How To Kick SaaS
  • Introduction
  • Forward
  • Who & How
  • The business of SaaS
    • The Business of SaaS
    • Basic Lessons of Saas
    • The Process
    • Parts of a SaaS
  • Validating You SaaS
    • Validating Your SaaS
    • What happens when you don't validate
    • The SaaS Validation Process
      • Why are you doing this?
      • Should you do this?
      • Competition Analysis
      • Buyer Analysis
      • Sales & Distribution
      • Time & Money
      • The Secret Sauce
      • Buyer Categorization By Sales Method
      • The Advisory Approach
    • Validation Success
  • SaaS Build Process
    • SaaS Build Lessons
    • Planning & Costing
      • The Costing Process
      • The Estimate
      • The Scope of Work
      • Information Architecture Development
      • Working Numbers
      • The Project Plan
    • Build Team Roles
      • What To Expect From Your SaaS Development Team
      • Build Teams
      • The Project Manager
      • Information Architect
      • UX Designer
      • Developers
      • Quality Assurance
    • Standard Tools
      • Project Management Tools in SaaS Development
      • Development Environment & Dependencies
      • Remote Development Environments
      • Code Repositories in SaaS Development
      • Monitoring Your SaaS
    • Steps to Developing a SaaS
      • What to expect in SaaS development
      • Systems Setup
      • Creative
      • Project Planning
      • SaaS User Experience (UX)
      • Concept Design
        • SaaS UX Design Case Study
      • Content Development
      • FrontEnd Development
      • BackEnd Development
      • Quality Assurance (QA)
      • Alpha Testing
      • Beta Testing
      • Launching Your SaaS
      • Continuous Integration
    • Things to know and expect
      • You MUST learn at least the basics of Project Management
      • Things you do and do not know
      • How to tell if your development team is working
      • Good, Cheap, Fast. Choose Two.
      • Positivity is Key in Management
      • Storytime: The Story of a Ton of Lost Users and Money!
      • Development is iterative
      • Development Time Increases As Complexity Increases
      • Storytime: Don't Send Me Shit
      • Story Time: The Best of the Best
      • Sunk Costs
    • Your SaaS MVP Pre-Development Build Checklist
  • Appraisement: Pricing Your SaaS
    • Appraisement: SaaS Pricing
    • SaaS Pricing Metrics
    • SaaS Pricing Metrics Glossary
    • Science of Pricing
    • What You Need To Know About Your Customers
    • How To Price Your SaaS
    • Customer Types Case Study
    • Storytime With Brennan
    • Pricing Page: The Most Valuable Page On Your Website
      • Pricing Page Examples
  • Acquisition: Gaining SaaS Users
    • Acquisition: Getting SaaS Users
    • SaaS Traction Lessons
    • Acquiring your first users
    • Getting ready for growth
    • Organic Search Marketing
      • Content Marketing Is An Investment
      • Step 1: Keyword Research
      • Step 2: Content Planning
      • Step 3: Writing, Formatting, & Beyond
    • Marketing Automation in SaaS
      • Marketing Automation Basics
      • Storytime: Learning about marketing automation the hard way
      • Lead Scoring, Tagging, & Triggers
      • Marketing Automation Systems
    • Lifetime Deals
    • Outbound Campaigns
    • Affiliates & Partnerships for SaaS Businesses
    • Narrowing Your Message With Adaptive Design
    • Social Media Marketing
      • Social Media Retargeting
      • Testing your social media ads
      • Social Media Ad Tricks
    • Pay Per Click (PPC)
    • SaaS Software Checklist
    • Email Marketing
    • The Marketing Website
  • Activiation
    • Activation
    • Getting Personal
    • Stalking Your Users
    • Onboarding
    • Training Webinars
    • Onboarding Emails
    • New User Tour
    • Setup Checklist
  • Attrition: Supporting Your Community and Growing Your Business
    • Supporting Your SaaS Customers
    • SaaS Community Building
    • Chatbots
    • Events
    • Swag
    • Education
    • The Knowledge Base
  • NOTES
    • NOTES
    • The best growth hacks no one wants you to know
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  • This is the MOST IMPORTANT thing in the book, don't skip it.
  • What happens all the time:
  • Idea validation is a must
  1. Validating You SaaS

Validating Your SaaS

PreviousParts of a SaaSNextWhat happens when you don't validate

Last updated 5 years ago

This is the MOST IMPORTANT thing in the book, don't skip it.

A lot of people get started with an idea, skip the validation, hire a team, and get going on the build of their project. Then, they get to the sales part and don't have a plan in place, know who they are selling to, understand how to reach those people, know what to say, and often end up realizing that either they built something that was not worth building or cannot compete in the market.

What happens all the time:

  1. I have an idea!

  2. Hire a team to build my idea.

  3. Wow, that was a lot more expensive than I thought it would be. But now I have something that kinda works about half way.

  4. How do I sell this thing and who's going to buy it?

  5. Throw money at marketing something that never had a chance in the first place.

  6. Give up and complain about how the developers destroyed a great idea.

  7. Cry & sometimes sue people.

This happens more than anyone wants to admit.

As you probably suspected, there's a much better way.

Idea validation is a must

There are a few people out there who did not do any validation and were still wildly successful. This is luck, plain and simple. For the rest of us, there is a process to ensuring success, it's call validation. For a SaaS project, I have outlined a process that works, but only if you do it.

But first, let's talk about what happens when you don't validate.

It hurts, it's embarrassing, it's a loss, and it can put you in the hole fast and in a bad way. It can ruin marriages and sink people into depression. If this is the position you're in now, it's ok. It happens to the best of us, and has happened to me more than once. Maybe you can pivot your business and still get some use out of the system, or maybe it's time to wash your hands of this, build up funds again and start over with a fresh perspective. Either way, you're going to learn a lot and it's going to .

The validation process outlined in this book is specific to SaaS products. But I recommend going further than just this and reading Since you’re already reading this book and you’re probably going to finish this one first, let's delve into the SaaS validation process.

be better the next time
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.