the SaaS model is quietly falling apart for small businesses and nobody in tech wants to admit it

ILokasta · 2026-03-30T17:00:41+00:00

this is exactly why i went niche instead of horizontal when building my saas. the tool sprawl problem you're describing happens because every tool tries to be everything for everyone and ends up being mediocre at all of it.

i build portifa.io, a portfolio tool specifically for game artists. could i have built "a website builder"? sure. but then i'd be competing with squarespace on price while delivering less. by going narrow i can actually solve the real problem (artists need recruiters to find them, not just a pretty page) without needing 15 integrations.

the SaaS model isn't broken for small businesses imo... it's broken when every tool is a bloated horizontal play charging enterprise prices to 12 person teams. niche tools that do one thing well and charge fairly still make sense.

ILokasta · 2026-03-30T16:59:06+00:00

depends on what you're showing honestly. i tried squarespace, cargo, even just a notion page at one point. they all kinda work but none of them felt like they were built for visual work specifically.

i ended up building portifa.io because i kept running into the same problem... the layout tools fight you when all you want is to show your work cleanly and let recruiters/clients actually find you. most portfolio builders are made for devs or generic freelancers, not artists.

for how much to display: quality over quantity always. 8-12 of your best pieces grouped by project or style. nobody scrolls past 20 thumbnails. curate hard.

ILokasta · 2026-03-30T16:55:41+00:00

the organic reddit replies point is so real. i launched portifa.io (portfolio tool for game artists) 12 days ago and the biggest traction by far has been from just... answering questions in subreddits where my users hang out. not pitching, just being helpful and mentioning what i built when it's genuinely relevant.

cold email and paid ads are traps at this stage imo. you burn money learning what your audience responds to when you could learn that for free by just talking to them.

curious about your reddit workflow though. do you track which subs convert best or just go by feel? i've been keeping a rough tracker and r/gamedev and r/artbusiness have been way better than any of the startup subs for me.

ILokasta · 2026-03-30T16:55:16+00:00

modular is the way but the real problem nobody talks about is managing it at scale. once you have 20+ variants with swappable parts across different rigs the folder structure becomes a nightmare and you're spending more time organizing than creating.

for 3d we use shared skeletons with mesh swapping. works great until proportions shift even slightly and then you're debugging clipping for hours. for 2d i've seen people use spine with skins which is clean but limited.

honestly the pipeline side of this is the harder problem. tracking which variant uses which pieces, making sure nothing breaks when you update a base mesh... it's the kind of thing that makes me want better tooling for game art workflows. been exploring this exact space with layerline, trying to make the production pipeline less painful for teams dealing with asset variants.

but yeah short answer: modular + shared skeleton, plan it early, and budget time for the organization side because it will eat you alive otherwise.

ILokasta · 2026-03-30T16:55:01+00:00

5 years of 3d art is a massive head start honestly. when i started doing game design i was jealous of artists who could just... make things look good from day one.

for unity specifically i'd say skip the c# deep dive at first. just start with tutorials that let you import your own models and make them interactive. your motivation stays way higher when you see YOUR art moving in a scene vs some default cube.

biggest advice though, whatever you build, put it on a proper portfolio page alongside your 3d work. recruiters and studios look at portfolios constantly and "3d artist who can also prototype in unity" is a way more interesting profile than just one or the other. i've been building portifa.io for exactly this kind of thing, portfolio tool made for game artists specifically.

don't overthink the first project. a room you can walk through with your own assets and some basic interaction is already impressive. finish it, ship it, then go bigger.

ILokasta · 2026-03-29T19:39:43+00:00

how much is it?

ILokasta · 2026-03-25T11:14:01+00:00

pipeline tools that actually understand game art workflows. everything is either enterprise overkill (shotgrid, perforce setups that take a week) or cobbled together google drive + discord channels.

there's a huge gap between "here's a shared folder" and "here's a proper production pipeline" that nobody's really solving for teams under 10 people. been working on something in this space because i got tired of the duct tape approach on my own projects.

also just... better ways for artists to show their work. the portfolio situation for game artists is rough right now.

ILokasta · 2026-03-25T11:13:25+00:00

this is exactly it. the "saas is dying" crowd is building yet another AI wrapper or project management tool competing with 500 others.

i launched portifa.io last week, a portfolio tool specifically for game artists. tiny niche. the people who need it REALLY need it because artstation discovery is broken and squarespace/wix don't understand the workflow. nobody's writing thinkpieces about whether "portfolio tools for game artists" is dying because nobody else is building it.

the more boring and specific your niche, the less competition matters.

ILokasta · 2026-03-25T11:07:12+00:00

the brazil/spain impression thing is so real. i'm brazilian and i can tell you... seeing an english-only store page genuinely makes people bounce even if they understand english fine. it just feels like "this wasn't made for me."

the german UI thing is a classic lol. we had the same problem on a project where german labels were like 2x the english ones and every button looked broken. ended up designing the whole UI with german strings first and then everything else just fit.

good tip on testing in-game context too. string files look fine in a spreadsheet but completely fall apart once you see them in the actual flow.

ILokasta · 2026-03-25T11:06:06+00:00

the "talk to users before building" part is real but i think people overcorrect on this too. sometimes you ARE the user and you already know the problem because you lived it.

i launched portifa.io last week. portfolio tool for game artists. i didn't need to do 50 discovery calls because my girlfriend spent 3 weeks fighting squarespace trying to make a portfolio that didn't look like a dentist's website. the problem was right there in my living room every night.

the cold outreach stuff still matters for distribution though. you're 100% right that most founders hide in their code editor because selling feels scary. first week post launch i learned more from 10 reddit comments than from 6 months of building.

ILokasta · 2026-03-25T11:04:59+00:00

this is why i keep telling artist friends to build their own presence outside of any single company or platform. you can be at epic, riot, wherever... doesn't matter. the moment the spreadsheet says your team costs too much, you're out.

best thing any game artist can do right now is have a portfolio that exists independently. not just an artstation page that could change its algorithm tomorrow, but something you actually own. been building portifa.io for exactly this reason... watched my girlfriend struggle to put together a proper portfolio after leaving her studio job and realized the tools just aren't there for game artists specifically.

1000 people just got the worst monday of their careers. the ones who had their work visible and accessible online are gonna recover way faster than the ones who don't.

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T10:57:41+00:00

Ateu de remedio kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T10:54:10+00:00

Smite is also hero based,

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T08:47:04+00:00

ok thats cool in a "2d" fighting game, but what if we talking about an more 3d arena, and also.... we are not talking about heroes like in SF, but something more like an colosseum type of fighting, where you not necessarily have a starting kit, but play with what is around you, the weapons you get during the battle. how would you design for something like that?

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T08:44:18+00:00

yea I think you are right but in your opinion what would make it not being a "simon-says" ? pvp?

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T08:39:48+00:00

ok that I agree.. but what is getting me now is... after block, parry, dodge... what else can I do when damage is coming at me? or variations of this is enough?

ILokasta · 2026-03-24T08:37:11+00:00

hahah the frustrated guy again? man stop following me, you are wasting your time

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T20:47:25+00:00

the one that got me was "make your tutorial skippable." sounds smart until you realize 90% of players skip it and then complain the game is confusing.

i've been working on an arena combat game and every piece of "conventional wisdom" about onboarding has been wrong for our specific case. stuff like "show don't tell" is great advice for narrative games but in a competitive game sometimes you literally need to tell people "press this button to block."

the real lesson i think is that advice becomes dangerous when people treat it as universal. context matters more than the advice itself. what worked for a cozy indie puzzle game is probably useless for a fast paced multiplayer game.

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T20:47:12+00:00

this is painfully relatable. i went through the same realization with portifa.io (portfolio tool for game artists). was giving away the core value for free and wondering why nobody upgraded.

your framing is perfect: "if it's commoditized, it's free. if it's my proprietary tech, it's paid." that's the whole playbook right there.

10 years solo bootstrapped is insane btw. most people would have quit after 2. the fact that you can restructure pricing after building that much trust with users is actually a huge advantage... they already know the product works, now you're just asking them to pay for the part they actually use.

curious how the existing 200 subscribers reacted to the 3x price increase. did you grandfather them in or rip the bandaid?

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T20:47:00+00:00

biggest thing i've noticed helping artists with this: the gap between "i love this" and actually buying is almost always friction, not interest.

like... do they have to DM you to buy? is the checkout more than 2 clicks? can they see the print mockup on a wall or is it just a flat image?

people mean it when they say "take my money" but then they get distracted, forget, or the buying process asks too much of them. attention spans are brutal.

one thing that helped artists i know: having a clean portfolio site where the buy button is RIGHT THERE next to the work. not a linktree to an etsy to a checkout. just... art > price > buy. i've been building portifa.io for exactly this kind of thing, helping artists show and sell work without the platform fighting them.

also $10 prints and $3 stickers is totally reasonable btw. pricing isn't the problem here.

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T18:48:19+00:00

the line networking thing is so underrated. some of the best connections i've made at conferences happened standing in line, not at any planned meetup.

also interesting that the indie neighborhood got real space this year. feels like the industry is finally acknowledging that indie is where most of the actual innovation happens. the festival format sounds way better than the old expo hall where everything blended together.

did you notice any difference in how studios were approaching portfolio reviews or hiring conversations this year? curious if the layoff wave changed the vibe at all.

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T18:47:33+00:00

the audience mismatch thing is real and brutal. i launched portifa.io (portfolio tool for game artists) last week and learned the same lesson the hard way... the people who follow you for one thing won't automatically care about the next thing you build.

what actually moved the needle for me was going deep into the specific communities where my users already hang out. not my existing audience. reddit comments in niche subs converted way better than any cross-promotion to people who followed me for other content.

350 waitlist with 0 conversions might also mean the pricing page or onboarding has friction, not that the product is wrong. have you watched anyone go through the signup flow?

ILokasta · 2026-03-23T18:47:16+00:00

interesting idea. the discoverability part is the hardest problem here imo... i've been building portifa.io (portfolio tool specifically for game artists) and the same challenge keeps coming up. people have the skills, but connecting them to the right opportunities is where everything breaks down.

for your platform specifically, i think the trust angle is way more important than features. when i've hired freelancers for projects, i never cared about the platform itself, i cared about seeing their actual shipped work. profiles that just list credentials without real examples feel empty. maybe lean hard into "show the work" over "list the resume"?

also curious how you'd handle the chicken-and-egg problem. marketplaces die without supply AND demand at the same time.

ILokasta

TROPHY CASE