Who & How
This book is written for people who have some business experience and are interested in growing their business by venturing into the SaaS world or starting a new SaaS business. This may be an entrepreneur with a new idea, a team member at a company that wants to provide a new offering for the company, a developer, designer, or project manager already in the world of development who wants to start a SaaS business, or a number of other people.
While running a SaaS business building company and having launched many of my own SaaS businesses over the years I have met so many people that lost so much money trying to launch their SaaS businesses because they didn’t understand:
What they were getting into
How to know if their idea would work
The steps to building a usable system
What to expect during the build of the system
How to price their system
How to market the system and bring in users
How to help users become customers
How to keep users engaged in the system and in the business
How to efficiently support users
If you're one of the people or have the questions listed above, this book is for you.
This book is about theory, practice and implementation. It's partially a book on now to run a business and part step by step instructions. It won't teach you how to be a developer, but it will help you manage them. It won't tell you how do be a UX designer, but it will teach you what to look for when you're working with them. It can't solve all your problems, but it can keep you from getting into big ones and get you out of a few others. As I like say, "I can't tell you how to be successful, but I can for sure tell you how not to fail. And maybe by not failing, you'll have the time to be successful."
This book was written with planning in mind because you want and need to know how much time and money this venture is going to cost you before you get started.
The book takes you through much of what I learned over the years about:
The Business of SaaS
Validating Your Idea
Building Your System
The 4 A's of a SaaS Business:
Appraisement - Pricing your system
Acquisition - Getting new users
Activation - From user to customer to advocate
Attrition - Keeping people engaged in your business
None of these areas stand independent from one another. Much like building a store or factory, you must have a foundation before you can have a roof, and what good is the roof without the walls? You have to build all the parts to have a structure that works.
If you're just getting started building a SaaS, I highly recommend you at least skim through the entirety of the book rather than just reading on section or another and moving forward. If you don't, you may end up with a roof and some windows, but no walls to hold them in place or a secure footing form them to stand.
