New Idea Validation resources | SaaS4Devs
Hey there,
I'm Nicolas, creator of SaaS4Devs.
I hope this email finds you well. Since this is the first time I'm writing you, I've left a question below, and I'd be grateful if you had time to reply with a quick answer.
Let's cut to the chase: New resources I've added:
- This article by Kevin Conti, which contains valuable insight in both the idea validation and MVP sections.
- Reading the book "Company of One" by Paul Jarvis was extremely useful. I've summed up the content of the most interesting part of the book in a paragraph.
Before you go, I want to ask you a question: if SaaS4Devs was to become a website or a blog, updated weekly with new resources, insight, interviews and advice about the SaaS industry, would you read it?
I appreciate all and any reply!
Thank you for reading, have a great day,
Nicolas
New content:
Learn from your target audience and establish relationships with them (by Paul Jarvis)
This excerpt is taken from the book "Company of One" by Paul Jarvis:
Assuming you’ve identified your target audience and developed a marketable skill set, you’re now in a position to provide a product or service for which they would be willing to pay money. You just need to convince them to take advantage of your talents!
Of course, that’s easier said than done, and there’s a whole process involved in reaching that point. First, you need to connect with your audience and learn about their needs, so you can know how to fulfill them. One way to do that is to reach out to potential clients and offer them free, no-strings-attached consultancy.
For example, if you were trying to establish a web-design side gig that could turn into a company, you could begin by finding people who were looking for a web designer or had already found one. By having conversations with them about their experiences, you could learn a lot of useful information, such as the manner and places in which they’re searching for web designers, the factors behind their hiring decisions, the objectives they’re trying to fulfill, the problems that lead to bad customer experiences and the questions they have about the web-design process.
By answering those questions, you could then begin to position yourself not just as a consultant, but as a trustworthy authority in your field – someone with valuable expertise from which other people can benefit and on which they can depend.
But again, you’re not charging any money at this point; you’re not even offering or trying to subtly push your services. You’re genuinely just trying to help your audience, in small but meaningful ways.
The word “small” is crucial here. You’re not redesigning someone’s entire website for free or anything like that. You’re just offering answers to questions, as well as advice, second opinions, brainstorming sessions and so forth – mini-consultations, you could call them.
By doing all this, you’re both learning about your audience and building a reputation – and developing mutually beneficial relationships with them. Indeed, by the end of your mini-consultations, they’ve already helped you, and you’ve already helped them, and you haven’t even done any paid work for them yet!
Having established these relationships and demonstrated their value, who do you think your audience will go to next time they need to pay for a web design service: a stranger – or you, the person they already know and trust as an authority in the field?
In the author’s own experience, the answer was the latter; nearly everyone with whom he consulted went on to want to hire him.
From the article by Kevin Conti:
Treat compliments as red flags, not validation!
Compliments are warning signs. If you catch yourself or your teammates saying something like this, try to get specific. Why did that person like the idea? How much money would it save him? How would it fit into his life? What else has he tried? If you don't know, then you've got a compliment instead of real data.
Rule of thumb: Compliments are the fool's gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless.
– Rob Fitzpatrick, "The Mom Test"
Be wary of email signups
In beta, I had around 80 people on my email list and a consistent 30+% open rate on my updates. People were hooked! When the beta invites went out, I even saw almost a 70% open rate! I thought I was killing it.
I figured that it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect 25% of them to sign up, maybe even 50%. On beta day, a total of three people joined. Only two ever activated. Be careful about treating email signups like cash.
"Scratch your own itch" is misleading
There's so much debate around whether or not it is a good idea to scratch your own itch. CoderNotes.io is definitely my itch. It's the product I wanted to see in the world. However, as business advice, I think that we need to look deeper. In reality, "scratch your own itch" has two different definitions, and they are heavily confused:
- Build something you want to exist (mistake!)
- Build something you've experienced as a legitimate gap in the market.
I was listening to the sales for founders podcast episode with Frank Breckner, who took a product from zero to 5 figures in only five months! In the episode, Frank talks about how he saw that his company needed software like the one he wanted, he spoke to people in his network who were also having the same struggles around the problem, and went ahead and built it.
That's very a different (and much better) version of "scratching your own itch". If you're thinking of making a "scratch your own itch" product, consider which of the two versions it is before making the decision to move forward.
The product is 1/3rd of the product
For my first product, I thought that the main thing I was building was... well... the product! Turns out, the actual product that you build is only a piece of the puzzle. A business isn't just a product. It's a system:
- A business includes a set of inbound and outbound channels that help drive customers to the product.
- A business includes positioning that defines what market it is a part of.
- A business is the pricing, payment, and customer service model it follows throughout the customer life-cycle.
- And finally, a business includes a product.
I've learned that, instead of thinking of a business as a legal entity that collects money for a product, it's better to think of a business as a set of puzzle pieces, all of which need to function for the whole thing to work. Conceptually, I think you can break this up into three pieces:
- The business has a defined market where customers already exist.
- A business has reliable channels to reach customers in the above market.
- A business has a product that serves customers in that market.
In other words, a product is only 1/3rd of the final "product".
Businesses that have to explain to users why they are valuable CAN be successful... but YOU shouldn't make one.
Imagine you are hungry, and decide that you are hungry for an apple. You know that you like apples, you've had apples before, and in particular you're a fan of crisp, red apples. Suddenly, someone comes up to you and offers you a banana. "Thanks," you say, "but I'm looking for an apple." "Actually," they respond, "a banana is much better for you! You'll be more full after eating this banana, my bananas taste better than apples, and in fact there are no other bananas quite like mine!"
The banana salesman has spent time and energy into convincing you into the sale. But for all his effort, he was trying to pitch you a solution to your problem that didn't fit the solution you had in mind.
When you have a product that customers don't already know, you will spend a lot of time selling it to them. Instead, if you can compete in a market where a customer is already solution-aware ("I want a red apple!") you simply need to compete by being the best in one specific category they care about (in this case, the crispness of the apple).
Is it possible that the banana company will be successful? Yes, but they need to spend time convincing the apple-lovers that bananas are the way to go. That's going to take a lot of marketing, and they are relying on a change in consumer behavior to get that result. For a bootstrapped company, fighting that battle doesn't make sense.
Many startups compete in established market categories and do so successfully by first breaking up the market into smaller pieces and focusing on one piece they can win. The goal of [this strategy] is to carve off a piece of the market where the rules are a little bit different - just enough to give your product an edge over the category leader. – April Dunford, "Obviously Awesome"