As we are on the brink of welcoming our 100th member, it's the perfect time to invite you to introduce yourself. What is your experience with SaaS? What are your challenges? Do you have an idea that you could see becoming a digital product? Navigating the world of SaaS becomes easier with diverse insights, and this group is made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds, with many roads to making progress towards launching a SaaS product. And that's a big reason why this group exists - to take something that is considered a 'long shot' for most people, and make it achievable through practical strategies. Through this community, I've had great conversations with members of this group, such as: @Russ Schneider, who has a wealth of knowledge and experience in business and SaaS, and took time out of his day to share no BS guidance with me during a call. @Danny Mallinder, an experienced business strategist, with an idea for a SaaS that is one of the best that I've seen in a while - because it comes from deep experience. @Zein Fayyad, who is building his SaaS product in close touch with his audience, with goals much bigger than just making a simple app. @Marc Green, who has an idea for a SaaS which can only come from experience, and a background in business that enables him to navigate it wisely. As I have mentioned before, like the candle from Beauty and the Beast...I am here to serve. I encourage each one of you to introduce yourself below, share your experiences, discuss your challenges, or talk about the digital product ideas that you may have. I look forward to getting to know you all better as we continue on this SaaS journey together.

Imagine this: You're on a long, monotonous drive to work. The road is stretching out before you, seemingly endless. You're not quite awake yet, and you're not quite hungry, but you know you will be. You need something, but what? You pull into a McDonald's and order a milkshake. It's not breakfast food, but that's not why you're buying it. You're not hiring it to be a meal; you're hiring it to be a companion. It's there to make your drive less boring, to keep your hands busy and your mind awake It's there to slowly melt away, giving you something to focus on other than the humdrum of the road. And it's there to keep your stomach from growling before lunchtime. This is the 'Jobs to be Done' theory. It's not about what a product is; it's about what a product does. And more importantly, it's about what a product means to you. So, the next time you find yourself buying something, ask yourself: What job am I hiring this product to do? You might be surprised by the answer. And if you're a business, ask yourself: Do I truly understand what job my product is being hired to do? The answer might just revolutionize your approach. Remember, we don't just buy products. We hire them to fulfill a need, to complete a task, to make our lives a little bit easier, a little bit better. And that, is a milkshake moment.

ChatGPT Plugins are set to 10X the capabilities of ChatGPT. Here are the top 10 plugins that are particularly beneficial for business and professional use: 1. Code Interpreter This plugin empowers ChatGPT to generate Python code and manage files. Essentially, ChatGPT recognizes when a task requires code execution. The Code Interpreter enables it to create and execute that code, which is a significant advancement! Use cases include Excel spreadsheet analysis, image manipulation, and much more! 2. Zapier Zapier provides connectivity to over 6,000 popular applications. Now, ChatGPT also has access to these applications. Simply input a command in natural language, and the combined power of ChatGPT and Zapier will direct it to the appropriate application. The integration of Zapier AI significantly enhances the ChatGPT ecosystem, opening up numerous possibilities. 3. Prompt Perfect This innovative plugin enhances and optimizes your prompt without any extra effort on your part. For instance, you could input a simple command like "Summarize the industry structure of the nutrition industry. Use Prompt Perfect.". Prompt Perfect will then refine and expand your prompt to ensure optimal output. 4. AskYourPDF / ChatWithPDF These tools, which also function as standalone applications, can now be utilized within ChatGPT. By pasting a link to an online PDF, you can interact with the document, requesting key points, summaries, and more. 5. Noteable Noteable is a tool that enables you to create data visualization and analysis notebooks directly within ChatGPT. By pasting a data link and providing some context about your analysis objectives, Noteable will prepare a comprehensive analysis for you! 6. Public / FiscalNote While numerous news sources are developing plugins, we find Public and FiscalNote to be the most reliable for delivering high-quality, current news via a consistently functional plugin. 7. Show Me This is a diagramming plugin.

Hi everyone - just sharing the success story of my AI test site I referenced in my introduction post. This is from the tool's FB group post - Hope this helps someone if they are wondering whether or not you can rank a site with AI! If you combine it with proper SEO, the sky's the limit!

Gary Halbert, a renowned copywriter, once shared vital insights that could save your direct-marketing efforts from financial ruin. From time to time, Gary taught classes on copywriting and selling by mail. One question he often posed to his students was: "If we both owned hamburger stands and competed to sell the most hamburgers, what advantages would you want on your side?" The answers range from superior ingredients to the best location or lowest prices. But when Gary's students finished listing their desired advantages, he told them he only needed one advantage to outsell them all: "A Starving Crowd!" Gary urged us to consider this: in direct marketing, your most profitable habit is constantly seeking out groups of people (markets) hungry for a specific product or service. How do we gauge this hunger? Gary explained that for direct marketers, mailing lists make it easy. Suppose we're new to direct marketing and want to sell a book titled "How to Invest Money in the Stock Market" via direct mail. Who should receive our promotion? Gary explored several possibilities: 1. Mailing to names and addresses from a telephone book - A terrible idea with too much waste circulation. 2. Mailing to people in high-income areas only - Better, but still insufficiently targeted. 3. Mailing to professionals with above-average incomes - A fair option, but we can do better. 4. Mailing to wealthy mail-order buyers - Now we're onto something. 5. Mailing to wealthy mail-order buyers of similar investment products - Bingo! We're getting warmer. 6. Mailing to wealthy, repeat mail-order buyers of similar investment products - These people are ideal prospects. 7. Mailing to wealthy, repeat mail-order buyers of similar investment products who've paid top dollar - We're very close to the best possible audience. 8. Mailing to wealthy, repeat mail-order buyers of similar investment products who've paid top dollar and made recent purchases - Almost perfect. 9. Mailing to the previous group, but only those whose list broker reports high responsiveness to similar offers - This is the best list to rent. 10. Your own satisfied customer list - The ultimate audience for your promotion.

In this video, Rob Walling explains his "stair step method" to SaaS entrepreneurship. The method involves taking three steps to reach $1 million or more in annual recurring revenue: building a simple product, rinsing and repeating, and then going full force into a full-blown SaaS app. - Step One: Building a simple product. This could be a single feature of a larger product or an add-on for an existing ecosystem, such as a WordPress plugin, Shopify add-on, or Heroku add-on. The idea is to start generating revenue and learn the ropes without having to build a full-blown SaaS app, which can be complicated and time-consuming. Building an add-on to an existing ecosystem simplifies a lot of the process and allows for a steady flow of visitors and customers. - Step Two: Rinsing and repeating. This involves doubling down on the model that worked in step one and repeating it until you own your time. You're using skills you have already developed, getting good at this essentially free or low-cost traffic channel, and learning the ropes of how to support software and interact with customers. This step provides income diversification and helps increase revenue and confidence. - Step Three: Going full force into a full-blown SaaS app. This is the holy grail for bootstrappers, but it is popular and competitive. Rob suggests taking the stair step method because it allows for predictability and repeatability, and it takes longer to reach goals. By climbing the stairs and gaining experience, skills, and confidence, you're more likely to succeed than jumping straight into a full-blown SaaS app. The biggest advantage of the stair step method is predictability and repeatability, which allows for a lot of confidence that you're going to make it to your end goal. The biggest disadvantage is that it can take longer to get where you want to go, and you might face platform risk and a natural plateau in step one businesses. There are so many ways to approach SaaS entrepreneurship - and this is just one of them. The whole video is worth a watch, and Rob Walling has a lot of great tips in his channel for aspiring SaaS founders.

After seeing the amazing tips here, I want to set a clear action plan for myself. So I consumed all YC's stuff and structured it to one 5-minute action a day. Join here if interested in the experiment(free).

Dalton and Michael discuss 'Tarpit ideas', and it's very interesting to hear their definition and insight into ideas which they feel should be avoided. Firstly, they recommend building products for businesses - not consumers. With consumers, the bar is extremely high - and timing plays a big factor. They also share some of their experience with apps that help you 'find new things', like restaurants, or concerts through a friend network - or some machine learning recommendation system. People say they would love to be able to discover new experiences - so you know people want it, and you want to build an app that helps them discover it. But the sad reality is, the 'magical place' doesn't exist. There are a finite number of restaurants that are open tonight, and you wanting there to be a better option, doesn't mean that a better option exists. Everyday people go on Yelp and search for restaurants, and don't like what they find - but that doesn't mean there are restaurants they don't know about, it just means that what exists is not sufficient, and the same goes for parties, events, etc. So there is a problem, but it's a physical one that your application won't solve. Dalton has experience in this from the music discovery side of things. People say they want to discover new music - but in practice, most people like popular music from a small number of bands. Just like with food - from their experience with DoorDash, they found that most people like to order McDonalds, or something comparable, like a burger from somewhere else. It turns out most people are not interested in ordering strange dishes or trying something new. They recommend doing thorough research before investing time and energy into projects like this - because many have gone down these roads before, and their experiences should guide you. On the other hand, there are startup ideas with a low supply of founders, and a high demand from customers. These are ideas beyond the typical social network and consumer spaces.

Came across this video where Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, discusses what he believes are the key factors that helped him build three billion-dollar companies. Obviously there is a lot that goes into it - but I think there are a lot of takeaways that apply to any small/medium-business SaaS Founders. 1. Struggle and failure are normal in entrepreneurship, but they are formative and can teach valuable lessons. 2. Leadership requires conviction, courage, and clarity to bring people together towards a common mission and to create energy within an organization. 3. To succeed, you need to choose the right elevator by picking a growing, expanding industry with good cards and knowing how to play them. The whole video is worth a watch. He hits the nail on the head in many ways, especially when it comes to prioritizing speed and taking action.

When you've been in business long enough, you have a specific way of doing things. This might involve the way you run ads, or close deals, or capture leads, or spark interest, etc. It's a process you created - which is why you know it works. It stems from your experience, which is why hardly anyone would think of it. Perhaps you currently perform that procedure manually, and it works well enough for you. But if that process was turned into a digital product, could it help other people too? For example, here's a website I came across: https://www.sharedocview.com/ This is a tool that helps you capture leads from documents that you send to people. You can require emails to view your uploaded document, and see how many times those people visited the page. If you uploaded a powerpoint, you can see how many slides they viewed, and gauge their interest. This idea isn't something that would randomly come to mind while taking a shower. An idea like this comes from experience - from someone who was sending out documents to prospects, and then realized they would like to know the metrics behind their efforts. If you're scratching your own itch - then you already have one customer. This likely indicates that thousands of others share the same need, providing the foundation for a unique and profitable micro-SaaS idea.

One of the biggest mistakes I've seen developers make is not creating a clickable prototype for their clients. You describe your idea to a developer, usually in the form of rough sketches and whiteboard diagrams. Sometimes you may have the flow represented in something like powerpoint or excel - but much is left open to interpretation. But then the developer immediately starts coding based on this, because they 'get' your idea. Weeks go by...and you start getting anxious. You want to see an update, and the anticipation has turned this into a big reveal. When the reveal comes...you're shocked. You imagined your project completely differently - and now you're scared, because this just went from being exciting, to being a nightmare. You're going to spend weeks going back and forth with revisions, having the developer change live code and details in every corner. But it didn't have to be this way - if you had just received a clickable prototype. Before we write a single line of code for any project, we create a complete, high-fidelity, clickable prototype of the application. You will be able to use the software, as if it were real. But it's not real. It's a visual prototype. When we make the first version of this prototype - we send it to you and get your feedback. Change the colors? Easy fix. The flow seems off? We'll switch it up. We bring your vision to life through this process, and nail it down with a clickable prototype. And now you can rest easy - because you know everyone's on the same page, and the final result has been completely confirmed. And while we take it through the coding stage - you now have an asset you can share with people to create hype and a waiting list. You can demo your software with your clickable prototype, through screenshots and videos of it. You could even pay for the entire development before it's even coded, by pre-selling it to people for a discount. So make sure you get a clickable prototype. Or just work with us, and we'll make sure you get one.

Just made another YouTube video - in this one, I discuss how online experts such as Frank Kern and Sam Ovens leveraged their info-products to become SaaS Founders. I also share the benefits of using your SaaS to build a community, and share a framework for how you can generate revenue while evolving your SaaS towards product/market fit. I'm thinking for the next video, I'll talk about the benefits of creating Clickable Prototype - both when it comes to confirming your vision, and also as a promotional tool. Let me know what you think!

I'm going to be around for an hour today for the collab call - feel free to drop in!

I came across this website, and it stood out to me as an interesting example of a Tech Lead Magnet. Salesman.com offers a framework sales-training, and they are very systemized about it. Part of their system is based around this free assessment software, which is a series of questions that tests your personality, and then outputs your strengths and weaknesses as a salesman. As far as digital products go, it is very simple. No one is going to pay to use this tool on it's own - but when combined with their core info-product, it becomes powerful. It can be leveraged to build your email list, and used to introduce prospects to the framework of your core offer. This is a great example of how as a consultant, you can look at your existing offer, and see where a digital product can fit into your process. In this case, it fits in as a lead magnet, which complements the existing info-product which already has demand. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it serves as a powerful tool that your business can leverage in exchange for your visitors contact information.

The 'discussions' drama in Skool has been very interesting, and reminded me of this short piece I wrote: The power of saying 'no' in software development Sam clearly knows that great software gives you an approach, and not just every feature. But once you give people a feature, they'll be pissed off once you take it away - even if the feature sucked. It seems like he is sticking to his guns, and not making a judgement based on the initial reaction. Once things cool down in a week or two, it will be like it never happened - but not every SaaS founder can stand the pressure of the initial push-back.

The topic of when to launch a SaaS product came up during our collaboration call on Thursday. If you are a consultant, coach, or online expert selling an info-product, it would be beneficial to launch your SaaS product as soon as your info-product is validated. Your info-product already has demand, and that's what you are trying to sell. Your SaaS product exists to enhance your offer, reduce lead costs, and build a community rapidly - which are tangible benefits that can be realized from day one. These benefits are unique to those who sell info-products. Most SaaS founders start with a goal of monetizing their product as soon as possible, but it takes several iterations to reach product/market fit. Once you do, you'll have an incredible product - but you're in a different position. Even when you give away your SaaS product for free, you still reap huge benefits because you have coaching, a mastermind, or other another kind of info-product to sell. By developing a SaaS product that complements your Info-Product, you stand out in even the reddest of oceans. And when you do reach product/market fit, you will have something that is even more powerful than your info-product, and incredibly scalable. So to answer the question - I think you should launch when your info-product is ready, and you're looking to gain a competitive advantage.

Another video that is pure gold from Michael Seibel, this time joined by Dalton Caldwell. They give so much amazing advice, but I just want to focus on the core message - you need to like your customers. Many startups see the convoluted systems that bigger businesses have implemented - and try to act like they are a big company too. They do things like pretend the customer service rep isn't actually the founder. But it's actually a competitive advantage to be accessible, and it's hard to beat a competitor who cares about their customer. No matter what industry you serve, it's about helping and caring about people. You're making money of course, but in your heart you know you're delivering value in a big way. The customer can sense when that's the case, and they can also feel it in their bones when you don't care.

This video is pure gold, and encapsulates the core philosophy I write about regarding product development. Launch fast, learn fast, iterate fast. Don't spend a year planning and building - get something to the market fast, and start learning. The faster you learn, the more likely you are to build something that people love before anyone else. Tips for building an MVP: 1. Give yourself a deadline. 2. Write down your specific features. 3. After you write it down, cut out the features you don't need. Get the basic stuff out first. 4. Don't fall in love with your MVP. It will change over time - fall in love with your user instead. Get those initial users, care about them, and work with them. If you solve their problems, you will build a great product.

Rob Fitzpatrick wrote a book called 'The Mom Test', which explains how to get honest and useful feedback from anyone - even your mom, who doesn't want to hurt your feelings. People say that you should never ask your mom about whether your business idea is good, and that's true. But the real truth is, you shouldn't ask anyone whether your business idea is good - or atleast not directly. That question invites people to lie to you - when your responsibility is to uncover the truth. You do that by asking good questions. What you want is to gather is concrete facts about your customers lives and world views. This is what will allow you to improve your business. And you do that by never talking about your idea. This may seem weird, but that's how you start asking better questions, and finding out what people care about. You talk about them and their lives. The Mom Test: 1. Talk about their life instead of your idea 2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future 3. Talk less and listen more It's called The Mom Test because it leads to questions even your mom can't lie to you about. If you do it properly, the person you're speaking to won't even know you have an idea. Here is are examples from the book: - "Do you think it's a good idea?" Bad question. Only the market can tell if your idea is good. Everything else is just opinion. Unless you’re talking to a deep industry expert, this is self-indulgent noise with a high risk of false positives. Rule of thumb: Opinions are worthless. - "Would you buy a product which did X?" Bad question. You’re asking for opinions and hypotheticals from overly optimistic people who want to make you happy. The answer to a question like this is almost always “yes”, which makes it worthless. Rule of thumb: Anything involving the future is an over-optimistic lie. - "How much would you pay for X?" Bad question. This is exactly as bad as the last one, except it’s more likely to trick you because the number makes it feel rigorous and truthy.

Sam discusses Darwin's Theory of Evolution extensively in his content. He describes how we all need to evolve to survive in business, just like animals in nature. All organisms are in a fight for resources, and they need to adapt to a changing eco-system in order to survive, reproduce, and live. This is true for every creature, all the way from bugs to humans - and business is no different. Business is an eco-system, where you are competing for customers, and you have to adapt to changing customer preferences and technology in order to thrive. The people you are fighting against are your competitors, and how you win is by providing more value than anybody else. But people often forget about this. They experience success, and then they remain static. They coast, and don't continue to evolve. But then someone comes in who is a bit hungrier, and ready to adapt faster. They think a little bit differently then the existing businesses, and are ready to provide more. And this is what kills existing businesses. It is failure to adapt to change. Sam has already evolved, but he isn't teaching it - yet we're all experiencing it here with Skool. The evolution is SaaS - and it's a big jump. But if you're a consultant/coach/online expert - you may have the same key ingredients to evolve like Sam did, and supercharge your offer with SaaS. With the right strategy, you can become a SaaS Founder, avoid development hell, and thrive in even the reddest of oceans.

Hey everyone - I've met with some members of this community, and the conversations have been great. Everyone comes from different experiences, but it's clear there is a desire to connect and learn from each other. I've put a weekly call on the calendar. These calls are going to evolve as time goes on, but right now I imagine it as a time where we can discuss each members questions, goals, and progress towards becoming a SaaS founder. Soon I will be uploading content to the classroom for free - at that point, these calls will include discussions regarding implementation of the content there. Maybe you have an idea you are not sure how to proceed with, or you have a concept you would like to get feedback on. Come in, ask questions, and don't be worried. You joined for a reason - let's meet and discuss your journey. Let me know what you think, would you be interested in a weekly collab call?

If you watch Sam's videos, he talks about how he's always saying 'no' to things, and the power of that word. I think he even calls himself Mr. No. I think it's interesting, because saying no is a great habit to have in software development, and that philosophy reflects in the quality of Skool. Every idea should have to prove it's worth, and work hard to be implemented. It's better to say no to every idea the first time it appears, and let it stand outside in the rain for a few days. If it keeps coming back, that's when you know it might be worth taking a deeper look - because each time you say yes, you've actually said yes to a whole chain of events. You need to take that single yes through planning, design, coding, testing, tweaking, testing, tweaking, testing, tweaking...updating any copy if necessary, making sure pricing is not effected, launching, and then hoping you didn't break any promises. And once that feature is out there, it's tough to take away - people will get pissed off, even if the feature sucked. So it's better to start with no - and pick carefully when you do say yes. Right now, Skool doesn't have a landing page builder, or a catalogue of groups, or a post scheduler, or custom gamification, or white labeling, or a myriad of other requests that come in daily. I definitely like a few of those ideas, and some of them may become reality - but I think what makes great software is the tendency to lean towards no, instead of trying to please everyone all the time. Because great software has a vision, instead of being as flexible as possible. Great software is opinionated, and doesn't just give you every feature - it gives you an approach. Skool certainly does that, and I think it's better for it.

Hey everyone, I'm excited to share with you a new idea I have for a FREE mini-course and open-source app that I believe can help this community thrive. The idea is to provide you with a functioning, open-source micro-SaaS app that you can customize with your branding and deploy to the Chrome Store with minimal coding required. The goal is to get running software up fast and learn best practices through hands-on experience. Through the mini-course, I will guide you through the process of customizing the app and deploying it. By participating, you will learn valuable skills that can help you take your business to the next level. And if you get stuck along the way, this community is here to support you. Share your questions, ideas, and progress updates with us! This mini-course and open-source app will lay the foundation for everyone to start making progress quickly, and it could even lead to me releasing more micro-SaaS prototypes and tutorials for different niches. I'm really excited about this idea and believe it has the potential to help this community achieve great things. I plan to launch the mini-course and open-source app very soon, and in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how we can make this project even more valuable. Let me know in the comments what you think!

Here's a case study of how we helped an Amazon agency align itself with a micro-SaaS product and the effect it had on their lead generation. Following the formula of "Info-Product + Micro-SaaS = System as a Service," we developed a "Product Research Micro-SaaS" for an Amazon agency to offer as a lead magnet and build a community of fans around. When launched on a page of Amazon products, it summarizes all the key information into a chart, including sales revenue. The user is able to load data for hundreds of products within seconds, export information as a CSV file, and view product images all in one window. On top of that, it has a 90-day product history, saved folders, Amazon Alerts, and more. To an Amazon seller, this is an irresistible lead magnet - and as an Amazon agency, you can easily build a "System as a Service" around this product. Teach people how to find their perfect product, build goodwill at scale, and warm them up to your paid offerings. When Facebook ads were run to this offer, our client got 30%+ email conversions compared to industry standards of 2-3%. With just one organic post on LinkedIn, over 65 people signed up to their community in order to gain access. In their community, people also get access to a course that shows them how to use the tool to find a great product. People share their feedback and appreciation, and they also post about the challenges they are facing on Amazon, which are opportunities to close sales. We helped them accomplish all this by building a Micro-SaaS they could combine with their Info-Product and leverage to establish a community. Now they are warming up their community to their paid offer, gathering feedback, and moving closer to product-market fit - all while staying out of development hell, and focusing on what they do best.

I finally made my first Youtube video for my channel. In it, I shed some light on a unique way of generating micro-SaaS ideas - which I have touched on in my posts. Straight to the point, easy to follow, and (hopefully) engaging. Let me know what you think!

OpenAI has finally released access to their ChatGPT API. Up until now, we only had API access to 'Da-Vinci-003', which is far less powerful then the model that powers ChatGPT - and plus, it is 10X cheaper then Da-Vinci-003. So this means we can use this API to build even more powerful apps...for 1/10th of the cost. This is huge for big companies, that have already made giant moves using the OpenAI API - and it's also a huge opportunity for micro-SaaS founders. You can build an app that carries the power of the latest AI available, and you can now save 90% on the cost of that service going forward. Here's some ideas: - Trading course + Stock Trading Algorithm = Trading System This system provides clients with the knowledge and tools to develop personalized trading strategies and automate their trades based on AI-powered recommendations. - Organic Marketing Course + Social Media Lead Generation Extension = Marketing System This system provides clients with the knowledge and tools to develop effective organic marketing strategies and automate their lead generation process based on AI-powered recommendations. - SEO Course + SEO Optimization Tool = SEO System This system provides clients with the knowledge and tools to optimize their website for search engines and automate their SEO process based on AI-powered recommendations. - Content Creation Course + Content Automation Tool = Content System This system provides clients with the knowledge and tools to create high-quality content at scale and automate their content creation process based on AI-powered recommendations. - Email Marketing Course + Email Marketing Campaign Automation Tool = Email Marketing System This system provides clients with the knowledge and tools to develop effective email marketing campaigns and automate their email marketing process based on AI-powered recommendations. - Cryptocurrency Trading Course + Cryptocurrency Trading Bot = Cryptocurrency Trading System

From a business point of view, SaaS is software that customers pay monthly or annually for in order to get continued access, as opposed to a one-off purchase. "Micro" means small, obviously - a SaaS business targeting a niche market, run by one person or a small team, with small costs, a narrow focus, a small but dedicated user base and no outside funding. My goal in this community is to arm founders/consultants/coaches/online experts with the knowledge they need to create a micro-SaaS product that complements their info-product, without ending up in development hell, spending years building something no one wants. Why? Because I believe that people who solve problems online, know how to market, and have an audience can make amazing SaaS founders - and I also believe that an info-product combined with micro-SaaS is one of the best ways to supercharge your offer and build a lifestyle business. At the same time, it's easy for people without experience to end up in development hell. That's a place where weeks turn to months, months turn to years, and dreams go to die. I want to help you avoid that place, by sharing the things I've learned from the micro-SaaS businesses I have built for myself and with clients. Some of you are already SaaS founders - and that's amazing. This group is a place where anything related to creating and running a SaaS business can be discussed - and I will take part. There are countless types of SaaS applications which can be built, channels to sell on, and ways to generate ideas - and you are welcome to discuss them all. I plan to primarily share info on the business side of things - the side that actually makes or breaks your success as a SaaS business - but I am also going to discuss technical aspects such as coding. Knowledge is power, and if you can develop the skills to create your own prototype or MVP, your efforts will be rewarded. I'll also be able to help many more people reach their goals this way, because I can't build for every client.

It can be tough to come up with an idea for a SaaS product - but if you're an established consultant/coach/online expert, you might have some clues right in front of you. The formula is Info-Product + Micro-SaaS = System as a Service. For example, Sam offered WeTube, which taught people how to sell masterminds - and then he bundled it with Skool, which is the SaaS you need to do so. This combination supercharged his offer - it became a 'System as a Service'. There are over 990 people in Wetube - at $1000 each, he made almost a million dollars in revenue within a few days. On a smaller scale, I've met gym consultants who teach the info people how to get more gym clients, while also including the Micro-SaaS for filling and managing their pipeline. I've met digital marketers who not only teach you how to attract more clients, and also include a subscription to their chrome extension for automating conversations with leads. Even for crypto trading - there are people who not only teach your their trading signals, but also include a monthly subscription to use their customized trading algorithm. That's an Info-Product + SaaS offer too. This not only reduces churn (people dropping out of their subscription), but it creates a more compelling offer that you can charge premium for. You are offering both the guidance AND the digital tool they need to succeed. This combination of Info-Product + Micro-SaaS is a powerful, and gives you a big clue towards what your SaaS product should be. if you're an established consultant/coach/online expert, all you need to do is look at your info-product, and see where your digital product could fit into your existing process. You're almost definitely using a SaaS product at some stage - could you replace it with your own, simplified version? If it's a tool you use a lot, you probably also have ideas on how it could be better. This way, you know exactly what you need to create - and the demand is built in, because your info-product has demand.

It's hard to figure out what your app should be. A good way to try and narrow it down is by defining what you don't want it to be. For example - you could say Skool's enemy is Facebook. Facebook is full of ads, chaotic, and not well suited to delivering educational content - all the things that Skool isn't. When you have an enemy, you also get a clear marketing message. Skool actually mentions their enemies in their headline/subheadline: - It's time to ditch Kajabi and Facebook groups. - Put your course, community, and event schedule together in one place. Give your customers a better home. Stop paying for Kajabi and wasting time on Facebook. Simplify your life. Conflict piques curiosity. People understand a product faster by comparing it to others, and choosing sides is a sure way to get attention. But don't get stuck overanalyzing the competition. Take a look, and then focus on your own vision and ideas.

I've been deep in the AI rabbit hole lately - Python, Machine Learning, Data Science, and of course, OpenAI. I've been thinking about the idea of an AI consultant - imagine if you could ask Sam any question, and the AI would use his knowledge to provide the answer Sam would give? So I took a very limited sample of some of Sam's teachings, and converted it into an index which could be searched based on semantic meaning. I then prompted the AI to role-play as a business consultant named Sam, and to answer my question using only the provided sample of text. This was one of exchanges: Question: How can I break through feeling lost, Sam? AI Sam: The key to breaking through feeling lost is to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life and to take massive action. Instead of playing the victim and looking for someone or something else to blame, it is important to recognize that any lack of success is your own doing. You should also understand that it is normal to feel uncomfortable when you are taking leaps forward, and that comfort is the enemy of progress. When you are feeling confused or unsure about what the next step should be, try looking at what you are being pulled away from - that is probably the thing that you need to focus on and get done. Sounds like exactly what Sam would say lol. It is not perfect though (some answers drift from the topic), and it can be expensive to run, but I worked on this for an hour and a half so this isn't too bad so far. The key point is, maybe this could be part of the future of delivering info-products - you ask a question, and you get an answer tailored to your specific context.