How I Never Run Out of SaaS Ideas
Summary
TLDRThis video script explores three methods for generating SaaS application ideas, tailored for different stages of the SaaS journey. The first method involves identifying personal inefficiencies for a hands-on project, the second suggests engaging with niche business owners on platforms like Reddit to uncover specific pain points, and the third leverages Partner Stack to discover and validate business solutions. The speaker emphasizes the importance of idea validation and provides insights on how to differentiate and create unique SaaS products.
Takeaways
- 🤔 The challenge of choosing what to build in a SaaS application can vary based on personal goals and experience level.
- 🛠️ Starting with personal inefficiencies or processes that could be improved in one's daily life is a practical way to find SaaS ideas, especially for beginners.
- 💡 Keeping a running list of ideas, such as on a phone, can help in constantly growing one's idea bank for potential SaaS applications.
- 🏗️ The importance of not only being an ideas person but also an execution person, which involves seeing projects through to completion.
- 🔍 Looking within niche communities online, such as specific subreddits, can uncover specific business problems that software could solve.
- 📊 The value of understanding the competition and market landscape by researching what other SaaS founders are building for targeted business owners.
- 🔑 Utilizing platforms like Partner Stack to discover and validate SaaS business ideas by exploring various software products and their features.
- 🛍️ The potential of affiliate marketing not just for earning commissions but also as a means to validate the demand for certain SaaS products.
- 💼 The significance of targeting B2B products which solve real business problems and potentially have a higher value for business owners.
- 🔄 The process of iterating and improving on existing SaaS products by adding unique features or spins to differentiate from the competition.
- 🚀 The encouragement for viewers to share their own methods for finding SaaS ideas, fostering a community of idea sharing and support.
Q & A
What is the main challenge when considering building a SaaS application?
-The main challenge is determining what to build, as it can vary depending on one's goals and where they are in their SaaS journey.
Why is it important to understand your goals before building a SaaS application?
-Understanding your goals helps shape the type of product you end up creating and can influence whether the application is for personal use, to make money, or to gain experience.
What does the speaker suggest as the first method for coming up with SaaS ideas?
-The first method involves looking within your own life to identify inefficiencies or processes that could be improved, which can be a great starting point for beginners.
How can personal inefficiencies be a source of SaaS ideas?
-Personal inefficiencies can inspire SaaS ideas because they represent real-world problems that a software solution could address, even if it's not a high-revenue idea initially.
What is the advantage of building a SaaS application based on personal needs?
-The advantage is that even if the application doesn't attract many users or sales, it still provides value to your own life and can motivate you to complete the project.
Why is it suggested to try new hobbies when looking for SaaS ideas?
-Trying new hobbies can expose you to new activities and challenges, potentially revealing inefficiencies or needs that could be addressed by a SaaS application.
What is the second method for finding SaaS ideas mentioned in the script?
-The second method involves finding business owners online, particularly in specific niches, and identifying the problems they discuss as potential areas for SaaS solutions.
How can engaging with business owners on platforms like Reddit help in finding SaaS ideas?
-Engaging with business owners on platforms like Reddit allows you to understand their specific problems and needs, which can lead to highly targeted and valuable SaaS ideas.
What is the significance of looking at competitors' products when using the second method?
-Examining competitors' products helps you understand the landscape, their features, and any missed opportunities or unique twists you could offer to differentiate your own SaaS product.
What is the third method introduced for generating SaaS ideas, and how does it work?
-The third method involves using Partner Stack, a platform where you can discover different SaaS businesses and validate ideas by promoting them as an affiliate and observing sales responses.
How can Partner Stack help in validating SaaS ideas?
-By promoting products on Partner Stack as an affiliate, you can test whether people are willing to pay for a product, thus validating its market potential before investing in creating a similar or improved version.
What is the importance of being creative when finding inspiration from existing SaaS products?
-Being creative with existing ideas allows you to offer a unique spin or additional features that can make your SaaS product stand out and be more appealing to potential users.
Why is it recommended to look at smaller or newer SaaS businesses on Partner Stack?
-Smaller or newer SaaS businesses may have fewer features, making them more feasible to replicate or improve upon, and they represent opportunities that larger competitors may have overlooked.
What can be learned from a SaaS product's website in terms of marketing and customer acquisition?
-By visiting a SaaS product's website, you can gain insights into their marketing strategies, customer acquisition methods, and how they present their product, which can inform your own approach.
How does the speaker suggest validating the market interest for a SaaS product idea?
-The speaker suggests using affiliate marketing to drive traffic to a product and observing if sales are generated. If sales occur, it indicates that there is market interest in the product.
What is brand bidding in the context of affiliate marketing on Partner Stack?
-Brand bidding is an affiliate marketing strategy where you run targeted search campaigns for the name of a company or product. If someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase, you earn a commission and validate market interest.
Why is it important to check the terms and conditions before promoting products on Partner Stack?
-It is important to ensure that the product allows for brand bidding and complies with Partner Stack's terms and conditions to avoid any issues and to understand the promotional boundaries set by the platform.
Outlines
🤔 Discovering SAS Ideas Through Personal Experience
The speaker introduces the challenge of finding ideas for a SAS (Software as a Service) application and suggests that the type of product one chooses to build depends on their goals and experience. They emphasize the importance of understanding one's SAS journey and whether the goal is to make money or simply to gain experience. The speaker shares their own approach to idea generation, which includes maintaining a running list of app ideas on their phone. They propose three methods for coming up with SAS ideas and promise to reveal a unique third method with bonus tips at the end of the video. The first method involves identifying inefficiencies or processes in one's own life that could be improved with a SAS application, which can serve as a starting point for beginners and validate the ability to see a project through to completion.
🔎 Researching Business Problems on Online Platforms
The second method focuses on finding business owners online, particularly on platforms like Reddit, to identify specific problems they face. The speaker uses the example of Airbnb business owners to illustrate how one can manually browse through threads to find 'golden nuggets' of potential software solutions. This method is described as time-consuming but valuable because it uncovers specific business problems that, if solved with a software product, could be easier to sell. Additionally, this approach allows for the discovery of competition and the opportunity to understand the market landscape, including the features offered by existing products and potential areas for differentiation.
🛍️ Leveraging Partner Stack for Idea Validation and Discovery
The third method involves using Partner Stack, a platform where business owners seek partners to promote their products. The speaker explains how to join as a partner and filter by category to discover different SAS businesses and their offerings. The goal is to find smaller, newer businesses with fewer features that could potentially be replicated or improved upon. The speaker also discusses the possibility of validating ideas by promoting these products as an affiliate, earning a commission, and using this as a means to confirm that there is a market for the product. They highlight the importance of being creative and adding a unique twist to differentiate from existing offerings. The method concludes with a discussion on how to use this information for marketing and customer acquisition strategies.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡SaaS
💡Ideas
💡Efficiency
💡Hobbies
💡B2C vs B2B
💡Subreddits
💡Partner Stack
💡Affiliate Marketing
💡Validation
💡Execution
Highlights
The challenge of deciding what to build in a SaaS application and how personal goals can influence the choice.
The importance of being both an ideas person and an execution person in the SaaS journey.
Three methods for generating SaaS ideas from personal inefficiencies, online business owners, and partnership platforms.
The value of identifying inefficiencies in one's own life as a starting point for a SaaS application.
How personal projects can validate the ability to see a project through and mitigate risks in SaaS development.
The process of looking outward to friends and family for potential SaaS ideas.
Engaging with online communities like Reddit to identify specific business owner's problems.
The manual process of sifting through online forums to find 'golden nuggets' of SaaS ideas.
The advantage of targeting B2B SaaS products that solve specific business problems.
Using Partner Stack to discover and validate SaaS business ideas by promoting existing products.
The potential of affiliate marketing to test the market for SaaS ideas before development.
The importance of understanding the competition and market landscape in SaaS idea generation.
The strategy of finding smaller, newer SaaS businesses to draw inspiration and identify gaps.
The creative process of taking a feature from an existing SaaS and enhancing it for a new product.
The practical steps of using Google Ads for validating SaaS ideas through brand bidding.
The necessity of due diligence when using Partner Stack to ensure compliance with terms and conditions.
Encouraging viewers to share their own methods for finding SaaS ideas and to engage with the content.
Transcripts
so if you've ever considered building a
SAS application you've probably come
across the question of what the heck
should I build and honestly it is not
the easiest question to answer and it
might vary depending on what your goals
are for the application that you're
trying to build you know where are you
in your SAS Journey have you built an
application before uh is this your first
one are you trying to make a lot of
money from this or is it just trying to
get your feet wet into this space all of
these factors will shape the type of
product that you end up picking but
throughout my life I've kind of always
been an ideas guy I haven't really had
any trouble coming up with ideas um but
now I'm trying to also be like an
execution guy as well so I want to share
with you three different methods that
I've come up with for coming up with SAS
ideas and I've used all three of these
to come up with a giant list of app
ideas that I have you know I keep a
running list on my phone and it's kind
of constantly growing I don't know if
I'll ever be able to get to all the
ideas that I have but I think these
three methods are very tried and true
they definitely work and they can come
up with a lot of different ideas cuz
really when it comes to SAS there's an
unlimited amount of ideas out there you
just got to kind of put in some work to
figure out what they all are definitely
be sure to stick around until the end of
the video the third method that I'll
share with you is one that I haven't
really seen talked about too much and
there's some special bonus tips in there
so stick around until the end to see all
of those methods but let's begin with
the first method and this really is the
lowest hanging fruit of them all uh if
you have absolutely no idea where to
start and you've never built a SAS
application before this will probably be
your best bet at finding an idea and
what this entails is kind of just
looking within yourself and looking
within your own life and seeing if there
are any inefficiencies or processes that
could be improved on your day-to-day
some more specific areas where this
might be relevant are just think about
your hobbies think about maybe things
that you do during work or just things
that you do every single day and if
there's a process that takes a really
long time or it just isn't very
efficient this could be a great idea for
a sass this doesn't have to be your
million-dollar idea and in all
likelihood it probably won't be an idea
that would bring in a ton of money but
if you've never built a SAS before it's
really important to figure out that you
can do it and these ideas will benefit
you first and that's really powerful
because it'll give you the motivation
that you need to see it all the way
through you know the risk becomes
completely mitigated because you know at
the end of the day hey even if I don't
get any users and I don't get any sales
still have something that I'm able to
use every day and benefits my life and
it also validates that you're able to
see a project through all the way to the
end which is a very important part of
the SAS process if you can't think of
any in your own life you know maybe just
try out some new hobbies uh try out some
new things that uh seem interesting to
you but also you can look outward you
know if you have some friends or family
that are struggling with things on their
day-to-day this can be a great place to
to start as well currently this is how I
came up with the idea for the
application that I'm building and if you
want to see the first Dev log for the
application that I'm building I'll leave
it up in a card above but essentially I
recently moved in with my girlfriend and
every day we were trying to figure out
what we're going to eat for dinner so
this is a way for couples to mitigate
that problem and solve a big
inefficiency in our life and as I was
saying before this is a great test for
me I just want to be able to see a
project all the way through and at the
end of it even if I have no users I have
something that my girlfriend and I will
be able to use every single day and will
be super useful for the both of us all
righty so that's the first method like I
said it's it's really if you were just
getting started or you really can't
think of any ideas a lot of those apps
will be in the B Toc space and they can
be harder to sell because you know in
the B2B space you're solving problems
for real businesses and potentially
making them more money with your product
so those are the types of products that
we'll be trying to find with method 2
method 2 is all about finding business
owners somewhere online and it can be
any type of business owner but it should
really be in a specific category of
business owners and I'm going to use
Reddit for the purpose of this example
but it really it doesn't have to be
Reddit business owners are hanging out
in a variety of different places you
could think about finding information in
Facebook groups or on LinkedIn obviously
Reddit is great or any other kind of
forums that you might think that your
business owners are hanging out in so if
we're specifically talking about Reddit
what we'd want to do is we'd want to
find specific subreddits for a very
targeted niche of business owners before
you start looking you can think of what
kind of business owners are you trying
to Target and recently I was thinking
about people who run Airbnb businesses
and kind of just figuring out you know
what are the products that are in the
space right now what are other SAS
Founders building for these business
owners and I couldn't really find a
whole lot so I went to Reddit to see
what their problems are and there are a
handful of different subreddits within
Reddit that uh Airbnb business owners
are hanging out in and a lot of them are
maybe talking about uh just terrible
guests that they had or other bad
experiences that can't necessarily be
solved with software but you'll find
some golden nuggets every now and again
of someone who just wish that something
was easier with the entire process and I
will admit that this is very manual I
just go in manually look at the titles
of the threads and if that might have to
do with a problem that can be solved by
a software application I'll read through
it see if there's any comments and see
if there are other business owners that
are feeling the same exact way this
definitely takes some time but in my
opinion it's very worth it because these
are incredibly specific problems that
business owners have and if you're able
to put a software product in front of
them that solves that specific problem
you're going to have a lot easier time
selling it than you would on some of
these B Toc products and while you're
doing this research you're also able to
see maybe there are other Founders who
have created products that solve
something similar or something adjacent
to this you're honestly able to find a
lot of your competition through this
method as well you know maybe this isn't
an area that you have a ton of expert in
so you need to just understand the
landscape a little bit who's building
products for these people what kind of
features are they offering them is there
a unique twist that you can add that
will differentiate you and are there any
other missed opportunities that other
Founders aren't tackling it's like I
said you can do this on Reddit but there
are definitely other avenues for you to
take as well people definitely still
hang out in Facebook groups it's kind of
insane 2024 that we're still hanging out
in Facebook groups but they do um you
could do there you can find them on
LinkedIn I don't love LinkedIn it always
feels like somebody's trying to sell me
something on there but business owners
are definitely hanging out there you
know they might be on YouTube as well
they might be on Twitter so if you have
a specific type of business owner in
mind you just got to find where they
hang out and then start reading about
their problems all righty so I'm glad
you stuck around to the third method
because like I said I think this is the
one where I've come up with the most
amount of ideas from and it's also
pretty easy to validate ideas uh using
this method as well like I said I don't
really see a whole lot of people talking
about this but uh I wanted to go into it
because it's really powerful tool all
righty so method three is all about
utili ing this website called partner
stack.com and essentially you're able to
join as a partner there are business
owners who will sign up as vendors and
essentially the business owners are just
looking for folks to promote their
products it's kind of like an affiliate
Marketplace so um you know if you join
as a partner you're able to promote
these vendors products and ideally earn
a commission if you if you earn sales
for the vendor we probably won't use it
for that purpose we will use it for the
purpose of finding different SAS
businesses in different verticals
because there are a ton of different
businesses on this website and all of
them are looking to earn more money
which means that they've probably
validated their idea in some way you
know they've gained some kind of user
base but they're looking to grow even
more so in order to see all of these
products you do I believe have to join
the network I forget exactly what the
terms for signing up are but uh once you
are able to join you'll get to a uh
screen that looks like this where you
can discover Partnerships and what's
nice is that you're able to filter by
category so if there is a specific type
of vertical that you're trying to get
into for your SAS you can filter by that
and then obviously find products that
are in your Niche and so from here what
I do is I just go through these they'll
normally have some kind of description
about what the software does and if it's
interesting to me in the sense that um
it might be something that I'm able to
build or if it is just in a vertical
that I'm interested in I'll keep note of
it and then I'll go over to their
website and and check it out there are
some bigger brands on here but what
we're looking for is ones that are a bit
smaller maybe a bit newer those are
going to have less features and they're
going to be more possible for us to
build SAS businesses that are similar
and again we don't want to you know just
completely copy here if we find a SAS
business that is interesting to us we'll
be able to go over to that website see
what their features are and you know
from there it's about being a bit
creative and saying hey how useful is
this feature could I put a unique spin
on it so that it could be more uh
beneficial to a business owner so this
one is interesting to me uh if you know
about 11 Labs L Labs is a they
essentially use AI uh voice synthesis
and you can do text to speech and I
think a whole lot of other things with
them but they are on this website and
you can see that you know you can earn
22% commission for the first 12 months
which is pretty cool but that's not what
we're interested in we're interested in
just the website and the software
product itself so from there I would go
over to the 11 labs we site and I would
just start checking out the solutions
the features and the pricing that they
have and see is this something that I
could build or could I take one feature
of this and make it really powerful and
then I would just do this for a bunch of
products if you do some research for an
hour 2 hours you're going to find a ton
of different products that you could
potentially make and by going over to
their websites and seeing how they
present their product you'll have a
better idea of how they're doing
marketing how they're doing customer
acquisition and these can all really
benefit you when you're trying to build
your own product this method is really
great for binding different ideas um and
new ideas that you hadn't thought of in
a particular Niche but what tends to be
the hardest with this method is
validating is this actually a good idea
or not and what partner stack allows you
to do is sign up as an affiliate so
you're actually able to promote these
products as an affiliate you'll be given
an affiliate link and you can drive
traffic over to that link somebody buys
that product you'll get some kind of
commission and we're not really
concerned about the commission that
we'll get from this what we want to do
is validate that people will actually
buy this product validating ideas tends
to cost money and so we can put you know
$1200 into this and see if we're able to
generate any sales for this company if
we are able to then it means that this
is a validated product people are
willing to pay money for this product so
now we can come up with our own spin on
this idea or this feature and brand it
as our own and then create an entirely
new product that we know people are
interested in so the way that I would do
this is you have to be pretty particular
on Partner stack so they will have some
terms and conditions for how you're able
to promote these products but if a
product allows you to do brand bidding
then you're able to run search campaigns
this could be through Google ads or it
could be through Microsoft ads and you
can do a specific uh targeted brand
search for the name of the company so
essentially what you would do is you
would set up a Google ads campaign
and whenever somebody searches say for
example 11 Labs your ad would come up
and if somebody clicks on your ad and
then purchase something from uh 11 Labs
then you would get the commission but
then you would also validate hey people
are buying this product and that's
really the the data and the information
that we want like I said though not all
products on Partner stack allow you to
do brand bidding so make sure that you
do some uh research beforehand they have
their terms and conditions before you
even sign up to apply for them um so
make sure you just do some due diligence
make make sure that you're able to do
that all righty so that will wrap up the
video those are the three methods that I
have used personally to find different
SAS ideas in different verticals uh B to
C B2B and I will continue to be using
these methods to come up with new
business ideas and that Notes app list
is just going to keep on growing because
I can find ideas faster than I can build
them for sure I really do hope that
helped though and if y'all are using any
other methods to find SAS ideas
definitely share them in the comments
below because like I said at the
beginning of the video it's kind of hard
to find SAS idea sometimes and if you
get into a rut it can demoralize you and
possibly stop you from even starting the
process so yeah leave a comment if this
was helpful definitely subscribe if
you're into this assas content and yeah
I'll have some more Dev Vlogs coming out
soon about the app that I'm building but
thanks to ton for watching until the end
I really appreciate that and I hope you
have a great rest of the day
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