Validate Your SaaS Idea FAST (Step-by-Step SaaS Validation Process)💡✅

[@MicroConf]

How to validate your startup idea 👉microconf.com/latest/how-to-validate-your-startup-idea

[@SergeySetti]

Absolutely agree with key points here! Building MVP is not a validation. Asking is good only if designed to pass mom test the right way - so wording is crucial here

[@thefatnav]

Great video Rob! This video is much needed. I still see so many people plunge headfirst into their idea without any validation, only to fail because no one wants their product. I think part of the issue is that many engineers are introverts, so talking to customers doesn't come naturally. Picking up the phone can seem really scary.

[@MicroConf]

Thank you so much Aron.

[@mmaaaxxxxx]

I get exact opposite of "cursed of the audience". People jump at the conclusion "your product is just like X" or "your product is useless" without even trying to understand the product or the idea. I think the key highlight is only early adopters are intellectually capable of understanding new stuff...

[@denniszenanywhere]

How do you overcome this?

[@mmaaaxxxxx]

@@denniszenanywhere ignore feedback from non-early adopters; don't talk to most people

[@denniszenanywhere]

@@mmaaaxxxxx what if the problem I am trying to solve would be enjoyed by companies but not the employees, like construction saas where the construction workers can''t be bothered to give an update?

[@keshavkhaneja]

Thank you for these videos, really helpful!

[@MicroConf]

Glad you like them!

[@krishankanhaya_]

Background music is too good I'm dancing on it

[@jubaroofing]

First of all, thank you for sharing this process. I believe it is verry helpfull for many of us out there. However I don't agree with the idea of bringing a 1000 or 10000 looking for "something". The thing is if you're just starting out, targeting 1000 or 10000 is already very big audience and a risky move. For me the fist thing to do is figure out if this a b2c or b2b business. Then try to lower your audience as much as you can, this will give you the power of having direct interaction and makes it easier to focus you time on something you have real feedback on for the mvp. The biggest the audience the more data you have the more complicated work can be. Once you have a really clear idea of what you're building and what you limited audience is looking for, it is time to look at the bigger picture and follow you process. But the only modification I would do, is build a prototype based on initial data and market it to a larger portion of audience. Because let's be realisitic, I wouldn't give me personnal informations for something that doesn't exist yet. I need to see at least a demo or a trial of at least a feature.

[@Pannafreestyle]

Thanks to you I am reading the mom test right now!

[@A.24.000]

Very helpful, thank u

[@ronylussari]

This channel is amazing!

[@MicroConf]

Thank you, Rony!

[@bramburn]

Deploy empathy is the saas version (bootstrap) of MOM test.

[@hadrizharif]

Comprehensive and insightful content! Thanks for the tips, Rob. I was wondering, how do you balance between sharing your ideas to gauge interest but at the same time not leaking them so that competitors who are already established and takes shorter time with bigger resoruces to apply that idea in their businesses. This is in the context that the software is catering for a niche market, B2B. I think I would understand why many would want to go for MVP first, so that they've already bought time and once word reached the market, they are closer to launching. Appreciate your thoughts on this! (or any other viewers with advice)

[@robertbalazsi]

What an excellent video! Thanks for sharing all these tips, Rob.

[@MicroConf]

Thank you for watching, Robert.

[@grahamwilkinson6902]

We have had clients purchase similar “systems” off of us.Thought that there must be a market for an automated version …. Had clients pay $thousands for a one offs and now doing a saas to allow them to automatically deploy themselves. Currently working towards validation so this is perfect timing!!

[@MicroConf]

Great to hear it! Thanks for watching, Graham!

[@gavinwiener]

That sounds interesting. What space are you in if I might ask? It sounds like that productised system you're doing for clients would scale as well? E.g. I use ActiveCampaign a lot with my clients, setup automations, optimise their sales pipeline, etc. And it allows me to import automations and setups between accounts, like snapshots. So maybe you could just productise whatever you're doing, and they just pay you to do the setup but it's very low labour because it's roughly the same system over and over for roughly same type of client

[@grahamwilkinson6902]

@@gavinwiener that’s one of the services we are thinking of offering as a setup solution.

[@koreyb99]

Mom Test is 2 thumbs up; highly recommend it for ideas on how to validate

[@MicroConf]

Thanks!

[@vincentcaudo-engelmann9057]

Dude, your advice is SO VALUABLE, that you should talk slower or add more details to each point. It’s like you’re glossing over tens of thousands of dollars of savings in blood sweat and tears (and green).

[@BradRhoads]

At 6:47 in the video, you say if your 5 - 10% opt-in, you have a positive single. My questions are how much traffic do you need for your landing page and how much time do you allow before you have enough data to make a decision?

[@MicroConf]

This is a tough question. Certainly under 100 uniques is too little. And by 500 uniques you start to get a pretty good sense. But it also depends on your opt-in %. If you get 100 visitors and have 30 opt-ins that’s a very strong signal. If you get 100 and have 1 or 2 opt-ins, I’d keep going (but I’d start tweaking my messaging and/or traffic sources).

[@megaklis.vasilakis]

Interesting. Im trying to validate an open source ML monitoring solution. I'll use this info. Thanks

[@novaria]

isn't their a couple SaaS for that exact thing? Might be enough validation.

[@kennstack01]

@@novaria Good point!

[@vanvittles8651]

Still looking for the double like...

[@adityarai6611]

Thanks for this !

[@MicroConf]

You're very welcome! Thanks for being here

[@bjovicevic]

how to validate idea for enterprise saas, high touch? Great video btw

[@MicroConf]

Ultimately enterprise customers are still made up of people, so you’ll need to find people that work at the types of enterprises you want to serve, and talk to them like I mention at about the 8 minute mark of this video. If you are looking for more tactical information about how to ask the right questions, I’d suggest reading ‘Deploy Empathy’ by Michelle Hansen.

[@bossgd100]

Thank you for these info

[@MicroConf]

Thank you for watching.

[@15tefera]

Does this apply to micro-saas ideas as well ?

[@MicroConf]

I would go about it slightly differently for micro-saas. I’d start by looking at the marketplace reviews to see if I could find a pain point to solve. Then I’d at least run the idea past a few users on that platform to see if there’s anyone that is actually complaining about the problem that you are thinking you can solve.

[@jamesnguyen2174]

Hi Rob, the last advice is to do both, you mentioned that you could do both. Did you only build a landing page then do marketing to validate the landing pages (this could be just a Wordpress site with no codes), create email list? or did you build more than just a landing page (you had your developers build the first prototype / MVP + landing page) to do marketing with these? Thank you

[@MicroConf]

Hi James, I give a detailed breakdown of how I validated Drip in this talk I gave at MicroConf: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fX3EqmqhoNh_qsU

[@jatinnandwani6678]

Thanks

[@PhilippBolender]

Great Video... I started to Develope ADDONS/Improvements for already existing Wordpress Plugins. We are offering them as a subscription. Do you think in generell, this is a good idea, to first start with something like "Addons" and impactful "enhancements", before starting something completly standalone?

[@thefatnav]

Starting small by building a product on top of an existing ecosystem like WordPress, Shopify, e.t.c, is a great idea - acting as a stepping stone to a full SaaS product. In fact, Rob coined the term the "Stair Stepper Approach". If you Google that term, you should find his blog about it; there may be a KZbin video too. Good luck with your endeavours my friend 😊

[@PhilippBolender]

@@thefatnav Thank you very much for your answear. I like the name ,,ecosystem,,. Because this describes it perfectly. You can own a ecosystem by develope something completly ,,standalone,,. Or you add things to an already existing Ecosystem. Like enhance an already existing Wordpress Plugin. 😊

[@MicroConf]

👀 Make sure you subscribe to the channel, next week we’ll be putting out a video deep diving into Rob’s Stair Step method!

[@Feronom]

​@@thefatnavI think he meant to build not only on top of WordPress, but to get even lower step and build an add-on for some WordPress plugin

[@Inspirationland-et8yy]

If it is an app for local business, instead of building a landing page, can you take time to meet potential customers and build a waiting list?

[@MicroConf]

Sure. Talking to potential customers in any format is great.

[@WikkiOnIlluminati]

Awesome video, bundle of learning...

[@MicroConf]

Thank you 🤗

[@LeinadMail]

Hey mate, how long did it take between telling your developer to go ahead, and then going on sale?

[@MicroConf]

This is going to depend on how complex your product is. In my case, he started coding 20 hours/week in December, then moved to 40 hours/week in March, and we had our first early access customer in May. I believe our first paying customer was June, and we started launching to our launch list in August or September (before then we had manually onboarded about 10 people). Then we did a phased launch until November.

[@ronrod997]

Oh I should have watched this video first

[@limbuscode]

What about this strategy? I do a bit of research in an app marketplace to find some opportunities, build a super fast (one week of work) piece of software and launch it to that same marketplace, then I wait, simple (the algorithm will be in charge to market my app). And if it doesn't get traction, then I repeat.

[@timdowd6613]

he talks about that approach in his recent video of if he had to start from the beginning again

[@erik4444q]

But don't you need an that audience that trusts you to do a presale or sign up list first? Lets say you get some conversation going and you want to take it to the next step with an actionable validation step like I mentioned before. If the audience is not there, you won't be able to get a good signal about your idea. It would be highly unlikely that people driving by the random places, where you could post your promo such as reddit, indie hackers, FB, etc, would sign up for a newsletter or let alone jump on the presale. Where I am going with this is that you need an audience first, which takes a lot of time to build. How would you address this to get that velocity for idea validation?

[@MicroConf]

You do not. If you are curing a desperate pain point, people will buy. Most SaaS sales are not made because someone likes you or listens to your podcast. They buy because the tool solves a problem they desperately need solved.

[@noamay]

How to build your network? How to do this if you have multiple businesses ideas with multiple target audiences

[@MicroConf]

If you are trying to decide between different ideas, you’ll want to check out episode 628 of my podcast, Startups For the Rest of Us: www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-628-the-5-p-m-idea-validation-framework In it, I lay out my 5 PM Idea Validation Framework.

[@rajeshbj7841]

Hi I have Micro sass idea. I am not an owner of any company nor an entrepreneur. I am just developer who has noticed a pain point which I would like to share my idea is it possible?

[@MicroConf]

Hi Rajesh, before diving into code, I would be talking to prospective customers to make sure that you are going to build something that is going to solve a real pain. I recommend reading Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hansen to learn how to find people to talk to and how to ask the right questions. You can also see the talk she gave at MicroConf in 2019: kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3qbmHV8pst2j9E

[@ramin175]

How Can we connect?

[@MicroConf]

You can join our community at MicroConfConnect.com

[@melindagolden1258]

Do you need to go through this validation process if you are on step 1 of the stair step approach where you are building a plug-in or add on to an existing marketplace?

[@MicroConf]

This is a good question. I guess it depends on my confidence in the problem I would be solving with the product, and whether validating it would take longer than building it. Some of these add-ons you can build in a few weeks, and the validation you get from having it in the App Store is certainly better than any number of conversations you could have.

[@melindagolden1258]

@@MicroConf thanks!

[@MetalPotionEhUmCu]

How many frameworks did you run through to validate the idea for that haircut? 🤣🤣🤣

[@anonymouscomment1772]

70 cold calls is not much lol - if you ever did real estate, you’d know that ain’t sh********

[@yunoletmehaveaname]

How do you validate your idea without someone stealing your idea?

[@MicroConf]

I think this is a mostly overblown concern. Is it possible that someone steals your idea? Sure. Is it likely? No. The risk of building something that no one wants because you want to protect your idea is a much more likely outcome if you avoid sharing your idea. I talked in depth about this in episode 641 of the Startups For the Rest of Us podcast: www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-641-dealing-with-high-churn-rolling-out-an-mvp-and-more-listener-questions

[@sarahstaub5550]

Are you ever hesitant someone is going to take your idea and develop it faster when validating?

[@MicroConf]

I’ve never heard of this happening (obviously it’s possible). There is far more danger in building something no one wants than there is in finding a brilliant idea that someone steals from you.

[@thesoundofeverything8023]

Yeah… I dont like to fool people like that.. have at least 50 lol…

[@TheRiddl37]

I don't have audience, am I doomed?

[@MicroConf]

We put out a video on this very topic. Check it out here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/epOudWuLjNuCbNk

[@hopelessdecoy]

SAS is trash, make desktop apps and let people have software ownership again. We have awesome computers now a days I don't want to use someone else's for a subscription fee.

[@willb440]

I'm new to this, what do you mean here?

[@hopelessdecoy]

@@willb440 Software as a Service or SAS is pretty much rental software. You pay a monthly fee and you get a software, stop paying and it goes away. You used to purchase a license that garunteed you a version of the software, wanted new features? Need a new license but your old license always worked for your original version number. Some things need the cloud and a subscription to make business sense like Netflix or cloud storage, other things are just done to force reoccurring revenue. Like Microsoft Office. I make all my software work offline.

[@TheRiddl37]

nah, then you'll hack it you nasty little devil

[@danielmorales5089]

I don't know if it's just me, but this video is full of promotion, more than real content. Each 5 seconds he is trying to promote something, himself or others. It's completely worthless to watch videos like this.