The $0 Secret to SaaS Startup Success (That Most Founders Miss)

Yesterday I went to Tech Alley, an event geared towards networking and being the centralized hub for tech startups in the Henderson/Las Vegas Area. Last night, John Emmons from Project Wilbur gave a presentation on how companies can get Venture capital funds, and what investors look for when investing into startups for Pre-seed and Seed rounds of investing.

For the second half of the event, they brought on Tax professionals and various other speakers to talk about the administrative and bookkeeping requirements when running a startup to avoid trouble with the IRS and how to minimize your tax obligation.

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By far, my favorite of the event was networking afterwards.

My company, NuVision Technology, is a software consulting firm that helps tech startups build their MVPs and establish product-market fit for free, to prevent them from spending tons of money on development before they have even proven if there is a need for it in the market.

I’ve personally worked for startups where this has happened, the founder falls in love with his vision, and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on development, cloud computing, and software maintenance without ever talking to users and gathering feedback to iterate on their product and pivot if need be.

The recurring theme of the night, as I talked to Lorraine Yarde , the host of the event and many other founders that were there that night, is that this is a common problem. Investing thousands, or in some cases millions of dollars into development, before establishing product market fit, talking to customers, and iterating on your product and user experience is the number 1 problem that I see tech startups that fail suffer from.

Tech founders that I have worked with, and seen scale multiple SaaS companies successfully, all have one trait in common: they validate their idea before they invest a ton of capital.

The process is straightforward.

Come up with an idea
Develop an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Get customer feedback
Use customer feedback to iterate or pivot

Let me give you an example to illustrate my point.

Social media has been non-stop talking about the data leaks that came from the Tea Social/Dating App . According to Pew Research, the percentage of relationships that begin online is rapidly growing. I saw an opportunity to demonstrate the value of iterating on user feedback and establishing product-market fit before you go all in.

I set up a Google form, and for about 30 minutes, browsed through various online social media platforms, and asked users who already indicated market intrest (since they are talking about it online), if they would be interested in a dating app that addressed the painpoints they were expereincing in dating apps, and if so to fill out my form.

These were the results.

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8 leads, 3 customer feedback responses, and customer buying intent.

Real Data, from real customers, in less than 30 minutes, and it cost me zero dollars.

I spent time talking with more potential leads as the responses trickled in, many users suggested they felt that modern dating apps were superficial, and did not allow users to truly express who they are outside of the typical “I like rock music, and Mexican food”.

Many of them also reported a desire for local group hangouts, something that is near to their city, niche, and authentic. They wanted real human experience.

This kind of data is GOLD for tech startups, because that user feedback allows me to change the user experience, features, and branding of the product. Decisions about what to focus on in development are no longer guesses; we are now making data-driven decisions with relevant data directly from consumers.

Now, this by itself is great, and can save your SaaS company millions in saved development labor, working on features that nobody cares about, but we can do better than great.

How do we know people want to give me money for my product or service?

We can ask them.

I asked users if they would be willing to spend a monthly fee to become early access members of the app; here were the results:

Just over half of the respondents, 62.5%, said they would like to give me money so they can have early access to the app.

Congratulations, we have now established product market fit.

Now this is a simplified, albeit real-world example of how to establish product market fit. If I wanted to bootstrap this into a full-fledged tech startup, I would significantly boost the amount of time talking to customers to get even more feedback and continue iterating, create a newsletter around this to promote marketing materials, gauge user interest, and keep them engaged. Maybe even start pre-sales and support monthly subscriptions to start bringing in revenue.

All of this, before writing even a single line of code.

Now, if you already have a tech startup that you’re working on, or have spent money on, it’s not the end of the world. You can start collecting user feedback now with what you have, and then repeat the process illustrated above.

If you want more information on how to set your tech startup for success without spending money on a product the market doesn’t want, then join my newsletter, where I show tech founders how to establish product market fit and how to build MVP’s fast to get users testing their product or service.

P.S. I do software engineering consulting / fractional CTO services for tech companies that need help establishing product market fit. With over a decade of experience in full-stack engineering, I’ve done work for Hulu+, Warner Bros Discovery, Yum Brands Inc. (Taco Bell’s parent company), AI companies, and many more. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

Email: [email protected]