Zero to SaaS - The formula
If you aren’t aware, I’m going to be building one app a month for the next 12 months or so. (Read more about it here )
Zero to SaaS - Falling in love with the process
This means going from idea → launch in roughly four weeks which sounds like a crazy idea!
I believe it’s achievable if I stick to a formula. “Formula, what? You can’t hack your way to shippable apps with a formula”.
No, of course not, but I can define a sprint structure that gives me the the structure needed to be able to take an idea from concept, to MVP and eventually to something I can release out there into the wild.
“Ok, what’s this formula then. hmm?”. Well, given the average month consists of 4.3 weeks, rounding down to 4 weeks that gives me 28 days of real estate to work with.
As I’m employed full time and the primary objective of this experiment is to enjoy building apps again, I wont be utilizing the full 28 days. Rather, just weekends. Assuming I work roughly 5 hours a day, Saturday and Sunday, that gives me 40 hours to create something I can ship.
Ok, that sounds pretty crazy now that I’m spelling it out. But that’s the point, this should be fun and exciting. Who cares if I ship something that’s a mess. I want to enjoy building something.
With that out of the way, how can I best utilize these 40 hours to get the most bang for my buck? Here’s what I’m thinking:
Week 1 (Sprint 1):
- Idea selection (1 hour)
- Product design; name, logo, domain name, etc. (5 hours)
- Waitlist page creation; early access sign up (4 hours)
Week 2 (Sprint 2):
- Frontend design mockups (5 hours)
- Database design (5 hours)
Week 3 (Sprint 3):
- API design (5 hours)
- Frontend implementation (5 hours)
Week 4 (Sprint 4):
- Backend implementation; Cloud hosting, etc. (5 hours)
- Testing & Launching (5 hours)
Following this formula looks like it will produce some pretty rough-around-the-edges work. That’s fine.
These aren’t meant to be polished, enterprise level applications. More like Minimal Viable Products (MVP).
Ideally, I would use the same technologies and implement templates for things like authentication which will help me stay within the small sprints. Perhaps I’ll build some of these early on? But that’s beyond the scope of this blog post.
I’ll be kicking off PI (Program Increment) next week and will talk more about the technical decisions in a future blog post so stay tuned!
It's an interesting plan, which seems to be win-win. I'm sure you'll learn a lot on the way and also potentially have a MVP which could be further explored and developed into something more polished.
Thanks ShortCipher!
Thanks for sharing Brandon, it inspired me to do something similar for the month of November.
Like everyone says, one month of weekends-only work is extremely short for publishing a new SaaS, but, setting tight constraints can actually be very helpful. You'll avoid both the trap of trying to think of and analyze an idea forever, and the trap of building forever (a trap that I always fall in somehow...).
If I remember well, John Carmack and John Romero did something similar before they co-founded id software: they created a new game every month back when they were employed by Softdisk. Romero created a game for every letter of the alphabet. I don't know if anything came of those titles they produced, probably not, but the lessons they learned through that high-volume production no doubt helped them to be extremely successful later on.
Are you planning to post on IH as a means of accountability?
Thanks for the response Laurens!
Nail on the head there. I have always fallen into the trap of building forever, so this time constraint will force me into a cutoff point for each project. Allowing me to become comfortable with "finishing" a project and moving onto the next.
That's a super interesting story and essentially the goal of this one!
I'm going to be writing about and sharing the journey on multiple platforms, IH included!
Looking forward to seeing what you do with November!
I love the idea, and would love to contribute. I've got a very enterprise grade pattern for the 'early access sign up (4 hours)' portion that only takes about 5 mins. I'd love to help, any interest in collaborating?
Thanks! The primary goal of this project is to become comfortable with executing on an idea to completion. As such, I'm not looking to collaborate with any parties on development. Appreciate the offer though.
All the best!
Thanks for reply, if you change your mind, here is a sample sandbox of a generic app that has built-in user sign ups. https://dev-sandbox.vvapp.io/
Kudos to you for your ambition to take on such a challenge, nothing is impossible but building an app every month for a year is a tall task. In most cases when you sacrifice time, you sacrifice quality but your goal is different and I think if you just do and let the pieces fall where they may, you may surprise us all with the results! Best of luck!
Thanks Tyler!
For sure, I've worked in a few startup environments and am used to the fast-paced nature of the industry. The goal here is to remove the anxiety around going from idea to product. Getting comfortable executing on things and then steadily improving from there
Hi, I think better formula is 6 SaaS per 12 months. 1 month of development and 1 month of marketing. Unless your goal is just develpment proccess.
Totally. The goal for this is just the development process. If any projects produced during this experiment gain some traction I'd definitely pivot and invest a lot more time into those ones!
I like the idea but the time you mentioned is very short for a good SaaS project.
Thanks James!
You're totally right. In my previous post I mention the primary goal of this project is simply the building process. Building a good SaaS project would involve a much larger commitment!
Good formula but i think it's gonna take more than that to build pretty good SAAS business
Thanks! You're right. In my earlier post I talk about the motivation behind project focuses on the building process. Building a "good SAAS" isn't the primary objective.
If there are any projects during this that gain some traction I'll definitely invest much more time into them!