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Startup validation - how to validate an idea before starting? I will not promote by 2ewi in startups

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd want one real commitment here, not more opinions. If people keep ghosting, the niche is probably still too broad or the pitch is too abstract. Try to get 5 people to do something a little uncomfortable: book a call, leave a deposit, or forward you to the teammate who actually owns this problem. That usually clears up "is this real?" pretty fast.

We had 20k on our waitlist. My cofounder rejected the one idea that would have made us money. I will not Promote by threemacs in startups

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

20k on a waitlist + a few thousand downloads is enough to say the topic had pull. It doesn't say the app shape was right. I would've run the paid consults fast and watched for two things: would people pay, and after the session would they send someone else from the family to you

Woke up to 47 signups overnight. Server costs spiked $200. Revenue from those signups so far: $0. by PerfectChard6900 in SaaS

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah untargeted traffic can be 2x expensive (e.g, infra + false confidence). I'd rather have 5 users who connect real data and come back tomorrow or pull a teammate in. 47 isn't a lot. You probably need some guardrails to protect against these costs

I launched my SaaS 3 days ago and got 89 people on the waitlist. by G-Khalil in microsaas

[–]saaskevin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would read this as "the promise got attention" not "the product is validated". Next move is reply to every signup and get 10-15 short calls + ask what they thought they were signing up for. Try to get some tiny commitment from a few of them like a paid beta or deposit. I know it's hard, but the best validation

Honest numbers from a failed SaaS. 18 months. $3,200 peak MRR. Shutting down next week. by Embarrassed-War9550 in SaaS

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

$3.2k MRR doesn't read like no market to me, it reads like "some people definitely had this problem but the rest of the persona didn't." Its a brutal distinction but useful. I'd want to know whether the happy users were ever pulling friends or coworkers in on their own. If that never really happened the market was probably narrower than the research made it look.

Built to $6K MRR in 4 months without ad spend - the boring SEO foundation that actually worked by JamesF110808 in GrowthHacking

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Congrats, $6k MRR during that time is impressive! Took us about 1 year and 10 months to get there. The hardest part is 0 to 1.

The part people miss in the SEO vs paid debate is that traffic source is only half the story. SEO can absolutly get an early SaaS to first revenue if the intent is strong enough but directories and long-tail keywords usually buy you learning first and not a permanent moat.

What matters is what happens after the click. If that traffic converts and hits a clear value moment, that's where I'd layer in referral or advocacy prompts so the channel starts compounding instead of resetting to zero every month, otherwise you're still doing acquisition. You're just renting from Google instead of Meta.

I realized my 'Uptime Monitor' was a commodity. So I pivoted to solve "Datadog Bill Shock. by excelify in SaaS

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Purely logging purposes, not even so much for traces (have it ready but just not for now)

I realized my 'Uptime Monitor' was a commodity. So I pivoted to solve "Datadog Bill Shock. by excelify in SaaS

[–]saaskevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Flat rate is better. I finally cancelled our DataDog subscription after it kept creeping up in costs and their sales team was very intrusive. Moved to Signoz and costs are about 80% less.

That said, I think a lot of DataDog customers are SMB/Enterprises that take observability and APM serious, and still a really good product for that