO, or on a social network and you send traffic there.
Or on digital product sales platforms like:
I suppose it could at least be offered here as well.
A lot of startups have been ditching the old "build it and hope they'll come" mindset and going straight for what matters: getting real customers to pay, even before the full solution exists. Please think of how Airbnb started by renting out airbeds before building their platform, or how Tesla took pre-orders for cars long before production.
Bottom line: You don't need a finished product to start making money or learning from real customers. Startups that use this revenue-driven discovery approach move faster, learn more, and build things people want to pay for.
Having a mere wait list does not necessarily validate your idea as much as earning revenues. This is the key principle I follow at https://startup-side.in/
I recommend the 1st option.