I want to talk about why this can be a HUGE advantage.
PS. I’m doing this now.
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Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here, and today what I want to talk to you about is one of my favorite patterns when you’re building a potential B2B SaaS application and that’s looking to solve your own problem. Now, I’ll talk about that in a minute, but first I wanna share with you some context around why I am such a big fan of this pattern, and it’s because it’s a easier solution to one of the biggest challenges facing folks trying to build successful SaaS products or companies, and.
Many oftentimes try to build a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Now, I talk a lot about identifying problems worth solving, and the research work that I do is largely focused on being able to differentiate between just a problem that really won’t be able to turn into a successful business or SaaS product and what I consider to be a problem we’re solving that should now, the advantage of this strategy.
In building a solution to your own problem is you are your own target market, which is great insider information into how your customer thinks. I know it’s a use case or an N of one, but that’s better than a lot of founders often have that choose to solve problems in industries or for people that in which they are not the target market.
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So this can be a considerable advantage and it can also help you gain access to more people. Within that target market. That is if you are also inside that target market, most of the time you probably know other folks like you, which makes it probably easier or at least closer to your current network to gain access to more of those folks, to better understand the context around how they want their problem to be solved, making it a bit easier for you to get the information you need to determine ultimately what to build and what the product should be.
Now, the other advantage to leveraging the strategy is, You’re, you may be talking about turning it into a SaaS application, but once the product itself is available, if it does in fact, solve a problem of yours, It’s immediately going to be providing you with value, as in you’re gonna start to get a return right away.
It’s not necessarily gonna be dependent upon your ability to sell this product super effectively in order for it to turn into something that’s valuable for you. Cause you’re using it to solve your own problem. It’s gonna produce value for you immediately. That’s what’s happening in the instance where I’m building this podcasting application because I also have a podcasting agency.
What I’m choosing to do in the micro SAS businesses that I want to build is I’m first looking internally to the potential bottlenecks I have in my own processes for running that business. Saying, this is the biggest one, this is the most expensive one. This is the most, this one intrus is the most risk, or it has less of, uh, backup, consideration or redundancy involved.
As such, if I choose to automate that, I’m gonna get all that value back, and I’m already receiving that because my product is now available. Now I’m selling it externally as well too, to others that also may need it, and that’s going to just increase the potential return that I get on it. But I’m getting value right away so the product isn’t sitting there.
Then potentially not earning if I’m not ultimately making paid conversions. So I want you to consider this as an option when you’re thinking, especially when you’re thinking about building potentially your first SaaS application. Are there problems you need solved? Because number one, you know you can get value out of it right away once their product is available.
But number two, and probably more importantly, it’s gonna give you greater context for the problem to be solved and. How people within that target market are probably thinking in terms of how they want it to be solved.