How to create a successful SaaS from scratch.

Steal the process I've used to build 5 $10k+ MRR SaaS's.

🧵 THREAD 🧵

The best way to know if people like your product is NOT:

- Have a lot of emails in the waiting list
- Become #1 on PH
- Become #1 of HN or Reddit
- Have people that saing "I'll pay"
- Have a lot of free users

The best way to know if they're actually pay for it.

The only thing that matters is your product providing a value, and you can't know this until people will pay money for it.

We can have a first signal of a product/market fit after the launch by check how many sales we've got in the first 24h. Some scale:

200+ This has a high potential.
100+: This has a potential.
50+: Some people need it.
10+: People almost don't need it.
0+: People don't need it.

This is for a single time payment product. For a subscription probably it should be less because people hate subscription.

And obviously, you should have a lot of traffic like 3-5k+.

Here is a stat for my products (macOS apps) for the first 24h after the launch:

A couple months ago, I got an email out of the blue from someone I had never met or heard about.

Today, that person co-hosted a webinar with me that had over 470+ registered and 130+ live

👇 Quick lesson on how to successfully pitch partnerships and co-marketing opportunities

How did he get in contact with me?

He sent a cold email, but not just any email. It was clearly personal, relevant, and conversational.

Lesson: Notice the language he used and how he tied it back to previous webinars.

Not only was it well written, but I could also easily judge if he'd be a good fit based on the article he wrote and linked to.

It's SUPER well-written and proved that he knew what he was talking about.

Lesson: Make your "ask" as easy as possible to consider.

There were three things that made the webinar a big success:

1. Tyler sent the webinar to his email list and did a lot of promotion.

2. He prepared ahead of time and put a lot of work into the deck, even incorporating some Baremetrics assets and references.

3. He had fun

Super appreciate all the work @TylerHakes put into today's "SEO for SaaS"

If you missed it, here's the recording:

1/ Pro Tip: Best way to find a job at a startup…

Hint: it doesn’t start with a job board…

a thread

2/ Go to @crunchbase and set up a filter for the following:

1. Amount raised: $5M - $10M
2. Announced on: today - 3 days ago
3. Headquarters location: your preference
4. Investor Name: @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z etc...

It should look something like this.

3/ When a company raises money… they are going to use the capital to build out their team.

It isn’t rocket science!

4/ When successful venture firms with track records like, @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z sink money into a startup. Their chance of success increases astronomically.

5/ Filtering for recent fundraising allows you to get a pulse for when a company is going to add positions to their job board (if they haven’t already)

Here are all the businesses I’ve tried:

(Half of them failed)

👇

Training Spectrum

A website showcasing local sports talent, health and fitness articles and interviews with personal trainers.

Started at 17. Lasted 4-5 months.

Food & Drink

A local website listing restaurants in each city (before Zomato was a thing).

Started at 18. Lasted 6-7 months.

Ambitionaire

An online magazine interviewing entrepreneurs for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Started at 18. Lasted 3 months.

10 Question Poll

A website asking 10 random funny questions and you share your results with friends.

Started at 22. Lasted 3 months.