{Free Course} How to Start a SaaS

Buckle up because it’s Monday and this is going to be a long email

but if you actually read this email in it’s entirety, you will GENUINELY have the entire roadmap to build a software company backed up by real examples

so, let’s go over what we’ll be covering, shall we?

In this email you’ll learn:

1. Why Software

2. How to Get Ideas

3. How to Validate Ideas for little money

4. Building an MVP in a scrappy way with no code

5. Getting your first 5 users & creating a feedback loop

6. first hires to make

7. Getting Your first 100 users

8. Getting 100 + users and iterating the product

Why Software?

I know I’m a bit of a broken record here but I must reiterate

Here’s why you should start a SaaS:

1) the software is the fulfillment, you don’t need to hire humans to fulfill a service

2) higher profit margin than agency/ecom

3) most importantly, enterprise value, every $1 in profit can be sold for 4-8x that amount when you exit

Understand this, most gurus online are not entrepreneurs, they’re internet hustlers

My old business partner talked about this, they’ve never built a business with enterprise value

they are their businesses, they can’t be sold, and they can’t run without them

and some of them cash flow amazing - which is awesome, but REAL wealth is made in liquidation events

Alex Becker sold hyros for $110m after 4 years, that type of money isn’t possible in any other vertical that I know of

the no code software space is still early, so if you start now, you’ll still have first mover advantage

there’s SO many giant software companies out there, that are slow, neglect their customers, and solve 1,000 problems

and if you can just pinpoint ONE painful problem the giant software solves, build a more tailored, specific solution, and give the customers a great experience, you can take your tiny percent of a huge market

this leads us to the next part

How to Get Software Ideas:

we’re going to go over a few different methods

Method #1: Use Acquire(dot)com

I know I’ve said this multiple times, but it’s still a great way

go to acquire(dot)com and filter to SaaS companies over $100k ARR and look for ideas in a niche you’re familiar with or that stand out to you

look for softwares that have the following traits

• charge $50/mo or more

• B2B (preferably)

• sticky / recession proof (crucial to run someone’s business)

• has competitors (shows it works)

then, once you find one, search their G2 reviews

for example: power dialer G2 reviews

I did this, and found complaints amongst all the different power dialers

find the recurring complaints, and aim to solve that complaint in your MVP

In my case, I found that people wanted parallel dialing and local presence primarily, among other things

so we launched with just those two features

the result? 9 paying customers in first 5 days

Method 2: Survey Existing Customers

some of you may run an agency currently, or a coaching / info biz, and have existing customers

ask your customers about what softwares they don’t love

and then repeat the process of searching their G2 reviews

or what softwares are you suggesting to your customers to use, that you could just build and own yourself?

Method 3: Solve Your Own Problem

in my instance, this is what I did, in 2022, the power dialer I used was horrible and I had a list of problems with it that’s been in my head since then

what problems are you facing in your life or business that you’d pay to be solved? think about this and brain storm

what software companies are you subscribed to that you aren’t a huge fan of?

Method 4: Create a Blue ocean inside a red ocean

there are MASSIVE CRM companies out there like hubspot and salesforce

but they’re so big and hard to use, that for specific niches like plumbers or window installers they want something that’s simple, easy to use, and tailored to their business

this is why you saw gohighlevel explode, they had easy to create snapshots for companies like this

you can create a micro saas, that solves ONE problem, is easy to use, and has a clean user interface and sell it to a specific niche instead of trying to have every feature and sell to every vertical

this will become more popular as people are searching for more specific solutions

think of Closify, you can hire sales people on upwork or fiver, but you can also hire any other position ever, it’s too crowded, it’s too much sifting through people

Closify was specific, easy to use, and more controlled talent

think of how you can do something similar

How to Validate Ideas for Little $:

so you have your idea now but you don’t want to spend time or money on it until you KNOW it’ll work

here’s what you do

use framer or carrd to build an early bird landing page like this:

call out your ideal client profile, the benefits of the SaaS, and why they should join the waitlist (a free PDF, a discount on launch, etc)

bonus points if you get a clickable figma protoype made ($100-$200) to show people how it will look and feel and to display on landing page, but not required

next we’re going to do outreach to get people on our waitlist, we’re aiming for 20 people

utilize facebook groups, for Trackify, I joined facebook groups of agency owners and made posts like this

“Here’s how I boosted my sales teams performance by 20% by utilizing a gamification software”

and I’d explain it and then plug trackify waitlist at the end

you can also set up a cold email campaign with 1,000 contacts for ~$200

buy 5 domains, warm them up in smartlead, get contacts from listkit, and send 1,000 cold emails and if you get ~20 positive responses, build it

I’d make your email like this

subject: quick question

body:

Hey {name}

I’ll cut straight to it - I’m building a software that will {insert benefits} for {ideal client profile} and I thought you may be a fit

once it’s built can I get you free lifetime access and in return you give me feedback and a testimonial if it works for you?”

20+ positive replies and I’d say built it, let’s move on

Building an MVP with No Code

there’s two types of people

1) technical people

2) idiots like me that struggle to operate my mac

technical people, I’m not too worried about you, you guys can figure out how to learn to build on bubble or flutterflow just from youtube tutorials or free bootcamps

but if this has been the part that’s hanging you up like how will I ever be able to build an MVP I’m not technical at ALL

believe me… I suck with technology

and even I was able to build my Closify MVP on the following tech stack:

• airtable for backend data

• stacker for front end user interface

• memberstack for membership payments

• zapier to tie stuff together

here’s my closify mvp

it wasn’t even called Closify yet, it was called Closer Connect haha

and obviously, it’s ugly

it was virtually the same as people paying for an excel spreadsheet of closers information

but guess what

it still drove the main value proposition people cared about

vetted closers, faster and more affordable than a recruiter

and there’s so many super simple tools to use to build MVP’s

make(dot)com, stacker, softr, glide, airtable, softr even has AI to help you generate most of what you want to build

you can dumb down your idea to a very simple MVP that can be built on an easy tech stack, trust me.

it’s important to get to market quickly and affordably, so you can use airtable for backend data, use webflow/softr/stacker for front end, use zapier and make for automations, etc

trust me, even if you’re like me, you can figure it out

Getting Your First 5-10 Users

we want this to be affordable, so there’s two super cheap methods

1) content

2) outbound (cold DM’s, email, cold calling, etc)

Content: make written content on X, linkedin, and in Facebook groups on how to use your software to help achieve your ideal client profiles desired outcome

for me it’ll be like “here’s how to use Zappx to increase your sales team’s output by 50%”

for video content, it’ll be similar, I’d focus on long form youtube videos showing how to use your product for them to get their desired outcome

for outbound, we can send 5,000 cold emails per month for only like $200/mo between paying for leads, domains, and smartlead for sending

so buy 5-10 domains, warm them up inside smartlead, and get leads from listkit of your ideal client profile

here’s your cold email format

subject: quick question

body:

“hey {name}

I’ll cut straight to it - I built a {explain your software and it’s unique selling point}

mind if I send over a video on how it works?”

test 3-4 different call to actions

other ones

“mind if I send over a calendar link for a demo?”

“mind if I share a free resource on how we used it to achieve {desired outcome}”

“are you available on {day/time} for a quick demo?”

and if you’re wondering if this really works

we’ve already booked 5 demos and closed 1 customer (our first demo, we still have the other 4) from cold email

again - everything I’m telling you I can back up with REAL and LIVE case studies

Create a Feedback Loop

your first 10 customers especially, make a private slack channel with them

let them dump their wishlist of new features they want

meet with them and ask about their experience

take their wishlist and start to work on making it happen

if you need to switch to bubble to make it happen for example, begin to budget for the transition and be transparent with your clients on timelines

this now starts an infinite feedback loop, you close a customer, they have requests, you relay the requests to whoever is in charge of product, they make the change, and the change / new feature is marketed out to new prospects

Getting to 100 Paid Users

getting to 100 paid users may take time, but it should be predictable

once you figure out your outbound conversion numbers

for example, 1,000 cold emails = 1 customer

you simply scale to hit your targets

if you’re sending 5,000/m and getting 5 customers

you can assume if you send 50,000/m you’ll get to 50 customers a month

and you can also add in connecting with them on linkedin and cold calling them all in one sequence

for example the flow would look like this

send a cold email and if opened but no reply → send linkedin connection request, if accepted → shoot them a cold call

doing outbound in a workflow sequence like this books 50% more demos on average, and it can go much deeper than this with high level lead scoring and a complex sales system build out… I’ll save that for another day

but to get to 100 customers, you really just scale outbound + add in linkedin and cold calling

and keep posting any content that you’ve been posting as well

100 → 500 Customers

100 paying customers is an incredible accomplishment, but we’re not done

if feedback is positive still and if the # of people happy and willing to refer customers is higher than churn, here’s what we do

hire a customer success manager

every new customer get’s an onboarding call, they’re shown how to use the product, and they also are told about your referral program and how they can earn recurring revenue for referring people

have your CSM have KPI’s for reducing churn month over month as well as a target for how many customers become affiliates and how many customers are actually brought in per month from affiliates

with 100 customers, this will start to have a pretty nice effect

500 → 1,000 customers

at this point, you’re a pretty reputable SaaS that now has leverage, you have a lot of paying users

now you can EXPLODE your growth

keep doing everything you’re doing

→ keep scaling outbound campaigns and hiring more sales people

→ keep turning new customers into affiliates

→ keep getting feedback and iterating your product

→ keep putting out content on all platforms

but now, other large SaaS companies that their software serves a different purpose, but they sell to the same target as you, would love to collab with you

so now you guys sell to each others customer lists

through exclusive discounts for each other, joint live trainings, etc

so if you guys run a joint live training showing how to use your tools, your MRR can EXPLODE

for example, listkit and my dialer Zappx will do this, we both sell to same ICP, but they sell data and we sell a power dialer

let’s recap

so in this email, you learned:

• why saas

• how to get ideas

• how to validate ideas

• how to build your mvp with no code

• how to get first 10 users

• how to get 100 users

• how to get 500 users

• and how to get 1000 users

and this email is already SUPER long without going into every nuance like:

• how to create high converting content

• how to set up email flows for your SaaS

• where to hire customer success managers

• what to look for in them

• where to hire sales people

• how to build out sales sytems

• how to build SOP’s

• how to build to exit

• and so much more…

So Here’s How I Can Help:

I have a new coaching program called No Code Accelerator

it teaches everything in this email A-Z but fully in detail

I show myself building this power dialer live behind the scenes

like really… I document what I do every day and show you

there’s two group calls per week

we have a private slack channel and I check in on you every single day

it helped Louis get instantchapters(dot)com to 100 paying users then he exited the company

it is the ONLY SaaS program I know of that will show you everything backed up by real, live proof

I’m not showing you what worked for Closify in 2022

I’m showing you what works, NOW.

Wednesday, the price is going up $1,000

you can join before then by clicking here and reading the offer doc and you can pay there as well

or if you’d like to book a call you can here

Happy Monday,

Alex