How To Launch A SaaS From Scratch (4 Essential Steps)

0:00 It used to be that you needed to raise VC funding in order to actually build a meaningful SaaS business. Fast forward to today because of no code, because of AI, because of completely unfair distribution advantages. You can actually build a SaaS business from scratch without raising big funding. Here's the big question, though. If you're looking to break into the SaaS industry, if you're looking to become a founder of a successful SaaS company, how do you make sure that you don't waste months building the wrong product only to realize that no one actually wants your SaaS offering? In this episode, Having taken two SaaS products from idea to revenues to now scaling in just the last 12 months, I'm going to walk you through the four steps that I follow every single time when I'm developing a SaaS idea

0:46 and launching it. And when you apply these four steps, you will be able to accelerate your path to becoming a staff founder, interim with everybody. channel I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now if you new to this channel, welcome. I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategy and tactics from the trenches on Hargreaves SaaS business faster. So if you knew. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon you'll get notified. Every single time I drop an episode with the TC Energy. Now, if you're already part of this community, if you're part of my SaaS, go to market coaching programs,

1:33 my people. Welcome back. It's really awesome to see over here. I remember when I launched my SaaS business Brain Trust. I had worked months, nights and weekends on develop the product. I would be coding. I'd be learning Ruby on Rails. I'd be figuring out Jake where. Yes, this was not long ago. I was trying to figure out Ajax. It was an amazing product. And finally I went for a big bang launch. I posted on Hacker News. I did all the things you're supposed to do to Do those big launches. But then it was just crickets. Turns out I had wasted months building the wrong product, building a product that no one actually wanted since that terrible incident, I've actually built and grown taken from idea to revenue. Three different SaaS companies. My last company told APP

2:19 I sold to a market leader called Marketo. the last 12 months I took two SaaS companies from idea to revenues and now they're scaling. So in this episode and we will walk you through the four steps that I follow every single time and every single SaaS founder that I coach, I get them to follow it as well to make sure they don't waste months building the wrong product and they're able to actually build a SaaS company from scratch and launch it the right way. So we're excited to get to principle number one, go and smash a like button for the YouTube algorithm and let's dig right into it. the first principle and the first step that you want to make sure you do is you want to make sure you focus on problems instead of ideas. Now, for those of you that have watched this channel, I've done countless videos on SaaS ideas. I did this episode, this episode,

3:04 this episode, this episode. This one. This one. This one. And this one. I've done all of those episodes. And while those episodes have solid principles on ideas for SaaS companies, the biggest thing that I teach founders when I'm coaching them is beyond the idea. The first thing you really want to understand is what problem you're solving. That is the quickest way to make sure that you don't start writing code. You don't start building a product. Then no one's going to want. Because here's the thing If you are solving a real problem that a specific segment of the market has, that turns into a successful idea because people want solutions to those problems. So every single time you're working to actually figure out what do I work on and how do I develop my idea and what's a great idea. While this idea videos are great,

3:49 a link to it below. The most important thing you want to whittle down on is What's the problem? What is the urgent and important problem that I am solving? Once you have actually done that, then comes the second step. if problems exist, chances are there's something solving them. There may be a spreadsheet they're using or an existing SaaS offering they're using. So the second step in this process, once you've identified the problem you want to solve, is what is the 10th differentiation in your solution. So we're going to be building a product. You need a ten X difference. You need something that's ten times better at solving this problem in some specific way than any of the competition out there. And remember, competition comes in all different shapes and sizes. It could be another SaaS offering

4:35 and therefore you need to build a feature that's ten times better. Maybe it uses air to get them results faster. Maybe it's a better user experience that's ten times better. Maybe it's for a segment of the market that no one is actually paying attention to. All of those makes it where it's ten times better. But also the competition could be a simple spreadsheet, and sometimes you'd be shocked how reluctant people are to let go of their spec sheets because they made it. It's theirs, it's their own little software and they can't tell the difference. Or it might just be apathy. Apathy is one of the greatest pieces of competition for SaaS companies today. Sometimes you think you're solving a problem, but it turns out it's actually not an urgent and important problem and therefore they're like, Look, I know this is a problem, but I really don't want to spend money on it

5:21 because it's not that big of a deal. It's a minor problem. It's not urgent, it's not important. And that ends up being your competition, apathy. They're just not going to do anything. those are the first two steps. And I promise you, if you do those two steps, that alone will save you from months of building the wrong product. have a third one and a fourth one, but let me pause here for a second. Ari, starting the power in this, so often people obsess over ideas. And trust me, I'm an engineer. I get really excited about ideas. I see an API here and I see this offering here in this library. Then I'm like, Oh my God, I can build this over a weekend. It could be so much better. And I love those kind of ideas. But over the years I've learned to actually discipline myself. That's the biggest difference between the first time founders and the second type founders. We know

6:06 really well that ideas aren't good enough. You actually need to hone in what is the urgent and important problem that you want to solve first and then develop your idea. And once you do that, need to figure out what's going to make me ten times better. If you start to see the power in this, you're starting to actually see the power of just these two simple steps that's going to save you months of building the wrong product. Can I just get a yes in the comments below and also smash up like button for the YouTube algorithm? It just loves it when you do that. Also, if you're a pre founder and you're at the stage where you're actually honing in on your idea and you're looking to identify the right problem in the right segment of the market, you want some more details on how to think about the problem your solving and what is a technical solution. Then grab a copy of my ten point SaaS business checklist. It goes in-depth into the specific questions and gives you

6:53 more details about these four principles that I'm sharing. You don't have to go anywhere right now. A link to it below. I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode. Let's go into step number three. Step number three is to create your one sentence value proposition. Your one sentence value proposition should fit into an index card like this and should follow a structure like this. My company blank. That's anywhere every company. And if you don't know the name yet, that's okay. You'll come up with one. Just call it mind you go creates software for blank. That's the specific group of people you'll be serving two blank. And the last piece is the key piece. That's the actual result your ideal customers are going to get. These three variables are the best way to really stress test.

7:38 If you're going after an urgent, important problem and your SaaS idea will actually stand a chance. And I do this for every single company that I've ever started. This forces me on an index card to get super concise about exactly what we're going to be delivering to the market. It forces me to actually make some decisions. What's the specific part of the market that I'm going to go after? That's my ideal customer profile. And what is the actual result they're going to get? What is the solution I'm delivering to the problem that they have this simple exercise will save you even more months because this will force you to think about Can I succinctly really articulate what I'm actually doing, what I'm solving for, and what my ten x differentiation is? And the reason I actually say to put this on an index card, not because I just love index cards,

8:23 because I do clearly I use them for all my videos, but also more importantly, it forces you to really get concise. I've met founders are like, Listen, I need an hour to really explain to you what we're working on. And I'm like, Look, if it takes an hour for you to explain what you're working on that I'm sorry, you're not going to get customers because your customers don't know you yet and they don't have an hour. You must figure out a way to define your one sentence value proposition even as a thought experiment, because that will allow you to really get down to the essentials of what you're really solving for it. Once you've done those three pieces, then comes the fun part. the fun part is not opening up a GitHub repo or opening up cursor or whatever tool you're using or whatever noko tool you're using to start building. Not quite yet. The biggest mistake here is to start building

9:09 while it's exciting to start building, the real thing you need to do is recognize that this is all a theory at this point. You have a thesis on what you can be building and that you're actually solving a problem and you have a ten X differentiation. The biggest thing you want to do now is actually validate this. And the way I go about validating this is I actually figure out how I can post content about the problem that I discovered. Now, posting content doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to start a YouTube channel like this. You can post on LinkedIn, you can post on Twitter, you can post on Reddit, you can post on Facebook wherever your ideal customers are hanging out and you can start posting content about the problem that you've identified and the potential solutions for it or the risks around it or the problems

9:55 that surround the core issue. All of this will help you test if other people resonate with that problem. Whenever I post content, I also offer a simple lead magnet. So when I was starting my last company megaphone, which is now starting to scale, we knew that referrals were an actual thing. So before we built the megaphone referral platform, I started posting content about getting referrals and I offered up a three point referral strategy guide. This did two things. One, it helped me validate that referrals were actually an important problem for people and they were thinking about it. But two, because I was generating leads, I was able to reach out to those leads and have real conversations to further validate my thesis. this allowed me to really vet out

10:40 if the problem that I'm solving is for real or I just made it up in my head. This allowed me to understand, Hey, is this a real problem for you? Have you tried other solutions? Why isn't this solved? And would you buy ours? And this allowed me to get initial customers. This is a very simple way to actually validate, but also a very powerful way to launch. Because by the time we started building the product based on the proof points we collected, we had a ready made lead list of people that were interested in buying the product. And on top of that, we never had to do those Big Bang launches where you get a bunch of users and then flatlines. We were able to consistently ratchet up the leads and start to get more and more customers. And at this point, we're at a point where more leads means more customers.

11:26 For us, we're starting to see a steady flow of customers, which is super exciting. we never had to do a crazy Big Bang launch. We were able to just dial up the knot on our scalable go to market machine to get more and more leads that converts more and more revenue. And that's what we're working through right now. Okay. So let's recap everything that we covered. These are the four steps that you want to be following to develop your SaaS idea and launch it without wasting months of building the wrong product. Number one, you don't want to just focus on your idea. You want to identify what's the problem that you're solving. Problems are more valuable than just ideas. Once you have the problem, then you want to understand what is the next differentiation for the SaaS product that you can build? What is going to make you ten times

12:11 better than the competition? The competition could be another SaaS product, a spreadsheet or just apathy, and you want to make sure you're ten times better. Then you want to craft your one sentence value proposition. My company and then the name of your company creates software for ICP to blank. That's the result. You do this, it will force you to really understand if you can communicate what you're really doing out in the market in a concise way. once you've done those three steps, you have your core thesis, then you're able to go validate that. The way I do it is I post content and I offer a lead magnet and then I take those leads and I have real conversations. I either get something where I learn something about the problem to make up ten next better solution, or I get a customer ideally,

12:57 and that's the power in this. So now you know how to launch your SaaS business from scratch without wasting months on building the wrong product. Now what you may not know is say, how do I differentiate between good problems and bad problems, or how do I figure out what are some ideas that I can use to solve for these problems? How do I find the right problems? You may be wondering what makes for a ten times better differentiator for a product. You may also be wondering how do I craft my one sentence value proposition? Or how do I go about validating my thesis? How do I post content? How do I offer a lead magnet? This is why I created my ten point SaaS business checklist. These ten questions are questions I wish BBT asked himself before he wasted

13:43 months building brain trust. Now, it wasn't a complete waste because it led me to tell that. But you know what I mean. I wish these questions existed because it would have fast tracked my progress like it did for my prior companies and the companies that I'm scaling now. if you want to grab a copy of this ten point checklist, it's completely free. Just go to T.K. Datacom slash SaaS dash checklist, T.K. Datacom slash SaaS dash checklist. It's completely free. Once you sign up for it, you'll get the PDF, the Google Doc version, and you'll get a video walkthrough by me walking you through each of the questions. It's super powerful. So many people have gotten this guide. They've gotten so much value from it, and I'm sure you will as well. Also, if you got value from this video, please smash it like button for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do that.

14:28 I also drop an episode like this every single Sunday with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches on Hargreaves SaaS business faster. So be sure if you haven't already to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon. That way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. Also, you have a fellow team member, if you have a potential co-founder for your SaaS business, if you're part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group with other potential founders and founders of SaaS, come on, please share this video with them. It just means the world to us. We put a lot of love into these videos. And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is going to be unstoppable. I'm T.K., and I'll see you in the next episode or inside the ten Points SaaS business checklist.

15:13 Say that ten times faster. Take everybody.