Picking a SaaS idea in the age of LLMs
I'm trying to ship 10 SaaS projects this year and honestly the hardest part isn't building. It's choosing what to build.
Coding agents made code cheap, but validation is still painful. So I wrote down the filter I'm using before I commit to anything.
Roughly: can I get to MVP in 2 weeks. Is there an obvious place to promote it (a subreddit, an ad audience, a platform like RapidAPI). Will I get a real signal within 6 months. And is it different enough from my other projects that I'll actually learn something new.
I wrote up the whole thing (criteria, the workflow, a couple of diagrams) over here if you wanna see it: https://codesolo.substack.com/p/how-to-pick-a-saas-idea-in-the-age
Curious what your dealbreaker is when you look at a new idea. Mine's time to signal. If I can't tell within 6 months whether it's working, I don't start.
The filter is mostly right, but “can I build it in 2 weeks?” is probably the least important part now.
That used to be a real constraint.
Now it mostly just filters for what is easy to ship, not what is expensive to ignore.
The stronger screen is usually:
does the problem already cost someone enough that they are solving it badly right now?
That tends to predict distribution, urgency, and willingness to pay better than build speed.
Fast MVPs are useful.
But “easy to build” has become a weak proxy for “worth building.”
That’s the part LLMs changed most.