How to Validate a SaaS Idea Efficiently
Hello everyone, I am Sas. So far, I’ve launched four SaaS products this year two failed, one made money, and the other one is postponed. One of the most important things I’ve learned in my journey as a software founder is to always validate your ideas before you start building. I cannot stress how important this is, and I really, really wish I had done this with my previous startups, where I spent months building only to discover nobody actually wanted to use my app.
It’s genuinely depressing to give your 100% into something and get no appreciation, so here are my methods to validate your SaaS idea before you start building:
1. Research for Market Demand
Go on socials where your target audience is hanging out and talk to them as a genuine person not a founder, but as a friend who cares. Ask them:
HOW they do XYZ
WHY they do XYZ
What are their motivations for doing XYZ
What are their pain points? (This is crucial!)
The pain points they mention offhand are often what keeps them awake at night these are their most important issues. These are the problems you should be building solutions for (this is your GOLD). If they don’t mention the problem you’re willing to solve, that’s fine, just ask about it. Mention the pain point and propose your solution. Ask them what they think. Ask them if they would pay for that solution.
If they say yes BINGO, you’ve got something. Now ask a few more people, and if they all seem interested, you’re onto something real.
2. Build a Waitlist Landing Page
Now that you’ve got a few potential users, create a landing page with a waitlist and share it with the people you interacted with earlier. This time, talk to even more people. If they seem interested, share the link to the landing page (but don’t just send a link to strangers we don’t want to do that, talk to them first). This way, we know our leads are high quality.
If your idea is a B2C SaaS, you may need at least 100 signups for the waitlist. For B2B SaaS, a few dozen should be sufficient.
3. Analyze Competitors and Talk to Their Users
If you succeed with step 2, then you can start building. For those who like to go the extra mile, I recommend analyzing your competitors. Talk to their audience (you can often find their users on X/Twitter). Ask them:
What problems are they currently having with your competitor?
How does the competitor solve those problems?
Figure out how you can solve those problems MORE EFFICIENTLY or BETTER. Then, explain how you’ll do this better than your competitor and share your waitlist link. If you manage to get these users to sign up, they’re willing to leave your competitor and use your product. This is HUGE.
If you can do this, you have a validated product. Why I like to do this step is to ensure your idea doesn’t fail. You might be solving a valid problem, but if your competitors do it better than you, people won’t use your product.
If you want to see what features your competitors lack and discover available opportunities in your market, and see target audiences pain points check out profiolio.com I built this tool specifically to help founders analyze their ideas, get competitor comparisons, and access many more useful metrics to help validate ideas and execute better than competitors.
If your niche is highly saturated you may not need to validation.
If your niche is very saturated, you may not even need to validate your idea. Just build something better than your competitors and show it to their audience. Not very ethical but it works.