Reserve 10 months to reach 100 SaaS customers

All of my projects took longer to build than I planned. I nearly gave up on everything but made a successful pivot.

Here are the tips that will help you plan your runway, so you don't quit your job too early:

1. Check how much cash you've got
   This is the most obvious one. Have a look at the bank accounts. See what assets you can sell in case you feel you're close to ramen profitability. My old TV covered my domain subscriptions.

2. Freelance
   I know you want to earn passive income from your products, but let's put it on hold for a while. You need to generate cashflow to put energy into startup. Think about which skills you can freelance with, while your project is getting momentum.

3. Analyze the market
   I jumped into high-risk & high-reward opportunities. I'd advise my younger self to first build startups in more obvious markets.

I learned a lot about building under uncertainty in 2021, but didn't earn as much as I assumed.

There are saturated markets (many competitors) and unsaturated markets (few competitors). If you're launching your first startup, better avoid markets where it's difficult to find competition. It's a high chance you won't find ramen profitability there either.

After launching a bunch of products, I came up with these approximate timings for building new startups:

A. Creating a landing page and 3 product screenshots - 1 week.
B. Getting first 5 calls - 3 weeks (these are the toughest because you find your message, audience, and offer)
C. Getting next 20 calls - 1 month. (here you start to see who needs it at all and edit your landing)
D. Reaching 50 calls and closing the first 10 customers - 1 month.
E. Turning 10 customers into 50 - 2 months of intense work.
F. Reaching 100 paying users - 2 more months of intense work.

I gave pretty ambitious approximations of the scenario when you don't get demotivated for weeks, don't pivot, and solve a real problem. In 7 months you may aim for 100 SaaS customers if you hit the right issue.

Better reserve 3 more months on iterations, product pivots, and periods when you'll have no idea what you do.
Steve Blanc advises spending 1-2 years on customer development. If you're launching a SaaS in an unsaturated B2C market, reserve 10.

Thanks a lot for reading this post! I'll really appreciate it if you like it, so other founders know what to expect🙂.

How much time did it take you to reach 100 paying users?