- The #1 mistake that SaaS founders make is that they immediately start with features. They add a bunch of stuff and make sure it’s really polished. Then they have something great that no one ever finds out about and the opportunity missed them. It’s more important to come up with something that is good enough for a specific use case and then figure out marketing and sales. If you figure out marketing and sales and you’ve got that engine, then you can start investing more in product. A lot of people do that backwards. - Chris Ronzio, founder of Trainual (pg. 141)
2. The barrier to entry is incredibly low. Anybody can build a startup. But you’ve got to identify a problem organically. I’ve talked to people trying to find a problem to solve, which is an odd way to go about starting a company. - James Davis, founder of Dispersion IQ (pg. 104)
3. You should be embarrassed by your first iteration. When I started my growth courses, I had no audience. The first time I sent an email blast, it was to like, eight people. I’m sitting there working, and wondering, How do I even justify where I’m spending all this time to my wife? But over time you talk about it, you pitch it, you get better at it. That actually helps you build a better product because, early on, you’re getting it in front of people for feedback. - Craig Zingerline, founder of Votion (pg. 98)
4. Product/market fit is a term that’s used so frequently that people think it’s very accessible and that’s not true. Product/market fit is probably one of the hardest things to achieve. The worst part about product/market fit is you may think you have it and you don’t. A number of times we thought we saw product/market fit and we didn’t. We got some good traction but the reality was that people weren’t yanking it off the shelves.
Be self-aware. Get excited when you have moments of traction, and don’t beat yourself down, but be honest. Is this truly a product/ market fit, and if not, what do we need to do to get there? - Al Bsharah, founder of Email Copilot (pg. 102)
5. Everyone’s so excited to have a subscription-based model. Too many of them are jumping right in, blowing cash, and thinking that a coder is going to solve all the problems. A coder is a coder. They’re not a CTO. They’re not a product manager. They don’t understand user experience. Typically they have no front-end user experience design. - Melani Gordon, founder of Evergreen (pg. 94)
6. I think this fallacy is finally disappearing, but the “overnight success story” just isn’t true. It takes seven to 10 years to go and do something. You’re not a failure if you’ve failed. You’re only a failure when you just stop trying something new. There’s a direct correlation between failure and learning. I’m a trained physicist and that’s how science works. You just fail a whole bunch of times until you succeed, and you learn from all those failures. Besides, failing fast means that you still have the energy and the money to go and find other opportunities, if necessary. - Taylor Cavanah, founder of PetDesk (pg. 177)
7. I heard somebody once say that as an entrepreneur you should never complain about having a “chicken or the egg” problem. That’s why you’re an entrepreneur. You have to find a chicken or the egg problem and you have to be the one to solve it. - Taylor Cavanah, founder of PetDesk (pg. 177)
8. This is something I never thought I would say, but the best advice I’ve received is to start with something small that you’re not going to have to lose a lot on. That’s a good way to get comfortable with failing. I want my companies to fail in an iterative, fast way, so they ultimately get to whatever the answer needs to be. They really under- stand this up in Silicon Valley. - Damian Esparza, founder of Smartproperty (pg. 20)
9. If you want to attract good venture capital, don’t raise money till your Series A. Because if your business can’t be profitable from the start, what are you doing? There are too many micro-SaaS options to say you can’t build your product without a million dollars – or even a quarter million – in capital. Now, the vast majority of SaaS ideas are cheap to build, especially if you have a working knowledge of no- code tools. - Michael Greenberg, founder of Podcast Score (pg. 219)
10. To create your MVP, you don’t need sophisticated architecture. You just need good planning. You can validate wireframes before anything is built. In the beginning, the founder and CEO is a glorified product manager. You need to talk to your Ideal Customer Profile and ask them questions around the pain and problem. - Helena Ronis, founder of AllFactors (pg. 183)
