r/SaaSSolopreneurs

Six months ago I launched my SaaS. Today it has around 40 paying customers.
It’s still tiny by startup standards, but it’s enough to have made a lot of mistakes and learn what actually matters. If you’re building your own SaaS, maybe some of these will save you some time.
1. Don’t waste time on ads too early
I spent far more time thinking about paid acquisition than I should have.
Until you know exactly who converts and why, ads are just an expensive way to learn. Organic channels gave me much better feedback.
2. Do whatever you can to get real user data
Analytics are useful, but conversations are better.
Every support call, onboarding session and email taught me something that dashboards couldn’t. The goal isn’t just getting users—it’s understanding what people are actually willing to pay for.
3. Start with a lower price
Pricing is surprisingly emotional.
A lower price made it easier to remove friction while I validated the product. Once I understood the value customers were getting, increasing pricing became much easier.
4. Keep expenses painfully low
Early on it’s easy to convince yourself that every tool, AI credit or subscription will accelerate growth.
Most of the time, it won’t.
If you can build it yourself or solve it manually for now, do that. Every euro you don’t spend extends your runway.
5. Know what your brand stands for
One of the biggest traps is building features because competitors have them or because one customer asks for them.
Not every request should become a feature.
Your product should become better at solving one specific problem, not average at solving twenty.
6. Not every customer is your customer
This one surprised me.
Some users generate lots of support requests, ask for endless customisations and ultimately pay very little.
Others sign up, understand the product immediately and become long-term customers.
Finding more of the second group matters much more than trying to satisfy everyone.
7. Take the calls
This probably isn’t scalable.
Do it anyway.
Every call uncovers objections, confusing UI, missing documentation and new opportunities. Those conversations eventually become product improvements, better marketing and more revenue.
8. SaaS compounds
The first few months can feel painfully slow.
But every blog post, customer review, feature improvement and SEO page keeps working for you long after you’ve published it.
Momentum is hard to see day to day, but obvious when you zoom out.
9. Trust your own judgement
You’ll hear conflicting advice from customers, founders, Reddit, YouTube and Twitter.
Listen to everyone.
Copy nobody.
You’re the one who understands your product, market and long-term vision.
10. Put pen to paper
Writing forces clarity.
Whenever I felt stuck, writing helped me understand what I actually believed, what customers really wanted and what the next priority should be.
11. Ask for Google reviews
Happy customers usually won’t leave reviews unless you ask.
A simple request after solving a problem has generated far more reviews than I expected, and those reviews build trust for future customers.
12. Write lots of blogs
I underestimated content marketing.
Every useful article becomes another opportunity for someone to discover your product through Google months later.
Unlike social media, good content keeps working.
13. Learn basic SEO
You don’t need to become an SEO expert.
Just learn the fundamentals:
Use Google Search Console.
Add structured data (schema) to your articles.
Answer specific questions people search for.
Publish consistently.
SEO has become one of my favourite acquisition channels because every article can continue bringing visitors long after it’s written.

My biggest takeaway
Building a SaaS isn’t about one viral launch.
It’s hundreds of small improvements that compound over time.
Six months in, I have around 40 paying customers. That’s nowhere near where I want to be, but it’s enough to know that consistency beats shortcuts.

1. Provide Google login: The majority of people wouldn't create an account otherwise.
2. Charge immediately: Stay away from free trials. Paid users = serious users.
3. Launching is the start not the end: Post-launch is 4/5 marketing, 1/5 product.
4. Promote shamelessly: Plug in your product everywhere, not just where it's "safe".
5. Value the unsubscribers: They're giving you the most valuable input.
6. Use your own product as much as you can: You'll find bugs your users haven't reported yet.
7. Retention > acquisition: The most valuable revenue comes from existing users.
8. Cut your MVP in half: Then cut it again. Ship the core, nothing else.
9. Think bigger: $10k/month feels great until you realize $100k requires the same effort.
10. Pay attention to market: If it's not converting after real attempts, the market is telling you something. Listen.
11. Your landing page has 5 seconds: Clean, fast, obvious value prop or they're gone.
12. Talk to your users: Email your users. DM them. Get on calls.
13. Price based on value, not competition.

Most SaaS founders fail because they give up too early

Stay in the game...

Was anyone else naive enough to think the actual challenge was the code?
You can spend months working to bring an idea to life technically, but that is literally just the starting line.

Code is logical, the market isn't: If something breaks in the backend, I check the logs and fix it. If a marketing campaign flops, there's no stack trace telling you why nobody clicked.

The "build it and they will come" myth: You can have the cleanest, most scalable code in the world, but if you don't know how to distribute it, you just have a pretty GitHub repo, not a business.

Sales > Features: You waste weeks building the perfect dark mode before even having your first paying customer.

Nowadays, you have to flip the routine: spend 20% of your time coding and 80% doing marketing. Even though we'd all much rather be doing the former.

Any other developers going through this existential crisis while transitioning from dev to building their own product? Please tell me I'm not the only one struggling with sales.

Getting someone to actually enter their credit card details is the real final boss.

I’ve been testing this with founders over the last few weeks and already checked 200+ startups/ideas.

You can drop your startup URL, app idea, ICP, niche, or the problem you want to solve.

I’ll look for useful Reddit signal: real pain, tool requests, alternative searches, niche conversations, and any sign of buying intent.

I’ll reply with a short public summary.

If there’s enough signal, I can also send a private report link with the full breakdown.

I’ll be honest if Reddit looks like a weak channel for your niche too.

Drop yours below.

I am trying to build a SaaS or an API. I am unable to find anything worth building.

I know the rule. You need to search for problems and then solve them. This approach has not worked for me.

I tried the method of copying what already works because competitors prove people already pay. I still failed.

I also tried observing a daily job. A flawed workflow you see every day produces ideas. Nothing has worked so far.

I refuse to build a basic CRM. I also will not code another chatbot. I want to automate real B2B problems or something for B2C ect

So please help and tell me how do you choose an idea worth building?

I've been building solo and got my product to around $400 MRR purely through cold calling and word of mouth. Proud of that, but I've hit the classic solo founder wall: Im pretty good at product / development, but I'm not the guy for distribution, UGC, content, or sales and that's clearly where the growth is for what I'm building. I cant just keep growing it cold calling, its extremely time intensive. It's in edu / humanizer space.

So I'm weighing my options and leaning toward bringing on a growth-focused partner rather than staying solo. Thinking meaningful equity (10–25% depending on commitment) plus a cut of monthly revenue from day one, so it's not just paper promises.

Two things:

1. If you've partnered up after starting solo, how did it go? Anything you'd do differently on structure or equity?
2. If you're a marketer/UGC operator/sales person lurking here and this sounds interesting, LMK.

My original pricing strategy was to offer three plans, all under $100:

• $49
• $79
• $99

But after calculating the real cost of third-party APIs, AI usage, servers, and backend infrastructure, I realized the original pricing may not be sustainable.

Now I’m considering changing the plans to:

• $59
• $99
• $129

My SaaS helps professionals, companies, and agencies warm up LinkedIn prospects before sending connection requests and direct messages.

The higher plans include more advanced features and require significantly more AI and API usage, so the pricing difference is not just based on adding a few extra features.

My concern is whether moving the top plan above $100 will hurt conversions. At the same time, I don’t want to price the product too low and end up with very little margin.

Would $59, $99, and $129 make sense for a LinkedIn outreach SaaS, or does the jump from $99 to $129 feel too high?

I’d appreciate feedback from SaaS founders who have dealt with pricing based on AI usage and third-party API costs.

I am stuck now for some time just because I never feel pleased enough to start a real saas which can get customers. For some reason there’s this invisible barrier to just starting; I basically can’t 100% finish an idea (which I actually like, I find this very hard) and build it out to a working Saas.

I’m doing lots of ai and marketing type products but for me it’s just too hard to just get that valuable enough product on the market. How did you guys exceed from this problem?

Hi Everyone! I’m in the process of building a SaaS on Loveable. I’m seeking advice on what other programs I’ll need to bring my idea to life. I’ve read it’ll be things like Supabase, Make.com, GitHub, Vercel, Stripe, etc.

I’ve never done this before but I have so many ideas and I’m rolling with it and hoping ya’ll can help guide me please 🙏. Is the above list good? Am I missing anything? I know it depends on what I’m building but any insight and info you can provide would be so appreciated.

It’ll be multi-unit management, no customer financial information, audits, checklists, dashboards, etc. I’ll want to connect to existing PMS systems (so I won’t be handling the actual move ins or tenant payments), and potentially financials in the future such as budgets, P&L’s, AI chat for SOP and Ops manual searches/questions, maintenance requests, photo uploads, etc.

What programs do I need to use, implement, sign up for, etc? I first started in Power Apps/Canvas, etc. and it was painstaking. I soon realized through some research that I needed to switch gears and that’s when I went to Loveable. Now I’m worried I’m not aware of the full picture so hoping to get your guidance and advice on what to be aware of and setup to build an operations management system.

Thank you!🙏

I handled the whole production of the video from start to finish. Starting with the script ending with the final video. The primary objective of this video was to deliver the message to the right audience.

A good demo video is the one that connects, not embarrasses.

Guess the conversion rates?

#founder #SaaS #demovideo #motiondesign #building

https://reddit.com/link/1uhx9ba/video/a7eq35qpy0ah1/player

Reddit is full of useful market research, but it is also messy.

You can spend hours opening threads, reading comments, saving links, and still end up unsure if the problem is actually worth solving.

That is the problem I’m trying to solve with Foundrly.

The result I want users to get is a clearer view of what people are repeatedly struggling with.

Example:

A founder wants to build a SaaS for small business owners.

Instead of manually reading hundreds of posts, Foundrly could help surface repeated problems like:

• missed leads
• bad follow-up systems
• too much manual admin
• messy booking processes
• customer questions repeated every day

Then it would group similar complaints and show the original Reddit sources so the founder can verify the context manually.

I’ve created a waitlist for people who want early access.

I’m also launching a private Reddit community for Foundrly where early users can share feedback, suggest features, and discuss real SaaS opportunities found from Reddit.

Would you use this during your idea validation process?

And what would make you trust the results?

I’m building Foundrly for founders who use Reddit to discover real problems worth solving.

The result I want to give users is not just “startup ideas”.

It is more like a research assistant that helps answer:

• What are people repeatedly complaining about?
• Is this pain showing up in multiple posts?
• What exact words do users use?
• What solutions have they already tried?
• Could this become a SaaS opportunity?
• Is it worth validating before building?

Example situation:

You want to build a SaaS, but you don’t know which problem to focus on.

Instead of guessing, Foundrly helps you explore Reddit pain points, group similar complaints, and find patterns that could become product opportunities.

I created a waitlist for people who want early access.

I’m also creating a private Reddit community for Foundrly where early members can share ideas, vote on features, discuss SaaS opportunities, and give direct feedback while the product is being built.

Would you join the waitlist?

And what would Foundrly need to show you before you would be ready to pay for it?