Use a “Micro-SaaS” strategy, not trying to build the next Salesforce, for a realistic path to passive income.
Be a Master Screwdriver Maker, Not a Warehouse Builder.
Imagine you’re a toolmaker. You could try to build a giant hardware superstore from scratch, with thousands of aisles and products, competing with Home Depot. It’s an almost impossible task. A Micro-SaaS strategy is like deciding to make the world’s best Phillips-head screwdriver for professional electricians. You’re not trying to do everything. You’re solving one specific problem perfectly for one specific person. It’s a much more realistic, profitable, and achievable way to build a valuable tool that people will happily pay for.
Stop writing code from scratch. Do use no-code tools like Bubble or Webflow to build and launch your first software product.
Build with LEGOs, Don’t Build a Plastics Factory.
Trying to build a software application by coding from scratch is like wanting to build a model car and starting by drilling for oil to create the plastic. It’s an incredibly slow and difficult process. No-code tools are like a massive box of LEGOs. All the essential, complex pieces—the wheels, the bricks, the windows—are already made for you. Your job is to be the creative architect, snapping these powerful pieces together to build your unique creation quickly and efficiently, letting you test your idea in weeks, not years.
Stop just selling software. Do build a media company that teaches your customers how to succeed with your software.
Sell the Camera, But Own the Photography School.
You can sell someone a professional-grade camera, and they might take a few decent pictures. But if you also create a YouTube channel, a blog, and a workshop that teaches them the art of photography—lighting, composition, editing—you become indispensable. You’re not just a camera salesman anymore; you’re the trusted guide who helps them become a great photographer. A media company turns your software from a simple tool into the centerpiece of a valuable education that your customers can’t live without.
The #1 secret to a successful SaaS is solving a “hair on fire” problem for a specific B2B niche.
Be the Fire Extinguisher, Not the Scented Candle.
Imagine your house is on fire. You are not “kinda interested” in a fire extinguisher. You’re not looking for a discount. You will pay whatever it costs to put out the fire immediately. This is a “hair on fire” problem. A successful software business doesn’t sell a nice-to-have “scented candle” that makes the room smell a little better. It sells a fire extinguisher to a specific group of people whose “house” is constantly catching fire. It solves an urgent, painful, and expensive problem.
I’m just going to say it: Your software idea is worthless; the execution is everything.
The Recipe is Worthless Without a Great Chef.
You could have the world’s most amazing, secret recipe for a gourmet dish. But that piece of paper is worthless. The value is created by the chef who can flawlessly source the ingredients, master the techniques, cook the meal to perfection, and present it beautifully. The idea for a software product is just the recipe. Thousands of people have the same recipe. The success comes from the execution—the team that can actually build, market, and support the final dish in a way that delights customers.
The reason your SaaS isn’t growing is because you’re a product person trying to do a marketer’s job.
The Brilliant Inventor with No Sales Skills.
Imagine a brilliant inventor who spends years in his workshop creating a revolutionary new machine. It’s a work of genius. But he’s so obsessed with perfecting the machine that he never leaves the workshop to tell people it exists or explain why they need it. A product-focused founder is that inventor. You can build the most elegant, powerful software in the world, but if you don’t dedicate just as much energy to the different skill of marketing—of getting your invention out into the world—it will just sit in your workshop gathering dust.
If you’re still not focused on reducing churn, you’re trying to fill a leaky bucket with more customers.
Your Bucket Has a Hole in the Bottom.
Imagine your business is a bucket, and your job is to fill it with water (customers). You spend all your time and money running back and forth to the well, pouring more and more water into the top. But you don’t realize there’s a huge hole in the bottom of the bucket (churn), and customers are leaking out just as fast as you can pour them in. It’s an exhausting, losing battle. Reducing churn is the act of plugging that hole. It’s the most important job, because it ensures that the effort you spend acquiring new water actually fills the bucket.
The biggest lie you’ve been told about SaaS is that it’s a “passive” business model.
It’s a Garden, Not a Plastic Plant.
A plastic plant is truly passive. You buy it once, put it on a shelf, and it stays the same forever. A SaaS business is a living, breathing garden. It requires constant, active attention. You have to water the plants (customer support), pull the weeds (fix bugs), add new fertilizer (release new features), and protect it from pests (deal with competition). If you just leave it alone, it will wither and die. The recurring revenue is the harvest, but it only comes after consistent, active gardening.
I wish I knew this about SaaS when I was starting out: The distribution is more important than the product.
The World’s Best Movie with No Movie Theaters.
You could create the most critically acclaimed, beautifully crafted movie in history. But if you have no distribution plan—no deals with movie theaters, no streaming service partners, no marketing—then no one will ever see it. Your amazing product will be a failure. A slightly-less-amazing movie with a brilliant distribution plan that gets it into every theater in the country will be a blockbuster. The product matters, but the system for getting that product in front of customers is what ultimately determines its success.
99% of founders make this one mistake when building an MVP: they build too many features.
You’re Building a Swiss Army Knife When You Only Need a Blade.
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) should solve one painful problem. The goal is to create a simple, sharp knife that does one job perfectly. But most founders try to build a giant, clunky Swiss Army knife. They add a corkscrew, a tiny pair of scissors, a nail file, and a dozen other weak attachments. This makes the whole tool complicated, mediocre at everything, and it takes forever to build. Start by making the single best knife you can. You can always add the other tools later if your customers actually need them.
This one small action of talking to 20 potential customers before you write a single line of code will save you a year of wasted effort.
Ask for Directions Before You Start a Year-Long Hike.
Starting to build software without talking to customers is like setting off on a year-long hike to a destination you’ve never been to, without a map or a compass. You’ll spend a year walking with incredible determination, only to realize you’ve been going in the completely wrong direction. Talking to 20 potential customers is like stopping at the ranger station before you start. They will give you the map, point you in the right direction, and tell you which trails are dead ends, saving you from a year of wasted, painful effort.
Use a “freemium” model, not just a free trial, to get a massive top-of-funnel for your product.
The Free Samples at the Grocery Store.
A free trial is like a car dealership letting you test drive a car for a weekend. It’s a great experience, but it has a hard deadline. A freemium model is like the grocery store that constantly gives out free samples of their cheese. There’s no pressure and no time limit. Millions of people can try the cheese, and many will get so much value from the free sample that they become paying customers for life. It creates a massive, low-friction entry point for people to experience your product’s value.
Stop just building a product. Do build a community around the problem your product solves.
Build the Fishing Club, Not Just the Fishing Rod.
You can manufacture and sell the world’s best fishing rod. But a much more powerful strategy is to create the most passionate, helpful, and engaging fishing club in the world. You host events, you share tips, you create a space where fishermen can connect and learn from each other. Your fishing rod is the natural tool that everyone in your club uses. By owning the community, you create a deep moat of loyalty that no competitor with a slightly better rod can ever cross.
Stop just having customers. Do have a “customer success” mindset focused on their outcomes.
Be the Personal Trainer, Not Just the Gym Owner.
A gym owner sells access to equipment. They are a vendor. If a member stops showing up, it’s not their problem. A personal trainer, on the other hand, is a partner. They are obsessed with their client’s desired outcome—whether it’s losing weight or building muscle. This is a customer success mindset. You’re not just selling access to your software; you are proactively working to ensure your customers achieve the result they hired your software to get. Their success is your success.
The #1 hack for a new SaaS is to build an integration or add-on for an existing, popular platform.
Open a Food Stall Inside a Giant, Busy Train Station.
You could build a brand new, standalone restaurant on a quiet side street and spend a fortune on marketing to get people to come find you. Or, you could find the busiest train station in the city—a platform that already has millions of people passing through it every day—and open a small, specialized food stall inside. Building an add-on for a popular platform like Shopify or Salesforce is like that. You are placing your product directly in the path of a massive, pre-existing river of customers.
I’m just going to say it: Most successful SaaS businesses are incredibly boring.
The Most Profitable Businesses are Plumbers, Not Rock Stars.
Everyone is captivated by the idea of being a rock star—it’s exciting, glamorous, and cool. But for every one rock star, there are thousands of incredibly wealthy, successful plumbers. A plumber’s work isn’t glamorous. It’s boring. But it solves a painful, expensive, and recurring problem for a huge number of people. Most successful SaaS companies are digital plumbers. They build “boring” software for industries like accounting, construction, or logistics, and they quietly become incredibly profitable.
The reason your churn is so high is because your onboarding process is terrible.
A Hotel with No Receptionist.
Imagine you walk into a beautiful hotel, but there’s no one at the front desk. You don’t know where your room is, how to get the Wi-Fi password, or what time breakfast is. You’d be confused, frustrated, and you’d probably just leave and go to another hotel. Your onboarding is the hotel receptionist for your software. It needs to greet new users, show them to their “room,” and quickly and clearly explain how to get the value they signed up for. Without it, they will churn before they’ve even unpacked their bags.
If you’re still not using a product analytics tool like Mixpanel or Amplitude, you have no idea how people are using your software.
The Security Cameras in Your Department Store.
Imagine owning a huge department store with no security cameras or staff watching the floor. You’d know how many people came in the front door and how many made a purchase, but you’d have no idea what they did in between. Where did they go? Which displays did they interact with? Where did they get stuck and give up? Product analytics tools are the security cameras for your software. They show you exactly where users are clicking, which features they are using, and where they are dropping off.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need venture capital to build a successful SaaS business.
You Don’t Need a Rocket Ship to Cross the Street.
Venture capital is rocket fuel. It’s designed for a very specific type of mission: building a giant rocket ship that can get to Mars (market domination) as fast as humanly possible, even if it has a high chance of exploding on the launchpad. But most successful, profitable businesses are not rocket ships. They are cars, bikes, or even just a good pair of shoes. You can build an amazing, life-changing business without ever needing the explosive, high-stakes fuel of venture capital.
I wish I knew that a simple, one-time payment for a software tool could be a great business model.
The Guy Who Sells the Shovel vs. the Guy Who Rents It.
Everyone in SaaS is obsessed with the recurring revenue model, which is like renting out shovels every month. It’s a great business. But there’s also an amazing business to be had in simply selling a high-quality shovel for a one-time price. A simple, downloadable software tool, a WordPress plugin, or a design template that solves a specific problem can be sold for a one-time fee. This model is simpler, has no obligation of continuous updates, and can generate a fantastic income.
99% of developers make this one mistake: they build a product for themselves, not for a paying customer.
The Chef Who Cooks a Meal Only He Likes.
Imagine a chef who is a master of molecular gastronomy and loves complex, challenging flavors. He opens a restaurant, but he puts it in a small town that just wants a good, simple cheeseburger. He keeps serving his fancy, deconstructed foams and gels, and wonders why no one is coming to his restaurant. He has built a menu for himself, not his customers. Developers often do the same. They fall in love with a cool technology or a complex feature and build a product for an audience of one.
This one small action of creating a public roadmap for your product will build trust and excitement with your users.
Showing Everyone the Blueprints for the New Community Center.
Imagine a new community center is being built in your town. If it’s all done behind a giant, secret wall, people will be skeptical. But if the builders put the architectural blueprints on a big sign out front, showing everyone the cool swimming pool, the new gym, and the library that are coming soon, it builds incredible trust and excitement. A public roadmap does the same for your software. It shows your customers that you have a plan and gives them a reason to stick around for the exciting future you are building.
Use a “content marketing” flywheel, not just paid ads, to build a sustainable customer acquisition engine.
Building a Wind Turbine vs. a Gasoline Generator.
Paid advertising is a gasoline generator. The moment you stop pouring expensive fuel (money) into it, it shuts off completely and you’re left in silence. A content marketing flywheel is a wind turbine. It takes a lot of upfront effort to build and get it spinning. But once it starts, it catches the “wind” of search engines and social sharing, and it generates a continuous, free supply of energy (customers) that gets stronger and stronger over time, even when you’re not actively pushing it.
Stop just having a pricing page. Do have a clear, value-based pricing strategy with tiered options.
A Restaurant Menu with No Prices vs. a Good, Better, Best Menu.
Imagine a restaurant menu with a list of dishes but no prices. It would be confusing and frustrating. That’s a pricing page with no clear strategy. A good pricing page is like a menu that offers a “Good, Better, Best” option for its steak dinner. There’s the standard sirloin (Basic), the more popular filet mignon (Pro), and the giant, premium porterhouse for the whole team (Enterprise). This tiered structure guides customers to the right choice based on the value they need, instead of just confusing them.
Stop just building new features. Do spend half your time on marketing and sales.
The Factory That Forgets to Build a Road.
Imagine you own a factory that produces the most amazing widgets in the world. You have a brilliant team of engineers who are constantly making the widgets even better. But you spend so much time inside the factory that you forget to build any roads, train tracks, or shipping docks to get your widgets out to the world. Your warehouse will fill up with perfect, unsold widgets. You must spend just as much time on the “roads” (marketing and sales) as you do on the “factory” (product development).
The #1 secret to high retention is to make your product an indispensable part of your customer’s daily workflow.
Be the Coffee Machine in the Office Breakroom.
A software tool that is only used once a month is like a fancy waffle iron—it’s nice to have, but it’s the first thing you get rid of when you need to save space. A product with high retention is like the coffee machine in the office breakroom. It’s not just a tool; it’s a core part of the daily ritual. People’s entire workday is built around it. To reduce churn, you must find a way to weave your software so deeply into your customer’s daily habits that the thought of removing it is unimaginable.
I’m just going to say it: Buying a small, struggling SaaS and fixing it is easier than starting one from scratch.
Renovating a House vs. Building One from Nothing.
Starting a SaaS from a blank page is like buying an empty plot of land. You have to survey it, get permits, pour a foundation, and build an entire house from scratch. It’s a massive, uncertain undertaking. Buying a small, existing SaaS is like buying a house that has good bones but needs a renovation. The foundation is already poured, the walls are up, and there are already people living in it (customers). Your job is to fix the leaky roof and update the kitchen—a much more defined and often easier path to success.
The reason your free trials aren’t converting is because you’re not providing a “wow” moment quickly enough.
The Movie That’s Boring for the First 30 Minutes.
If a movie is slow and boring for the first half-hour, you’re going to turn it off and watch something else. A great movie hooks you with a “wow” moment—an exciting action sequence, an intriguing mystery—within the first five minutes. Your free trial is the opening scene of your movie. You can’t expect a user to spend hours setting things up to maybe see some value later. You have to engineer a quick, powerful “wow” moment that makes them see the magic and convinces them to stay for the whole show.
If you’re still not using a subscription management tool like Stripe or Chargebee, you’re making billing a nightmare.
Doing Your Business’s Taxes with a Shoebox of Receipts.
You could technically run your business’s finances by keeping all your receipts in a shoebox and manually typing them into a spreadsheet. But it would be an inefficient, error-prone nightmare. Trying to manage recurring subscriptions, failed payments, and prorated plans on your own is the same thing. A tool like Stripe is the professional accounting software for your revenue. It automates all the complex, painful parts of billing, so you can focus on your business, not on being a disorganized bookkeeper.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that the best product always wins.
The VHS Tape vs. the Betamax.
In the 1980s, there was a format war between two types of video tapes: VHS and Betamax. By all technical accounts, Betamax was the superior product with better quality. But VHS won, and it wasn’t even close. Why? They had a better marketing strategy, a better distribution network, and a lower price. The “good enough” product with the brilliant go-to-market strategy will almost always beat the “perfect” product that is poorly marketed.
I wish I knew how to properly calculate my LTV (Lifetime Value) to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio.
Knowing if Your Gold Mine is Profitable.
Imagine you own a gold mine. It costs you $300 in labor and equipment (your CAC) to dig up a single ounce of gold. If you then sell that ounce of gold for $2,000 (your LTV), you have a fantastic, profitable business. But if it costs you $300 to dig up an ounce of gold that you can only sell for $250, you have a failing business, even if you’re pulling tons of gold out of the ground. The LTV to CAC ratio is the simple, crucial math that tells you if your gold mine is actually making money.
99% of founders make this one mistake: they don’t have a clear “ideal customer profile.”
A Fisherman with No Idea What He’s Trying to Catch.
Imagine a fisherman who goes out on his boat with a random collection of nets and bait. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to catch tiny shrimp or giant tuna. He’ll likely sail around all day and catch nothing. A clear ideal customer profile (ICP) is knowing that you are specifically trying to catch 300-pound bluefin tuna. This knowledge informs every decision you make: which boat you buy (your product), what bait you use (your marketing), and where you go to fish (your distribution channels).
This one small action of adding a “powered by” link in your free product will be your best viral marketing tool.
The T-Shirt with the Brand’s Logo on It.
When a brand gives away a free T-shirt, they don’t just give away a plain white shirt. They put their logo on it. This turns every person who wears the shirt into a walking billboard for their brand. A “powered by” link in your freemium product does the exact same thing. Every free user who embeds your widget on their website or sends an email from your tool is showing off your “logo” to their entire audience, creating a powerful, built-in viral loop that brings new users to you.
Use a “product-led growth” (PLG) model, not a sales-led model, for a more scalable business.
A Self-Service Grocery Store vs. a Personal Shopper for Every Customer.
A traditional sales-led model is like having a personal shopper for every single customer who walks into your grocery store. It’s a high-touch, expensive, and slow process. A product-led growth (PLG) model is like a modern, self-service grocery store. The product itself is so well-designed and the value is so obvious that customers can walk in, find what they need, and check out all on their own. The product itself becomes the primary driver of customer acquisition, making it an incredibly efficient and scalable model.
Stop just having a product. Do have a unique point of view and a manifesto.
The Generic Politician vs. the Leader with a Movement.
A generic politician tries to be agreeable to everyone, and ends up standing for nothing. They are forgettable. A true leader has a strong, unique point of view—a manifesto—about how the world should be. They create a movement. People don’t just vote for them; they believe in them. Your software shouldn’t just be a collection of features. It should have a strong opinion. It should have a manifesto that declares, “We believe the old way is broken, and this is the better way forward.”
Stop just trying to get more customers. Do focus on expansion revenue from your existing customers instead.
Stop Digging for New Oil Wells, Just Dig Deeper.
Imagine you own a piece of land with a dozen productive oil wells. You could spend all your time and money trying to find a new patch of land to drill a new well. Or, you could realize that the wells you already have are much deeper than you thought. “Expansion revenue” is the act of digging deeper with your existing, happy customers. By offering them more value—through usage-based pricing, upgrades, or new add-ons—you can often find more “oil” with far less effort than trying to acquire a brand new customer.
The #1 hack for a bootstrapper is to start with a productized service and then turn it into a SaaS.
From Custom-Built Car to an Assembly Line.
Imagine you’re a brilliant mechanic who builds amazing custom cars for a few wealthy clients. It’s a great service, but you can only build a few cars a year. This is a “productized service.” You then realize that 80% of what you do for every car is the same. So, you use your profits to build a small assembly line that automates that 80%. Now you can sell a fantastic, standardized car to thousands of people. You used the cash flow from the service to fund the creation of the scalable product.
I’m just going to say it: Your landing page is more important than your product’s homepage.
The Movie Trailer is More Important Than the DVD Menu.
Your product’s homepage is like the main menu on a DVD. It’s for people who have already bought the movie and just need to navigate it. Your landing page is the exciting, two-minute movie trailer. Its only job is to convince a stranger who has never heard of your movie to buy a ticket. It’s the first impression, the sales pitch, and the single most critical piece of marketing you have. You must obsess over making your trailer compelling, because without it, no one will ever see the main menu.
The reason you’re not getting traction is because you’re trying to serve two different customer segments with one product.
The Restaurant That Tries to Be a Pizzeria and a Sushi Bar.
Imagine a restaurant that has a big sign out front that says, “World’s Best Pizzeria and Sushi Bar.” You’d be skeptical of both. A pizza lover wants to go to a place that obsesses over pizza. A sushi lover wants a master sushi chef. By trying to be both, you end up appealing to neither. Your software is the same. If you try to build a product that serves both small freelancers and giant enterprise companies, you will likely build a confusing product that perfectly serves neither of them. Pick one.
If you’re still not using a tool like Intercom or Crisp for customer support, you’re not providing a modern experience.
A Help Desk with a Walkie-Talkie vs. One with a Smartphone.
Doing customer support purely over email is like running a help desk with an old, crackly walkie-talkie. It’s slow, conversations are disconnected, and it’s frustrating. A modern chat tool is a smartphone. It allows for instant, real-time conversations, you can see what page your customer is on, and you can proactively send messages to help them. It’s the fast, seamless, and helpful experience that modern customers expect, just like they expect a business to have a website, not just a fax number.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to be a technical founder to start a SaaS business.
You Need to Be the Architect, Not the Construction Worker.
You don’t need to know how to mix concrete or operate a crane to be the visionary behind a skyscraper. You need to be the architect. You need to understand the needs of the people who will live in the building, create the blueprint, and manage the project. The same is true for software. A non-technical founder can be the “architect” who deeply understands the customer’s problem and designs the solution. They can then hire a team of skilled “construction workers” (developers) to actually build it.
I wish I knew that a boring niche with unsophisticated customers was a fantastic market to enter.
Be the Only Plumber in a Town That’s Never Seen a Wrench.
Trying to sell marketing software to expert marketers in San Francisco is like trying to open a new craft coffee shop in Seattle. The competition is brutal and the customers are incredibly demanding. A much smarter strategy is to find a “boring” industry—like construction or landscaping—that is full of people who are experts at their trade but are not tech-savvy. Being the one company that builds a simple, easy-to-use software solution for them is like being the first and only plumber in a town full of leaky faucets.
99% of marketers make this one mistake with a SaaS product: they sell features, not the emotional outcome.
They Sell the Mattress, Not the Good Night’s Sleep.
A mattress has features: it has 800-count springs, a memory foam layer, and a cooling gel topper. But nobody buys a mattress because they want springs and gel. They buy it because they want the emotional outcome of a perfect, restful night’s sleep. They want to wake up feeling energized, refreshed, and pain-free. Too many SaaS marketers get stuck describing the technical “springs and gel” of their software. You must sell the emotional transformation—the feeling of relief, confidence, or success—that your software provides.
This one small action of creating a “jobs to be done” framework for your product will clarify your entire roadmap.
People Hire a Milkshake to Do a Job.
A famous case study found that people weren’t buying milkshakes because they were thirsty or hungry. They were “hiring” the milkshake to do a specific “job”: to make a long, boring morning commute more interesting. This insight is profound. Customers don’t buy products; they “hire” them to do a specific job. Before you build any feature, you must ask, “What job is our customer hiring this feature to do?” This simple question will bring incredible clarity to your product decisions and prevent you from building useless features.
Use a “side project marketing” strategy, not just a blog, to attract potential customers.
Build a Free Playground Next to Your Daycare Center.
A blog is a great way to attract parents to your daycare center. But imagine if you also built a small, free, and incredibly fun public playground right next to it. The playground itself doesn’t make you any money, but it attracts exactly the right kind of people—parents with young children—to your location. “Side project marketing” is building that free playground. You create a simple, free tool or resource that is genuinely helpful to your target audience, which in turn acts as a powerful marketing channel for your main, paid product.
Stop just building. Do spend time talking to your churned customers to find out why they left.
Conduct an Exit Interview with Every Employee Who Quits.
When a valuable employee quits, a smart manager conducts an exit interview to understand why they left. It’s a goldmine of information about the problems within the company. Your churned customers are valuable employees who have just quit. You must talk to them. They will give you the brutally honest, unfiltered truth about your product’s weaknesses, your poor onboarding, or your confusing pricing. These painful conversations are one of the most valuable sources of feedback you can possibly get.
Stop just having a monthly plan. Do offer an annual plan with a discount to improve your cash flow.
The Season Pass for the Amusement Park.
An amusement park could just sell day passes. But they also sell a season pass at a discount. Why? Because getting a big chunk of cash upfront is incredibly valuable for the business, even if it’s a little less per visit. It gives them the capital they need to build new rides and hire more staff. An annual plan is your season pass. It dramatically improves your cash flow, locks in a customer for a full year, and gives you the resources you need to invest in growing your business.
The #1 secret to a successful Micro-SaaS is that it does one thing perfectly for one type of person.
The Perfect Tool for a Specific Job.
A successful Micro-SaaS is not a Swiss Army knife that does twenty things poorly. It is a single, perfectly crafted scalpel that does one job—and only one job—flawlessly for a heart surgeon. It is a specialized wrench designed specifically for a plumber working with a certain type of pipe. This fanatical focus on solving a single, painful problem for a single, well-defined customer is what allows a small, bootstrapped business to win against giant, well-funded competitors.
I’m just going to say it: The passive income from a SaaS business only arrives after you’ve hired a team to run it.
The Restaurant Owner Who Finally Hires a General Manager.
A restaurant owner who also works as the chef, the host, and the server is not a passive investor; they have a very demanding job. The restaurant only becomes a “passive” source of income for them on the day they hire a trusted, competent General Manager who can run the entire operation without them needing to be there. A SaaS business is the same. It is an active, demanding business until you have successfully hired a team to handle the support, marketing, and development.
The reason you’re failing is because you’re building a “vitamin” (nice to have) instead of a “painkiller” (must have).
The Difference Between a Sore Muscle and a Broken Leg.
A vitamin is something you take to feel a little bit better or to prevent a future problem. It’s a “nice to have.” A painkiller for a broken leg is a “must have.” You are in intense, immediate pain, and you will do anything to make it stop. Many software products fail because they are vitamins. They are interesting, but not essential. To build a successful business, you must find a customer with a “broken leg”—a painful, urgent business problem—and sell them the powerful painkiller that they cannot operate without.
If you’re still not using an affiliate program to incentivize others to sell your software, you’re missing a scalable sales channel.
Build a Commission-Only Sales Team That You Only Pay When They Succeed.
Imagine being able to hire a massive, global sales team. You don’t have to pay them a salary, you don’t have to manage them, and you only have to pay them when they actually bring you a paying customer. That’s what an affiliate program is. It’s a system that allows other people—bloggers, YouTubers, and experts in your niche—to become your commission-only sales force. It’s one of the most powerful and scalable ways to get your product in front of new audiences.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to have a completely unique idea.
The World Doesn’t Need a New Type of Restaurant. It Needs a Better One.
There are already thousands of Italian restaurants in the world. The idea is not unique at all. But you can still become a millionaire by opening a new Italian restaurant if you can just be a little bit better than the competition. Maybe your service is friendlier, your location is more convenient, or your pasta recipe is just 10% more delicious. Most successful software businesses are not brand new inventions; they are simply a better, faster, or easier-to-use version of an existing product for a specific niche.
I wish I knew that the market determines the success of a product more than the team or the product itself.
A Master Surfer Can’t Surf a Tiny Pond.
You can have the best surfer in the world, with the most advanced, perfectly designed surfboard. But if you put them in a tiny, calm pond, they will fail. They can’t create a wave that isn’t there. The market is the wave. A great team with a great product in a terrible, non-existent market will always fail. A mediocre team with a mediocre product in a massive, fast-growing market with a desperate need has a fantastic chance of success. The size and power of the wave is the most important factor.
99% of founders make this one mistake: they underprice their product.
The Fear of Selling a $50 Steak.
Imagine a chef who creates a world-class steak dinner. It costs him $20 in ingredients and labor. He should probably sell it for $50. But he’s scared. He thinks, “What if no one thinks it’s worth that much?” So, out of fear, he sells it for $25. He’s barely making a profit, he can’t afford to hire good staff, and he has no money for marketing. Underpricing your software is the same. You’re crippling your business out of a fear that you haven’t created enough value. Charge what your solution is worth.
This one small action of creating a simple onboarding email sequence will dramatically increase your user activation rate.
The Helpful Tour Guide for Your New Theme Park.
When a new user signs up for your software, it’s like they’ve just walked into your giant, new theme park. They’re excited, but also a little bit lost. An onboarding email sequence is the friendly tour guide who meets them at the gate. The first email points them to the biggest, best rollercoaster. The next day, an email suggests they check out the amazing water slide. These simple, automated emails guide a new user through the key “attractions” of your product, ensuring they experience the magic instead of just getting lost and leaving.
Use a “design partner” program with your first few customers, not just building in isolation.
Co-Designing a House with the Family Who Will Live in It.
Imagine you’re an architect designing a new house. You could lock yourself in a room for a year and create what you think is the perfect house. Or, you could partner with the actual family who will be living there. You show them the blueprints, they give you feedback, and together you design their dream home. A “design partner” program is co-designing your software with your first few customers. You build your product with them, not just for them, which almost guarantees you will create something they will love and pay for.
Stop just having a website. Do have a library of case studies that show how your software creates ROI for your customers.
The Before-and-After Photos for a Personal Trainer.
A personal trainer can talk all day about their training methods and philosophies. But the most powerful selling tool they have is a binder full of dramatic before-and-after photos of their clients. A case study is the “before-and-after” photo for your software. It tells the specific, data-driven story of how you took a real customer from a state of frustration and inefficiency to a state of success and profitability. It’s the tangible proof that your product actually works.
Stop just trying to compete on features. Do compete on customer service and experience.
The Two Coffee Shops on the Same Street.
Two coffee shops can sell the exact same coffee beans for the exact same price. One is just a transactional counter. The other has friendly baristas who remember your name, comfortable chairs, and free Wi-Fi. Which one are you going to go to every day? You’ll go to the one with the better experience. In a world where your competitor can copy your features in a matter of months, the one thing they can’t copy is your fanatical dedication to providing a superior customer experience.
The #1 hack for a non-technical founder is to partner with a technical co-founder.
An Architect Partnering with a Master Builder.
An architect can have the most brilliant, visionary ideas for a new skyscraper. But without a master builder who knows how to actually construct it, those ideas will only ever exist on paper. A technical co-founder is that master builder. They are the partner who can take your vision, your customer insights, and your market knowledge and turn them into a real, functioning, and scalable software product. Finding the right partner is the most important decision you will make.
I’m just going to say it: Your Minimum Viable Product should be embarrassing.
Your First Pancake is Always a Mess.
When you make pancakes, the first one you pour onto the griddle is always a little bit misshapen, a little bit burnt, and generally a mess. But it’s crucial. It tells you if the heat is right and if the batter is good. Your MVP is that first pancake. If you wait until you can produce a perfect, golden-brown, Instagram-worthy pancake, you will have waited too long. The goal is not to be perfect; the goal is to get that first, messy version out into the world so you can start learning from your customers.
The reason your product is so complex is because you’ve listened to every single feature request.
The Car Designed by a Committee.
If you asked a hundred different people to design a car, you’d end up with a monstrous vehicle with giant off-road tires, butterfly doors, a solar panel on the roof, and a built-in espresso machine. It would be a complex, expensive, and useless mess. A product roadmap cannot be a democracy. While you must listen to your customers, you must also have a strong, focused vision. Your job is to say “no” to the hundreds of good ideas so that you can say “yes” to the few truly great ones.
If you’re still not using a public-facing changelog, you’re not showing your customers that you’re constantly improving the product.
The “Under New Management” Sign at a Restaurant.
A changelog is a running list of every bug you’ve fixed and every improvement you’ve made to your software. It’s the digital equivalent of a restaurant putting up a sign that says, “We’ve renovated the kitchen, hired a new chef, and improved our menu!” It’s a constant, visible signal to your customers that you are working hard every single day to make their experience better. This builds incredible trust and shows them that their subscription money is being put to good use.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that a SaaS business has high margins.
The Iceberg of Hidden Costs.
On the surface, a SaaS business looks like it has near-perfect profit margins. You build the software once and just collect money, right? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Hidden under the water are the massive, recurring costs: the salaries for your developers and support team, your marketing and sales budget, your server and infrastructure costs. While the margins on each incremental user can be good, the overall business is a complex machine with significant, ongoing operational expenses.
I wish I knew the difference between a “feature” and a “benefit.”
The Drill vs. The Hole in the Wall.
A feature is what your product does. A benefit is what your customer can do with it. A feature of a drill is that it has a “lithium-ion battery.” That’s a boring fact. The benefit is that you can “hang a picture of your family in under two minutes, without a clumsy cord.” People don’t buy features; they buy benefits. They buy the better, faster, more successful version of themselves that your product helps them become. You must sell the outcome, not the technology.
99% of SaaS businesses make this one mistake: they don’t have a clear and simple pricing model.
The Restaurant Menu That Requires a Calculator.
Imagine getting a restaurant menu where the price of a steak is calculated based on the weight of the cow, the day of the week, and the current price of corn. You’d be confused and frustrated. You just want to know how much the steak costs. A confusing pricing page does the same thing. It forces your potential customers to do complex math and try to guess what their bill will be. Your pricing needs to be so simple and clear that a visitor can understand it in five seconds.
This one small action of adding in-app chat support will give you invaluable real-time feedback from your users.
The Helpful Assistant Sitting Next to Your User.
In-app chat is like having a helpful, friendly assistant sitting right next to your customer as they use your software. The moment they get stuck, confused, or have a brilliant idea, they can just turn and ask your “assistant” for help. This not only provides amazing customer service, but it also gives you a real-time, unfiltered stream of consciousness from your users. It’s a direct window into their pains and desires, which is the most valuable feedback you can get.
Use a “value metric” in your pricing (e.g., per user, per contact), not just a flat fee.
The Electricity Bill vs. the Cable Bill.
Your cable TV bill is a flat fee. You pay the same whether you watch one hour of TV or a hundred. Your electricity bill, on the other hand, is based on a value metric: the more electricity you use, the more you pay. This feels fair. Your SaaS pricing should be like the electricity bill. As your customer’s business grows and they get more value from your product (e.g., they add more users, store more contacts), their price goes up accordingly. This aligns your success directly with your customer’s success.
Stop just building a product. Do build a distribution channel first (like an audience or a blog).
Build the Movie Theater Before You Make the Movie.
Most founders try to make an amazing movie and then figure out how to get people into the theater. A smarter approach is to build the movie theater first. By creating a popular blog, a newsletter, or a YouTube channel for a specific audience, you are building your own distribution channel. You are gathering a loyal, trusting audience. Then, when you finally create your “movie” (your software product), you already have a packed theater waiting for opening night.
Stop just having a free trial. Do have a trial that demonstrates immediate value.
The Free Sample That’s Actually Delicious.
A free trial that requires a ton of setup and configuration is like being handed a “free sample” that is just a box of complicated, raw ingredients and a difficult recipe. It’s not a sample; it’s homework. A great free trial is a perfectly cooked, delicious, one-bite sample. The user should be able to sign up and, within a few clicks, experience the core, magical “wow” moment of your product. It should demonstrate value, not just promise it.
The #1 secret to a sellable SaaS business is clean code, documented processes, and low churn.
The Well-Maintained House vs. the Hoarder’s Mess.
Imagine you’re buying a house. One is clean, well-maintained, and comes with a detailed binder containing all the user manuals and service records. The other house is a chaotic mess, with junk everywhere and no records of any repairs. Which one is more valuable and easier to sell? A sellable SaaS is that well-maintained house. Clean code, well-documented systems, and a stable customer base (low churn) make it a turnkey asset that a new owner can confidently take over and operate from day one.
I’m just going to say it: A no-code SaaS is a completely viable and profitable business model.
You Don’t Need to Forge the Hammer to Build a House.
A master carpenter can build a beautiful, sturdy house using high-quality hammers that he bought at the hardware store. He doesn’t need to mine the ore and forge the steel himself to be considered a professional. A no-code SaaS founder is that master carpenter. They are using powerful, pre-built “hammers” (no-code platforms) to construct a valuable, functional, and profitable “house” (their software business). The customer doesn’t care how the hammer was made; they only care that the house is well-built.
The reason you’re not growing is because you’re not spending enough time on sales.
The Fisherman Who Spends All Day Polishing His Lure.
Imagine a fisherman who spends eight hours a day in his garage, meticulously polishing his fishing lure until it shines like a mirror. But he only spends five minutes at the end of the day actually putting the lure in the water. He’ll never catch anything. Sales is the act of putting your lure in the water. You can have the most perfect, polished product in the world, but if you are not actively, consistently, and strategically putting it in front of potential customers, you will not grow.
If you’re still not using a trigger-based email system to engage your users at key moments, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
The Helpful Robot That Taps You on the Shoulder.
A trigger-based email is like a helpful little robot that watches a user’s behavior. The moment a user successfully completes a key action, the robot taps them on the shoulder and says, “Great job! Here’s the next step.” If a user gets stuck and hasn’t logged in for a week, the robot taps them and says, “Hey, are you stuck? Here’s a helpful guide.” These automated, behavior-based messages are incredibly relevant and can guide a user through their journey far more effectively than a generic newsletter.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to be in Silicon Valley to build a SaaS company.
You Don’t Need to Live in Hollywood to Make a Movie.
Decades ago, if you wanted to make a movie, you had to be in Hollywood because that’s where all the cameras, studios, and talent were. Today, with digital cameras and the internet, you can make a blockbuster movie from anywhere in the world. The same is true for software. With cloud computing, remote work tools, and global talent pools, you no longer need to be in the expensive, competitive bubble of Silicon Valley to build a world-class SaaS company.
I wish I knew that customer support was a key driver of product development.
Your Support Desk is a Gold Mine of Ideas.
Most founders see customer support as a cost center—a necessary evil. This is a huge mistake. Your support inbox is a gold mine. It’s a real-time, daily report on every single thing that is confusing, broken, or frustrating about your product. Every ticket is an idea for how to make your product better. The patterns that emerge from your support conversations should be the primary input that drives your product roadmap, telling you exactly where your customers are feeling the most pain.
99% of founders make this one mistake: they don’t fire their bad-fit customers.
The Restaurant That Tries to Please the One Rude Customer.
Imagine a restaurant has 99 wonderful, happy customers and one customer who is rude to the staff, constantly complains, and demands things that aren’t on the menu. A smart owner knows that trying to please that one bad-fit customer is a massive drain on morale and resources, and it takes away from serving the 99 good ones. You must do the same. A customer who is abusive, outside your ideal profile, and costs you more in support than they pay is a drain you must be willing to fire.
This one small action of creating a “comparison” page between you and your competitors will be your highest-converting pages.
The Helpful Shopping Assistant.
When a customer is ready to buy, they are almost always comparing you to your competitors. They have a dozen tabs open, trying to figure out the key differences. A comparison page makes you the helpful shopping assistant. You do the homework for them. You create an honest, side-by-side chart that shows exactly how you’re different (and better) than the other options. This builds incredible trust and makes you the confident, transparent choice for a customer who is deep in their buying journey.
Use a “single-purpose” WordPress plugin, not a complex SaaS, as a simple entry into the software world.
Sell a Single, Perfect Cookie Before You Open a Whole Bakery.
Trying to launch a full-blown SaaS is like trying to open a giant bakery with a hundred different types of bread and pastries. It’s incredibly complex. Creating and selling a single-purpose WordPress plugin is like perfecting a recipe for the world’s best chocolate chip cookie and selling it at a local market. It’s a much smaller, simpler, and more manageable way to learn the fundamentals of the software business, generate your first dollar of revenue, and build a customer base.
Stop just having a product. Do have a clear and defensible “moat” around your business.
The Castle with a Moat is Better Than the One Without.
A castle is a strong fortress. But a castle with a giant, crocodile-filled moat around it is almost impossible to attack. In business, your product is the castle. But what is your moat? What makes it difficult for a competitor to attack you, even if they build a similar castle? A moat can be your strong brand, your unique access to a distribution channel, your proprietary data, or the high switching costs for your customers. You must actively build and widen your moat.
Stop just looking at signups. Do look at the activation, retention, and referral rates.
The Party Host’s Mistake.
A bad party host only counts how many people walk through the front door (signups). A great party host wants to know more. How many people are actually having fun and dancing (activation)? How many people are still here at the end of the night (retention)? And how many people are texting their friends to tell them to come over (referral)? These deeper metrics are what tell you if you’re actually hosting a great party, or if you just have a house full of bored people who are about to leave.
The #1 hack for a bootstrapper is to find a niche that is underserved by the big, venture-backed players.
Be the Small Speedboat in a Harbor Full of Cargo Ships.
A giant, venture-backed company is like a massive cargo ship. It’s incredibly powerful, but it’s also slow to turn and can’t navigate into small, shallow coves. As a bootstrapper, you are a small, nimble speedboat. You can’t compete with the cargo ship in the open ocean. Your advantage is your ability to zip into the small, profitable coves (niche markets) that the big ships can’t be bothered with or are too clumsy to enter.
I’m just going to say it: “Build it and they will come” is the mantra of failed software founders.
You Built a Beautiful Stadium in the Middle of the Jungle.
You can spend years and millions of dollars building the most magnificent, state-of-the-art sports stadium in the world. But if you build it in the middle of a dense, remote jungle with no roads leading to it, no one will ever see it. The act of building the thing is not what matters. The act of building the roads, the marketing, and the distribution channels that bring people to your stadium is the real work. The “coming” part is not magic; it’s a direct result of your marketing efforts.
The reason you’re not successful is you’re trying to build a product for a market that doesn’t exist.
Trying to Sell Sailboats in the Desert.
You can be the most passionate, talented, and hardworking sailboat builder in the world. You can craft the most beautiful, seaworthy vessels ever made. But if you open your sailboat shop in the middle of the Sahara desert, you will fail. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if there is no market of people with the problem your product solves. You must first find the ocean full of desperate sailors, and only then should you start building the boat.
If you’re still not using a simple CRM to track your sales leads, you’re not really doing sales.
A Detective Trying to Solve a Case Without a Notebook.
Imagine a detective trying to solve a complex case, but he doesn’t write anything down. He tries to keep all the clues, witness statements, and follow-up tasks in his head. He’d fail immediately. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is the detective’s notebook. It’s the central, organized place where you track every lead, every conversation, and every next step. Without it, you’re not running a professional sales process; you’re just an amateur who is letting valuable clues slip through the cracks.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need a beautiful UI. You need a functional UI that solves the problem.
Craigslist vs. a Beautiful, Unusable Website.
Craigslist is, by all accounts, one of the ugliest websites on the internet. But it is wildly successful. Why? Because the user interface (UI), while ugly, is incredibly functional. It helps you accomplish your job (finding an apartment or selling a bike) with ruthless efficiency. Many startups obsess over building a beautiful, award-winning UI that is actually confusing to use. The goal is not beauty; the goal is clarity and effectiveness. A rusty, ugly wrench that works is infinitely better than a beautiful, gold-plated wrench that can’t turn a bolt.
I wish I knew that my first 10 customers were more important than my first 1,000 users.
The Foundation of a Skyscraper vs. the Windows on the 50th Floor.
Your first 10 paying customers are the deep, concrete pilings that will form the foundation of your entire skyscraper. You need to work with them intimately, listen to them obsessively, and build the product with them. They are the partners who will ensure your foundation is solid. Your first 1,000 free users are like the windows on the 50th floor. They are important for the finished look of the building, but they are far less critical than the structural integrity of the foundation upon which everything else is built.
99% of SaaS companies make this one mistake: their pricing page is confusing.
The Menu Written in a Foreign Language.
Imagine being handed a restaurant menu that is written in a language you don’t understand, with complex rules and exceptions at the bottom. You wouldn’t know what to order, you’d be afraid of making an expensive mistake, and you’d probably just get up and leave. A confusing pricing page is that menu. It should be the simplest, clearest page on your entire website. If a visitor can’t understand exactly what they get and how much it costs in under 10 seconds, you have failed.
This one small action of adding a “cancel anytime” promise to your pricing will reduce friction and increase signups.
The Free Trial That Doesn’t Ask for a Credit Card.
The reason a “no credit card required” free trial is so powerful is that it removes all risk and friction for the user. A “cancel anytime” promise on your paid plans is the next best thing. It’s a powerful psychological reassurance. It tells the customer, “You are in control. We are so confident you will love our product that we’re not going to lock you into a scary, long-term contract.” This feeling of safety and control will give many hesitant buyers the confidence they need to click “purchase.”
Use an “API-first” business model, not just a front-end application, to create a more valuable asset.
Selling the Engine, Not Just the Car.
A standard SaaS is like selling a complete car. It’s a great product. An API-first business is like being the company that manufactures and sells the high-performance engine. You can still sell your own car, but you can also sell your powerful engine to dozens of other car manufacturers, boat builders, and even airplane companies. By building a powerful, flexible API, you are creating a foundational technology that can be embedded into hundreds of other products, making your business a core piece of infrastructure and a far more valuable asset.
Stop just thinking about your product. Do think about the entire ecosystem it operates in.
A Fish Doesn’t Know It’s in Water.
As a founder, it’s easy to become so obsessed with your fish (your product) that you forget about the water it swims in (the ecosystem). What other tools do your customers use every day? How can you integrate with them? What communities do they belong to? What podcasts do they listen to? Understanding the entire world that your customer lives in allows you to build a better product, create smarter partnerships, and market your solution in the places where your customers are already gathered.
Stop just building features for your power users. Do focus on simplifying the core experience for new users.
The Pro-Level Camera That’s Too Confusing for a Beginner.
A professional camera has a hundred tiny buttons and complex menu settings. It’s perfect for the power user who has spent years mastering it. But it’s a nightmare for a beginner who just wants to take a nice family photo. While you should listen to your expert power users, you must remember that your business’s growth comes from new users. You must relentlessly focus on simplifying and perfecting that core, beginner experience, making it as easy as a smartphone camera to get a great result.
The #1 secret to a successful software business is a deep empathy for the user.
Walk a Mile in Their Shoes Before You Build Their House.
You cannot design a functional and comfortable house for someone if you don’t first understand their life. How do they live? What are their daily frustrations? What are their hopes and dreams? Empathy is the act of metaphorically walking a mile in your customer’s shoes. It’s the deep, almost obsessive need to understand their world, their pains, and their desires so completely that you can build a solution that feels like it was custom-made just for them.
I’m just going to say it: Your SaaS is a recurring revenue machine that can fund all your other passive income dreams.
Your Business is the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs.
A profitable, stable SaaS business is one of the greatest financial assets you can build. It’s the goose that, once you’ve built it and hired a team to run it, lays a golden egg (a lump of cash) in your bank account every single month. The ultimate goal isn’t just to own the goose; it’s to use those predictable, recurring golden eggs to fund all your other dreams—whether it’s buying real estate, investing in the stock market, or funding your next big adventure.
The reason you’re not growing is because you’re not niching down enough.
You’re a Shotgun, Not a Sniper Rifle.
Trying to build a product for “small businesses” is like firing a shotgun at a distant target. You spray a wide area, but you have no precision and very little impact. Niching down is trading that shotgun for a high-powered sniper rifle. You are aiming at one very specific, very small target—like “plumbers in Texas with 5-10 employees”—but you can hit that target with incredible power and precision. Your marketing becomes easier, your product becomes better, and you become the clear and obvious choice for that one specific customer.
If you’re still not using a simple “Net Promoter Score” survey, you don’t actually know if your customers love your product.
The Simple Question That Tells You Everything.
An NPS survey asks one simple, powerful question: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product to a friend?” This one question is like a doctor taking your business’s pulse. It’s a quick, simple diagnostic that tells you the overall health of your customer relationships. Are your customers “promoters” who will actively help you grow, or are they “detractors” who are secretly unhappy and about to churn? It’s the most important number you’re probably not tracking.
The biggest lie you’ve been told is that you need to raise money to signal that you’re a serious company.
A Wedding Ring Doesn’t Make a Marriage.
Some founders think that raising a round of venture capital is like getting a wedding ring—it’s the official public signal that you are now a “real,” committed company. But a ring doesn’t make a marriage, and funding doesn’t make a business. A real business is defined by having happy, paying customers and a profitable business model. You can be an incredibly serious, successful, and valuable company without ever taking a dollar of outside investment.
I wish I knew that a boring, profitable business was better than a cool, unprofitable one.
The Plumber’s Bank Account vs. the Rockstar’s Debt.
The world is fascinated by the “cool” startup founder who is trying to change the world, even if their company is burning millions of dollars a year. That’s the rock star. But the “boring” founder who runs a profitable software business for dentists is the plumber. He’s not on the cover of magazines, but his company is a cash-generating machine that provides a fantastic life for him and his employees. Given the choice, you should always choose to be the quiet, wealthy plumber.
99% of founders make this one mistake: they don’t know their key SaaS metrics like MRR, ARR, and Churn.
Flying a Plane with No Instruments.
Trying to run a SaaS business without knowing your key metrics is like being a pilot trying to fly a 747 with no dashboard. You have no idea how high you are (your MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue), how fast you’re going, or if your engine is about to fail (your Churn rate). These simple metrics are your instrument panel. They are the essential, non-negotiable numbers that tell you if you are climbing, stalling, or in a dangerous nosedive.
This one small action of setting up a weekly “customer conversation” call will be your most valuable source of insight.
The CEO Who Works the Cash Register Once a Week.
The best CEOs of retail companies make a habit of working a shift on the cash register once in a while. Why? Because it gives them a direct, unfiltered connection to the real-world problems and desires of their customers. A weekly, scheduled call with a random customer is your “cash register shift.” It’s a simple habit that will keep you grounded, provide you with more valuable insights than any spreadsheet, and ensure you never lose touch with the people who actually pay your bills.
Use your SaaS not just to create income, but to build a valuable, sellable asset.
Plant an Orchard, Not Just a Vegetable Garden.
A vegetable garden is great. It provides you with food (income) all season long. But at the end of the year, it’s gone. An orchard, on the other hand, not only provides you with fruit every year, but the orchard itself—the land, the mature trees, the systems—becomes an incredibly valuable asset that you can one day sell for a huge sum. You must think of your SaaS the same way. You’re not just building a job that provides income; you’re building a valuable, sellable asset.