Question: How do you find SaaS ideas?
Yes - point blank asking it here as I am always getting the same answers to this question.
- "Talk to customers".
- How do you talk to customers?
- "Have you read the mom test?" 🧠🔫💀
If you are in the "idea" phase how do you find customers?
I tried talking to my personal network - mainly other software engineers. The most common topics were legacy code, tech debt and poor organisations (bad boss, budget constraints etc.). I tried talking beyond my network to get in touch with new industries - marketing. Besides hearing the same complaints about organisation specific problems, I did not get anything useful other than a list of tools they already use and are happy with. And if they are not happy with them I was able to find at least 3-4 alternatives. Marketing is c-r-o-w-d-e-d.
So maybe I am searching for the "ONE GOOD IDEA" ? Maybe I should just choose something dull and go with that e.g. CRM?
Okay cool, so lets niche down - CRM for financial advisors, hows that? Sounds good to me, although if I was a financial advisor I see not problem with using a more generic tool that is more battle tested and most likely for a better price given the scale - but what do I know, I guess I'm too much in my technical brain to understand & I hold money too tightly.
A quick google search found a few CRM's for financial advisors but a quick call to a friend who is a financial advisor confirmed he does not use anything and would be potentially open to it. I might be on to something!
So, lets say I build this - how do I get my first customer? Where do I find him/her? How do I talk to him? In the end it will be easy to talk them if I already have a product to show right?
...but what if they dont like it? Maybe I should talk to them first.
Aaaand Im back to square one! I feel like this is the loop that I run through over and over. Sorry for the rant. I know it's not as bad as it might feel right now but I bet I am not the only person with this frustration so I am curious how you guys deal with it & more importantly, how to get out of it?
You’ve got a friend who’s a financial advisor and he said he’s open to using a CRM? Sounds like you have an excellent lead on your first customer. You don’t need a ton of customers early on; if you solve a problem for your friend you’re probably solving the problem for others as well.