How to build a SaaS in 6 simple steps

There are thousands of resources available for building your first SaaS. But 90% of them are just repurposed content from the main resource 🤷🏻♂️

But I have helped many clients build and launch great SaaS products (building my own SaaS product too which is going to launch very soon) and I am going to enlist all the steps & explain them to you in the most-simplest-way possible so that a 5- years old can understand it.

1. Research to find the gap & convert it into an idea

Before you even decide to build a SaaS out of thin air, research and try to find the gap if it exists.

Here are 3 types of research you can conduct to do so:

👉🏻 Target Industry and Market

👉🏻 Competitor analysis

👉🏻 Pain & problems of customers

The 3rd one is very important because a lot of the SaaS is built on the first 2 but it's the last one that makes it the most profitable.

Because you are going to sell it to the customers. If it's relevant directly to the customer's problems & solves them, your SaaS will be successful.

But sometimes, most SaaS ideas are just those problems that piss you off. You can try to pay attention to your problems and maybe you have your next SaaS idea.

For example, Stripe is the most successful startup of Y Combinator. Its founder faced this problem, "why can't we have the easiest method to get payments through the web"? While he was trying to get payments for his other startup.

Seeing this problem urged him to create a payment gateway and the rest is history!

(I have also explained it here)

So, I just want you to sit relaxed and think of the problems you face in your daily work. Can something be fixed which is the pain for many people? And there you will find your SaaS idea…

But getting an idea is one thing and knowing whether this idea has the potential to generate cash is another. In simple words, is it only you who's excited about that, or other people are also facing the problem?

And that leads to our next step...

2. Idea validation by stakeholders

Before you start hiring an agency to build your SaaS, you need your idea validated by all the stakeholders.

Two of the most important stakeholders:

1. Developers
2. Potential customers

Can your idea be given the shape of the SaaS and have a pricing model? You will get this answer from the developers.

Not every idea can be SaaS ☹

Is my idea important enough that people will love to pay for it? So, there's no point in building a SaaS if customers are not going to pay for it.

For the first, just have a 1-1 call with the developers and they will guide you through it, or you can also reach out to me here.

And for the second, you can just post about it in the discord servers, Reddit, or your own social media and you will get feedback.

It is very important that you validate it before starting to build it ✋🏻

3. Choosing the right tech stack

To build your own SaaS, there are many tech stack options available to you but ultimately it depends on your product scope of work.

For the front end, we recommend frameworks like Vue, React, Svelte, or Preact. If you are focused on SSR/SSG there are frameworks on top of these like Nuxt.js, Next.js, Astro, and much more.

I love Vue.js for the SaaS frontend and Tailwind CSS for building UI because it’s easy to get started and worked well in all our SaaS projects.

For the backend, we used Nodejs, Python, and Golang for most products. 

For the database, we love working with MongoDB, and Firebase. We also suggest MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Supabase for small applications. 

For cloud servers, we mostly used AWS and GCP. However, we love GCP more considering the overall developer experience and transparency. AWS on the other hand felt more counter-intuitive and needlessly hard to work with lots of hidden costs.

Now don’t get me started on AWS documentation 🤮

For SaaS payments, which are mostly subscription-based, we suggest using "Managed Stripe". 

Managed stripe makes it easy for non-technical founders to set the payment gateway on their own without spending money on the developer & it has amazing features too.

4. Deciding the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with the right features

Now, the next step is to create an MVP to let your customers understand, how's your product going to work.

But here's the catch.

Anyone can build an MVP, but a successful MVP will be built on a feature that you do only, and it will differentiate you from your competition.

Why? It helps your potential customers understand why they should pay you instead of them.

We build a Figma prototype for our MVP and then use it as the video to showcase how our product is and what you can expect from the product.

Currently, on our SaaS product, we have done the same. We Built the Figma prototype and then we are going to build it.

(If you need help regarding building your MVP, you can reach out to me here

5. The beginning of the crucial work: "Development"

After you have decided everything from tech stack to cloud vendor, it's time to develop it.

Now, if you are looking to outsource the development to the agency, make sure you must read my 6 tips before you even make that decision.

Besides everything, either you build it on your own as a technical founder or outsource it as a non-technical founder, I suggest hiring a Fractional CTO for it.

The diverse experience of the Fractional CTO would help you build your product better with better features. Because he can guide you to where you can improve it.

And he is going to manage the development team more efficiently & effectively.

6. UX is not "consideration". It's a "necessity" ✅

Most SaaS founders make the same mistake.

"They do not care about the UX"

Customer's smooth interaction with your SaaS is very important. It can make or break your product.

If you are not focusing on your UX, you will just fail your product badly.

You must understand design psychology to create a great SaaS product.

Read the experience of Omar Farook (founder of Glorify where he explains not having a great UX was one of the reasons he lost $250k on his startup here

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That was my guide to building a SaaS product and I hope you have found value 🙏🏻

Got a question about building SaaS? Schedule a 1:1 with me here. 

Happy building!!