SaaS is hard. Services are easy!
In the last few years, I've had exposure to the services industry as well as the products industry. My conclusion - SaaS is Hard. Services are Easy!
I've helped services-based companies set-up their service oriented units and have closely observed the modus operandi. People are always looking to outsource - development, design and some other work. If you can identify those companies the only hard part is to get connected with the right people within the company and pitch your services.
Overall, it's a much simplified and easy sales process where you get paid for the hours you spend.
SaaS is a totally different game, so it seems. Identifying customer's pain-point seems to be the biggest challenge; because the customers, most of the times don't know about it.
Even if you identify the pain, you don't have a clue about the degree of pain it is for the customer - and their willingness to pay a monthly subscription fee to fix that problem.
What's your opinion?
IMO, SaaS scales easier than services when you have product market fit. Getting to product market fit with a SaaS company though is probably one of the hardest things in startups. If you're not looking to go MASSIVE, I'd say go with services.
Caveat is that services are harder to scale at the tail-end. This is someone who worked at a $500M-$2B services company... pain in the ass...
Agreed. PMF is hardest. The not so good part about services is that most of us end up trading time for money. On the other hand a micro-saas can help you retire and spent the rest of your life on a nice beach in Bali.
Service doesn't scale. But it is much easier.
I spent 3 years on various SaaS products and made less than $2K/mo on average. Spent 3 months on services and I'm making $9K/mo.
Interesting. Could you elaborate on what type of SaaS products where you working on and also what type of services you are currently offering?
I think the complete opposite is true. With services you only get paid when you are actively working. With digital products like SAAS, you can build once and sell it 10 million times without having to re-create that initial building process. With services, you have to do the work every single time.
That's true as well. Scaling is a different thing - and SaaS scales 1000x better than services. It's easier to automate as well.
The hardest for almost all of us is finding the PMF.
Yes, that’s why is useful try to solve your own problems and then realise who alse shares that problematic with you, if it is not a problem of yours, then will be difficult as you say try to be on your customers pov
True. Creating a SaaS to solve my own problems may not always work. My approach is to find out the problems people are facing or spotting companies that are solving problems and then approaching them with a better solution. It's still very hard!