What are the subjects a software engineer should be familiar with before starting a SaaS business?
Hi all, I'm new to this forum and the world of entrepreneurship. I'm a software engineering, with more than a decade of experience under my belt. I'm convinced that I need to do something of my own but I do not know "what" yet.
With this in mind, which are the non-engineering areas I should aim to educate myself on, before starting on this journey if I want to start my own SaaS a year from now and what resources would you recommend for the same?
Thanks in advance.
Why start a year from now when you can start today? With 1-hour per day progress, you can achieve a lot. Indie Hackers is enough resource to inspire and keep you motivated.
There is no subject in specific. You just have to start and learn in the process.
By no subject I mean, you don't have to be a pro software developer, a sales expert or a marketing ninja in order to build and launch a profitable SaaS business. You just have to start building and learning. In no time, things will start clicking.
What exactly is holding you down?
I can help more if you can share more about your challenges.
I run a bootstrapped SAAS business. Some of my tips:
It is not about the software. It never is. It is about "solving your customer's problems" which in SAAS happens to be through software. Start thinking about what problems you can solve and for which type of customers i.e. the market/domain you will sell to
Learn how to sell. If you cannot sell, you cannot run any business. Sales is something that can be learned. You don't have to be a born sales person even though some people may be better hustler than you but it doesn't matter. You can learn how to sell.
If you sell to everyone, you will sell to no one. Read that again. The goal is to identify your target market. There is no magic wand for it. It may take a lot of trial and error and even years before you can figure this out sometimes. It took my business 3+ years to finally understand who our target market should be.
Learn Finance and basic accounting. Understand the difference between Revenue, Cost, Income Statement/PNL, CashFlow , Balance SHeets etc.
Start today. Start now. Don't wait for the perfect day when you will be ready. You never will be ready until you jump into the real thing. You don't have to start full-time. You can find 30 minutes a day to start. Baby steps. One thing at a time. Don't have time ? Then you are not serious enough. If you want to do something badly, you can find time to do it. Most likely, you will fail but learn some valuable lessons along the way so that you can try again. Failure is only failure when you stop trying. Otherwise, it is just another step to success.
Don't compare with others. It never helps. Only look at others for inspiration if at all. Just because some friend of yours is doing great in business, you have no idea the sacrifices and difficulties they may have gone through. Focus on what you can do. Everyone has their strengths. Find yours.
All the best. Doing your own thing is the best thing you can do for yourself BUT it is also one of the hardest things to do. It takes time and there are no shortcuts. Exceptions are always there but don't think about those.
I loved reading this.
This is gold
Spend time figuring out how you can provide value to a market. Once you have a validated idea, build the software and learn all the entrepreneurial stuff along the way.
Trust me, I spent 4 years "learning" and being a wantrepreneur. You'll never know "enough" until you start working on an idea. Once you get a product out, you will learn more than you can handle.
With that said, once you have an idea, learn from people who are similar to you. IndieHackers is a great place for that. I've learned so much from other people in the B2C space, and plan on learning much more.
I've been keeping track of resources that have helped me create Ulluminate, and they may be useful to you as well. I'll keep it up to date with things that have helped me along the way.
Resources that have helped me
Good luck in your journey!
Agree with other commenters on learning via practice. Your first idea doesn't have to be "the one" with financial success, think of it as your "sandbox" where you test things out. In fact, assuming your first project is just for learning will make you more likely to try things versus overthinking it on "the idea" you want to pursue into commercial success. This approach can save you from mistakes when you start working on something with more commitment.
Resources for starting/running a SaaS business:
https://www.startupschool.org - starting on Monday, regi now!
https://stripe.com/atlas/guides - focused on SaaS and Stipe Atlas also offers resources for creating a legal entity for running a business (you can wait to do this until you validate your idea and preparing to start collecting payments for your product).
Second this. You don't know it's a good idea until it is so just get to doing and then do some more.
No amount of preparation is going to prepare you as much as on-the-job learning. Of course, that's not to say you should go in guns blazing. The sooner you get started, the better, but supplement your journey with resources that help you avoid common mistakes/pitfalls while providing you basics of the important areas. As an engineer myself, it was a harsh realization that the engineering aspect constitutes a relatively small part of the overall process. Sales, marketing, support, customer outreach and acquisition are critical in order to avoid building a product nobody wants or has heard of. Best of luck.
I also came to entrepreneurship from software.
I learned the hard way that entrepreneurship skills aren't learned in the same way as technical skills.
You don't educate yourself first, or study some subjects, before becoming an entreprenur. I thought that's how it worked, because that's how it is in engineering fields. That assumption turned out completely wrong, and I wasted a lot of time trying to learn before doing it.
Instead, you have to jump into it and learn by doing. Sales, marketing, and other business topics all have to do with talking to people, understanding them, and communicating to them how you can solve their problem. So while you can't get good at those things by reading a textbook, the good news is that there's no real barrier to entry to start doing it and learning from experience. That's my observation.
Work Ethics and sleeping on small amounts of sleep. Stress management. And how to put a good team together. Learning to fire people on a drop of a hat. Knowing when to shut shit down and keep on experimenting. Ohh and create a feature request board and create a 24/7 help desk don't forget that.
Hey there - fellow engineer and product guy here.
You should read everything answered by Jason M Lemkins before you start SaaS.
Go read https://www.saastr.com/quora-2/ and don't start until you have finished every single questions.
Good Luck! It will be a tough journey but a fulfilling one.
Step 1. Understand your customer
Step 2. See step 1.
One of the best ways to learn is to get involved with someone/some people who are on their way working towards achieving the type of things that interest you. Theory is good but nothing quite like seeing theory come into action and tasting of that savoury practical pie.
If you're looking to dip your toes in somewhere with that dev talent, I'm sure there are lots of great projects interested in your skills. I'm in Brisbane, be happy to discuss further with you what I'm working on.