Before you spend ages building your SaaS

When I first decided to try and create something of value, and charge for it, I opted to create an e-book.

It was a lot of work to write, test, proofread etc.

But nearly all the learning came from figuring out how to market the thing, how to find an audience, write launch emails, and eventually make sales.

Nothing earth-shattering, but strangers on the internet, paying for something I’d created.

I think I made about $2.5K in that first launch, but it was some of the sweetest money I’ve ever made!

I remember sitting in a café on holiday with the family when a sale went through, and turning, with great excitement to my wife to tell her we could have dessert after all 😁

Soon after, buoyed by this success, I decided to create a course.

But then I got carried away, and decided to build my own course platform.

My mentors (Alex Hillman and Amy Hoy) advised other people not to build their own platform.

My friends raised their eyebrows.

But all the existing platforms were flawed to various degrees, and I wanted to create something better.

Since making that decision, I’ve created two entirely separate versions of my own courseware, dealt with endless customer support issues (login challenges, password issues, missing courses) and sunk hours and hours into development.

At one crazy point, during Covid, in a kind of lockdown mania I ended up building, then rebuilding an MVP version of the platform in no fewer than 5 different web frameworks, while also ‘home-schooling’ the kids.

Every time, I got close to something that worked, I discovered some fatal flaw that meant I couldn’t possibly carry on with that framework and so had to start over.

Looking back, it’s clear where I went wrong.

There are three pillars when it comes to selling online.

Audience > Problem > Solution

An audience you can reach, who have a problem you can solve, and your actual solution to that problem.

I became fixated with building my solution, because that was the safe, fun place to be.

We’re coders, we want to code dammit!#

But what if I had focused entirely on the audience and the problem I was trying to solve, and committed myself to solving that problem in the simplest way possible?

I now know I could have got to the same result (and probably better result) in half the time.

Sure the chosen course platform would have had its quirks, and maybe wouldn’t have been perfect.

But then neither is the one I’ve built!

So this is a friendly reminder - as a developer, your heart (and your habits) will pull you towards building software.

But remember the real point is to identify and solve your audience’s problem, and get an offer in front of them to see if they’ll pay for it.

And if that’s hard, then that’s the skill to focus on and develop.

And don’t spend ages building the perfect mousetrap (or course platform!) before you have any customers.

Because future you won’t thank you for it.