u/hawkeye77787

Question for the SaaS builders: How are you prioritizing which requests / features to work on when you're doing dev work?

Are you going with a low/medium/high priority, some kind of scoring vs. effort, or just your gut feel? Any other prioritization models I should be aware of?

I'm working on a product management / product feedback tool and trying to understand which prioritization models are popular.

So I recently decided to build a new SaaS and document the entire journey on my weekly newsletter.

I thought it would be helpful to share with the community the exact checklist I use to get a "go-on-go" for new SaaS builds. Feel free to ask me specifics in the comments and I'll be more than happy to share.

For some added context: My goal is to build a new SaaS from scratch and take it to $10k MRR. I will be bootstrapping the SaaS and building it myself (vibe-coded using Cursor). I'm highly technical and been working in SaaS for most of my career.

The checklist:

• Is it B2B?
• Is there an existing market?
• Is it monetizable? (do businesses pay for it today?)
• Is it a large market?
• Is it a growing market?
• Does the SaaS solve a real problem?
• Is the problem evergreen? (will it exist in 10 years from now?)
• Can the SaaS scale to $10k MRR? to $100k MRR?
• Is there a moat? (how easy will it be to replicate / steal market share from the SaaS?)
• Is there an exit strategy?
• Can I build it?
• How will I get my first 100 users?
• Can I monetize from day 1?
• Can I "dogfeed" the product?
• Does it scratch my own itch?
• Is this a project I can work on for years?

I was able to answer "yes" to every question above. I think that is necessary if your goal is to build MRR from SaaS with minimal risk.

Happy to share more in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Hey guys,

I'm building a new SaaS which combines a few interesting concepts I've picked up the last few years.

I wanted to start a new project in an existing market but wasn't sure how to differentiate myself.

I decided to take a lesson from Tally who launched in a very saturated market by offering an extremely valuable free plan. This allowed them to build a powerful growth flywheel from their user base which now drives over 100k users a month.

I decided to build a solution in the saturated user feedback management / feature request space but to offer an extremely valuable free plan. This will be the main differentiator but I have some other ideas I will explore such as offering a useful Stripe integration to tie requests to existing MRR.

I think solopreneur vibe-coders can now take this approach (clone existing SaaS in a large market + add their own spin) and compete directly on price in a very aggressive and substantial way.

I think there is room for another player in this space since the SaaS market continues to grow and it's a project I can sink my teeth into and scale it to $10k MRR and beyond over the next few years.

This is the first time I'm announcing the new project publicly. Feel free to share any questions or feedback you have. I'd love to hear from you.

You can learn more and join the waitlist here - https://www.projectecho.io

Thanks.

Justin

Hey friends,

Today I reached the milestone of 100 email subs for my substack and thought I'd share what I've learnt since starting +-6 months ago.

For some context:

• My niche is SaaS. I write 1 long form post once a week covering a wide range of topics related to the software-as-a-service niche.
• I promote my new posts on LinkedIn and X. I have a much larger audience on LinkedIn (7.9k followers) compared to X (1k).
• I have one other, older substacks, with 560 subs which is more of a journal where I share lessons I've learnt as an entrepreneur. I share updates on the new substack in the old substack.

Being humbled + the "Lenny Rachitsky Case Study Mistake"

The last 6 months have been a grind. I've honestly been shocked at how slow my newsletter has grown considering the effort I've put in writing the content and distributing it. I also started with an existing audience on LinkedIn and X and another substack with 500+ subscribers.

Without going into too much detail, I'm in a fortunate position to focus most of my time on the newsletter since I have revenue from other passive sources. I've been humbled by the last few months and the difficulty in driving new subscribers.

A big mistake I made was spending too much time research Lenny Rachitsky's story (founder of Lenny's Newsletter). I loved his approach (1 deep researched post once a week + share on social), and built my strategy to mirror his. I now realize that he is an outlier and even though I didn't expect to get his numbers at the start, I realize my expectations were completely out of sync with reality.

Understanding the dynamic between content, existing audience, discoverability, and niche

The good news is that the longer I play this game the more I'm understanding it. I like puzzles and working out how this newsletter game is played and how to win it is like a puzzle to me.

I'm starting to understand better that the content you produce is only one piece of the puzzle. There are many pieces that need to fit together for the flywheel to start spinning.

This involves:

• Optimizing content for social media (each platform is different)
• Getting a critical mass of people so shares, likes, and word of mouth start happening
• Building enough trust so people actually tune in and start spreading the word (time + consistency)
• 2026 is a lot more noisy than 2018, 2020 and 2022. 2027 will be more noisy than 2026.

I could go on but you get the point.

So what am I doing different moving forward?

I will continue to experiment with different types of content and keep on pushing. I'm hoping that I'm still in "the hole" (audience too small to spin the flywheel) and that once the numbers climb higher I'll reach a tipping point where the audience starts driving the growth, rather than me fighting for each new subscriber.

I tried publishing notes but that hasn't done anything. I don't believe people other than Substack writers are spending any time in that feed.

I'm 6 months in but I have no plans to quit. I want to hit a critical mass, dial in my content and build a sizable audience that helps pay the bills in 12 to 24 months from now.

Thanks for reading.