I have a problem to solve, is it enough to start a SaaS?

When I started my Saas, I thought I didn't need customer interviews. I was so arrogant that I thought I was a perfect fit for my product and that my intuition was enough.

Most importantly I didn't like talking with people. So I decided to skip this step and went straight into the building.

You can imagine what happened next.

In case you haven't seen any of my previous posts, let me recap real quick:

I started a company almost 2 years ago. It failed. I made tons of mistakes and I learned A LOT.

Now I'm live-building my next thing:

- sharing all my mistakes

- sharing how I am approaching this new adventure

My hope providing value to the people reading this. It's tons of fun for me and I miss working with other people.

Before I get into the core of the post I want to take a moment to thank all of you.

The amount of encouragement and support I have received absolutely blew me away. so THANK YOU.

If you remember the steps from day 1, to start a SasS I have to:

1. find a problem to solve (I talked about this in my previous post)

2. talk to a few people about it and figure out if it is a problem worth solving (we're doing this now)

3. Create an MVP quickly and iterate like crazy (hopefully we'll do this soon)

In my previous company, I didn't follow those steps. I skipped a critical part. And that cost me my dream.

This time I have a problem:

I didn't how to create a high-converting landing page.

I am a tech founder. I am a solopreneur. I'm an engineer. How many other people like me are struggling with the same problem?

Thankfully YC has a list of 10 questions that can help figure out if its a problem is worth pursuing:

- "Do you have a founder market fit? are you the best person to work on this?"

Am I the best in the world at making landing pages? obviously not, I would not be writing this if I was. but I have

- "How big is the market?"

Hard to tell,

- "How acute is this problem?"

A high-converting landing page generates revenue. Everybody wants to make money. I'd consider making more money an acute problem.

- "Do you have competition?"

Yes. there are a few tools a very helpful Redditor sent my way. maker(.)co and Instapage(.)com there's probably many more. Do you know of any?

- "Do you want this?"

100% I do. I needed it and I want it now even more.

- "Did this recently become possible or necessary?"

No, I don't think so. The only recent thing that happened is me realizing how sucky my landing pages were

- "Is there any proxy - a similar company that is not a direct competitor"

This is a really hard question, I don't have a product yet. All of our website builders can be in this category and so is WordPress

- "Is this an idea you want to work on for years?"

Honestly, I don't know. For sure for the next few years and see where it takes me

- "Is this a scalable business?"

if I'm building a SaaS yes. There is a danger of trying to provide services that aren't easy to scale, consultancy for example. But software is scalable

- "Is this a good idea space?"

Another hard question. my immediate answer is yes, for the simple reason that I'm in the space of making people money. As long as people make money using my product, we have a winner.

Mixed signals here, I don't know how to answer some of those questions. But I think there are enough singles that I can move on to the next step. Talking to people.

I've always hated this part.

I never liked talking to people.

I found it awkward.

I've worked a lot on myself to get over this mental block. What helped was figuring out why I hated talking with people. The answer was one:

I was afraid of putting my idea out in the open.

I was afraid of people judging me, judging my ideas. I was afraid of them calling my idea stupid or telling me "I'd never pay for this"

Imagine having a person telling you your idea is terrible and they will never pay for something like it.

It was much easier not to talk with people so I could continue with my idea.

I eventually pushed myself to talk to more people. To jump on a call with them if I could.

I didn't do that because I had a breakthrough or anything. I was starting to run low on money and I desperately needed for things to start moving.

If there is one thing you can take away from my mistakes is this: Don't be afraid of rejection or other people's opinions. Talk with people, gather data, and use the data to make the best decision you can.

If it helps, every single conversation I had was an ABSOLUTE blast. I had so much fun in every single one of them. I'm kicking myself every day for not starting sooner.

To talk to people I need to find them. But before talking to them we need to know how to talk to them.

The most important lesson I learned is:

User interviews at this stage are meant to validate that the problem is worth solving. Don't introduce your solution/product and listen when they talk.

Is very easy to jump in and say "Hey you need a landing page, I'm building a tool to help. Do you want to use it?"

Is also very easy to hear only what you want to hear. For example hearing the user saying that they need a landing page, but not listening when they say that they would not pay for a solution to that problem

My job at this point is to figure out:

- how big is the problem

- how bad people want a solution for it

- how much are they willing to pay to solve it

Speaking of questions to ask users: One of the most amazing things happened today.

I had the most amazing conversation with Andre from onlysales.io. He reached out to me because I started this series of posts and he was kind enough to provide me with a lot of valuable feedback. Andre, you are absolutely amazing, thank you SO MUCH

He gave me some incredible advice about 2 questions I should ask:

- "How much does the problem cost you right now?"

- "What if I could make the problem disappear? How much would you pay for this?"

Those two questions are PURE gold. They get to the heart of figuring out if solving this problem can start paying you a salary.

Now that I know what to ask them, where do I find people?

There are 3 places to look for users (according to the internet):

- My network. I already talked with 4 of my friends about this problem. Unfortunately, I also mentioned my solution and they were super supportive. I don't know if they believe in me or the product I want to build so I won't count these chats.

- co-workers or former coworkers. I've been alone for the past year so no dice on the co-workers now. Hopefully, some ex-colleagues will be available to chat

- People you don't know: on Reddit, Linkedin, Facebook, X, etc

So what's the plan?

I want to find at least 10 people to talk to. I want to ask them if I can record the user interview and put it on YouTube or something. if not that's totally fine I'll ask them if I can share notes from our conversation for my next posts.

I want to share what questions I'm asking so that people in a similar stage of their journey have some data on how to do it.

I'll go in this order:

1. ex-colleagues: I know of, I have at least 3 ex-colleagues who started their own things, I'll ask them if they are willing to talk

2. Reddit. Actually, we're already here! If you are reading this and want to participate in a user interview, please DM me. As you can see I desperately need your help! If you know of anybody that can help, please send them my way. I'll send you cookies for your help!

3. Reddit + Linkedin: I'll start DM people who might be good candidates. I honestly don't know what a good candidate looks like. I'll figure it out and let you know.

That's it for today. What do you think? Is there anything I'm not doing that I should do? is there anything that I'm missing?

Please leave a comment to let me know!

Signing off with some progress update

✅ We have a problem to validate.

We have talked with 0 users.

We do not have a product.

We made 0$ in revenue.