How to validate your SaaS startup idea?

You have a great startup idea, a SaaS that can potentially solve a problem. You want to inject thousands of dollars into development. Are you sure that everything is in order before you start? Read our SaaS masterclass which will guide you on how to validate your SaaS startup idea.  

Start by focusing on your ideation stage:

What this means is that you should determine whether or not people are ready to pay you for your ideas. Whenever you have an idea, the first step is to validate it. Without this, do not move forward. While you may think your idea is revolutionary, your competitor is making millions of dollars, that does not mean you will be able to do the same. The first step is to validate your idea.  

There are some very simple hacks and strategies that you can use. Set up a simple landing page. All you need is WordPress. Pick any template. If you don‘t want to spend time here, you can use the free templates available at the theme store. Use the free Elementor plugin. Set up a page that describes the problem you’re trying to solve, along with an early bird pricing that you are willing to offer. Once you do that, start spreading it across on social media and put it up on the ProductHunt ship.

Spend on SEM: 

Another thing that you can do is to spend about $200 on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Create a small ad and place it on your competitor’s videos. Gather data on how many sign-ups you get.  In order to constantly improve the idea, make sure you use an optimizing plugin for optimizing.

Understand the problem & adjust:

Install things like HotJar so you can track how much people understand the problem and adjust accordingly. Then see how you can change your copy to make it easier for people to understand the problem you’re solving and whether they’re ready to sign up for it. People will if they have a real problem.

The main reason you’re still reading this blog is that you want to learn more. You’re here because you want to learn something new. Similarly, there are people who want solutions to their problems.  You just need to focus on finding those people. Get them on the phone and offer them the best deal for the software once you find them. 

Think that you only need 15-30 minutes from them and you would like to learn more about their business and what problems they are facing. Try not to talk about your solution since they already know that. They saw your ad. They already know too much. Then get them on the phone and understand their problem. The next step is to get 100 sign-ups in total. You will most likely get 20 to 30 people on a call from those hundred sign-ups.

Setup an autoresponder:

Make sure you set up an autoresponder, so an email will be sent out immediately. You might as well try getting them on the phone while you’ve got their attention. Keep it simple at first. Get them into the loop. After you have done that, get them on a call and write down the common problems they are all experiencing. You should also ask them how large the problem is because once you know the size of the problem, you know how much you can possibly charge. You can then use this information to develop a pricing strategy.

Finding pricing balance:

Imagine that I have a problem, and I’m willing to pay $1,000 to solve it. Because I’m willing to pay $1,000 to solve this problem, that means that I will earn between $10,000 and $15,000 if the problem gets fixed. If you price it much too low, people will call it a cheap service; if you price it too high, people will not sign up. Finding that pricing balance is crucial in SaaS, which also helps you with the product market. It’s a matter of people skipping or buying a service.

That is how crucial your pricing policy needs to be. The more you understand people’s problems and how big the problem is in terms of their money statement, the easier it would be for you to price your product you don’t need to copy your competitor’s price. You can keep it expensive, provided your solution is better And when I say it’s better, it doesn’t have to be more features than what your company is providing.

Build MVP:

What you are doing is you’re solving it in a better way with limited features. People don’t need 10,000 features, all they need is those four features to automate their problem and that’s it. You just focus on those four. This will help you to decide what to build in an MVP.

Now even before building the MVP, ask your users, ‘hey, would you be willing to pay one dollar for this problem right now?’ There is a difference between someone saying I’m going to pay you and someone actually taking out the credit card and paying now whether it’s one dollar or $100, it doesn’t matter. If someone is willing to take out one dollar and take out the credit card, that means there is trust.

Now you have to get to this stage where people are ready to pay you. If you get 100 people on call and out of those hundred people, if only 30 people pay, the chances of your SaaS to succeed is only 30%. If 60 people out of call pay you if chances of success are 60%. Now you have to make sure that it goes above 50% before you take the bet of building the product.

If that doesn’t happen, just refund that $1 to everyone and move on. Because you have now successfully saved over hundreds and thousands of dollars on development. This is how you validate your idea right now. If that 70% or 50% of people are not paying, try to understand why they were not paying. Again, try to get them on a call. Spend some more time on ideation

Don’t spend your time on development:

Once you start developing, there’s never going back. Because SaaS is a very money-hungry, driven business. You have to inject so much capital during the initial stages before you start seeing returns. Sometimes it can take three to five years just like any other business. SaaS is the same way because developers are way too expensive and it’s only getting more and more expensive because people know their work. 

Today, people find it a lot easier to find a job in a safe company today because of the remote culture, remote work, and all the things that are happening remotely and they can get a job in the US, Europe, just sitting in India. Those days are gone when you can just get someone for something utterly cheap. Those days are gone.

This blog is a compilation of my SaaS masterclass talk with Udit Goenka. Here’s the full session recording to watch 🙂