🧠 Are all the good SaaS ideas already taken?
Tags: webdev, saas, discuss, watercooler
Published: 2023-09-08 21:59:49

Hey all 👋

Charlie here!

Today I’m going to convince you to **just go ahead and build** that product or feature you’re thinking of.

Even if you’re up against strong competition.

This week in IdeaHub…

- **Competition is a good thing:** _Beehiiv shows us it never hurts to be late to the party…_

- **Niching down:** _How to start small and differentiate your product._

- **The underrated differentiator:** _One thing every big SaaS is failing at that you can guarantee to beat them on._

Let’s jump in… 👇

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> Join 400+ tech peeps learning to build SaaS products every week for free on [IdeaHub](https://ideahub.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=are-all-the-good-ideas-taken).

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## 1. Competition is a good thing

When [Beehiiv](https://www.beehiiv.com/) launched in 2021 war had long been raging in the email marketing space.

MailChimp had already amassed **more than 10 million customers** and been acquired by Intuit for $12 billion.

Plus - ConvertKit entered the race in 2013 and was already delivering over **$2 million in MRR.**

And countless other smaller platforms either failed or were acquired along the way:

_ExactTarget, TinyLetter, iContact, Campaigner, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, Emma, Mad Mimi…_

Would you build an email marketing platform knowing this is what you were up against?

If you’re like me - probably not! But if you’re [Tyler Denk](https://twitter.com/denk_tweets) and the Beehiiv team, you make it work…

{% embed https://twitter.com/denk_tweets/status/1486071663514906624?s=20 %}

So the moral of the story is:

No matter if you’re up against the likes of MailChimp or a handful of $1K MRR bootstrappers…

…**build something people love and nobody can stop you.**

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## 2. Niching down

Say you have some experience in email automation, maybe you’re a fan of what Beehiiv are doing…

You can’t go head to head, so what do you do?

- Pick an **underserved** customer segment

- **Refine the core features** to solve a specific set of problems

- Market your solution to the nichè

For example: _‘Beehiiv for Indie Hackers’_.

With unique integrations to communities like ProductHunt and revenue visibility platforms like [BareMetrics](https://baremetrics.com/).

This would help us share our [#buildinpublic](https://twitter.com/buildinpublic) journeys, and celebrate when we cross new revenue milestones or launch a new product.

But you can also **nichè down through features**, keeping the customer base the same, and focusing on solving a smaller more specific problem.

For example:

_Email Marketing → Cross-promotions → Finding cross-promotion partners._

You could build a platform that allows creators of any guise to find and collaborate with others and grow their audiences.

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## 3. The underrated differentiator

As big SaaS platforms grow, they all encounter one problem at some point or another:

It’s **difficult** to scale customer service.

It’s why so many incumbent SaaS platforms **get a bad rap** from their customers.

{% embed https://twitter.com/thejustinwelsh/status/1698329003856211972?s=20 %}

So whatever you’re building - **obsess over your customer’s experience.**

Forget transactional emails and write everything from scratch.

Engage with as many as you can on X and **create a relationship** where they feel like they can reach out whenever they want.

Make them feel special and reap the rewards. You’ll see:

- Increased **organic** feature suggestions and feedback

- **Word-of-mouth** will become a measurable growth tool

- You’ll learn 10X more than just watching your Stripe dashboard…

That's it folks! If you found this interesting, check out my newsletter below:

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Join **400+ tech peeps** learning to build SaaS products every week for free on [IdeaHub](https://ideahub.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=are-all-the-good-ideas-taken).