OK.. so for years, the SaaS (software as a service) dream was reserved for either, founders who could raise enough capital for development costs, or those who can code / design / market a product on their own. For the founders route, after building extensive teams, they can easily wait YEARS until they maybe get a return on investment.
This formula was fairly rigid. But that model has been breaking over the last year or two. The era of the bloated ‘all in one’ platform is giving way to a leaner and smarter approach. The ‘Minimal Viable Solution SaaS’ route. Called ‘MVS’ from this point on.
A good MVS isn’t necessarily a scaled down version of an application either. It’s actually more like a razor sharp, specialized tool that solves ONE single, usually agonizing problem, for a highly specific audience. It may only have a handful of main features, one core workflow, and a simple dashboard. But if it solves that one problem spectacularly better than some all in one solution, users will pay for it!
The general philosophy of making a great MVS product, isn’t about just being ‘minimal’ just to launch fast or anything.. It’s more about starting small with that main pain point being solved – building a durable, profitable business. This framework shifts the goal from a VC funded scale to being sustainable, to bootstrapped business LEVERAGE.
Here is my 4 part framework to identify, build, and monetize your own minimum viable MVS SaaS product.
Phase 1: The Agony Audit (This will be the main pain point your product will solve)
Most failed software business attempts begin with an ‘idea’. Successful products begin with an observation of culminated agony. Which makes sense if you think about it, where a bunch of people are having a pain point, there lies opportunity.
The core of the MVS model is finding empathy and solutions for these specialized problems, or pain points. You’re not trying to solve a generic, super wide spread problem, like ‘managing tasks’. You’re looking for a highly specialized pain point, or process failure of a current solution.
A great MVS is often born when a professional says “I wish there was just a way to ‘do this thing’ automatically, or easier.”
Your job in this phase is to conduct an ‘agony audit’ of whatever niche or industry you’re interested in (it could literally be just about anything, no joke!). Look at your own workflows, or the workflows of people you know in said related industry, and identify the ‘workarounds’ where time is being wasted on repetitive tasks, or where they have to kind of do a ‘hack’ or have a complicated or unnecessarily complex way to do their tasks. Manual cross referencing, complex formatting. Situations where they say “well this is just how I have to do it”.
Criteria for a great MSV pain point:
- High frequency – the problem happens daily or weekly
- Explicit pain – it’s a manual process that everyone hates doing but just ‘has’ to.
- Measurable impact – solving it saves clear time or eliminates errors.
- Overall existing inefficiencies – people are currently using spreadsheets, email or multiple generic tools to ‘hack’ a solution.
Here’s another example.. Instead of a ‘marketing platform for small businesses’, an MVS target might be something that automatically formats Google reviews / links for contractors to send offers via SMS (phone text) to their customers. The second problem is specialized, a common pain point, and immediately solvable.
Phase 2: Radical Feature Surgery (this is where the CORE features are defined )
Once you’ve isolated the high-frequency pain points that you’ll be targeting, your instinct will be to build a robust tool with all the bells and whistles that you ‘think’ users may need. Instead of adding features you think may be needed, you must take an honest look at the features they’ll NEED no matter what, or better yet go directly to the ones with the pain points, and ask them exactly what specific features they would want / need for your proposed solution (this is the best way).
Your MVS product only needs to do ONE thing, and that’s to solve the aforementioned problems. If you’re tempted to add a feature, ask yourself – will the core problem go unsolved WITHOUT this feature? If the answer is no, cut it. At least for the version that you’ll launch with. If theres neat features that you want to add on after some time and customer requests them, then by all means add them! But for your initial product, your goal should be the absolute minimumally viable product.
- You don’t need a full featured mobile app, start with just a web app.
- You don’t need a comprehensive social presence.
- Or an advanced analytics dashboard
- Or a sophisticated user permission system
You need to focus entirely on the CORE action that your product solves..
Problem –> MVS –> Your Product
If your MVS for contractors (for example) generates the SMS reviews and offers a simple button to send it, it’s complete. It doesn’t need appointment scheduling, or automated follow ups or anything, AT LAUNCH.. Again, those are for version 2.0.
Your MVS Product Focus:
- Core Utility – 1, or only a couple, powerful solutions
- Speed – Fast response and load times
- User clarity – An interface that is DEAD simple to understand without a tutorial.
Phase 3: The No-Code Methodology
- Bubble, FlutterFlow, or Softr can be used for the interface and frontend. These build the actual application that the user sees and interacts with. Softr is excellent for building on top of Airtable and also Google Sheets, for example.
- Airtable, Supabase, Xano can be used for the backend and database you may need. This is where you store user data, inputs, settings etc. Supabase and Xano offer professional database power for people that can’t code at all.
- Make.com (Integromat) or Zapier for the logic engine. This connects different services you may need. Make.com in particular, lets you visually map out complex logic and data manipulation that functions like invisible custom code for your users workflow methodology.
- Stripe can be used for the payments and billing in general. This will handle subscription billing and user management seamlessly.
The ‘MVS Contractor SMS’ tool we referenced earlier, could be built ENTIRELY on Softr + Airtable + Make. It would allow you to ship a usable product literally in WEEKS, not months or even years in some cases.
Phase 4:Validating For Profit Not Scale
The goal of your first year, lets say, is not some random number like ‘100,000 users’ or something. It should be something more like 100 paying customers.
A good MVS product isn’t validated by user signups, it’s validated by recurring revenue. Because you’re solving a very specific high frequency problem, your users should be willing to pay for it immediately, and month after month, if it’s a problem that’s being continually solved.
Start with simple, monthly subscription pricing. Tiered pricing could be introduced later. Your initial price should reflect the time saved, not the complexity of the software. If your tool saves a contractor 3 hours a week, saving them lets say $150 per week, then charging them $30 per month is a 20X return on investment for them!
This may be the most important part of this entire article right here:
Make SURE when creating your product, that they get a KILLER return on investment from buying and using your product. This makes buying your product an absolute NO BRAINER!!
Spend $30 a month to save 3 hours of work per week, times 4 = 12 hours of work saved per month. This works BEST when your product saves them time AND money. For instance, buying a product that increases conversion rates, for a random example, producing higher sales permanently, is an absolutely obvious purchase!
Make your product literally pay for itself, and then some, if possible! This is literally one of the most important things I hope you take away from this article. If you can find a specific niche pain point, and create a product for it that lets your customer save money and time, while making them more money, your success is literally all but guaranteed!
How To Launch & Validate
- The beta label: Launch your product as a ‘beta’ version. This manages expectations regarding bugs and will frame early users as ‘partners’ in building the final product. And YES you can charge for beta users! Another option, is to give FREE access to a handful of people as well, in exchange for valuable reviews and feedback on your product.
- Go where the problem is: Market in specialized forums, groups, and linkedIn communities where people are actively complaining about the pain points your product solves.
- Partnerships: Partner with a recognized person in related subjects, or maybe a service provider in your niche that already has trust.
- Gather brutal feedback: Use early user feedback to refine the single core function of your product. Don’t immediately add a bunch of new features, focus on making the existing workflow absolutely flawless.
Once you obtain good profitability, it’s like having a MOAT or super tall walls, around your business. The biggest risk in the MVS framework isn’t failure, but rather the urge to grow too fast. The danger is not being small, it’s becoming generic.
When you build a highly profitable, small SaaS that solves a core problem for a bunch of people, you’ve created a “moat” around your business that’s difficult to disrupt. Major software companies, cant (and won’t) compete with you because your niche is too small for their bloated ‘all in one’ model! Competitors can’t easily displace you because you have solved the ONE problem users care about ten times more than anyone else.
The minimum viable SaaS model is the ultimate realization of digital leverage, because it requires minimal capital, allows you to move rapidly, and creates a recurring, compounding asset that runs without your daily labor.
Stop chasing the next ‘unicorn’ idea, and start looking for the next specialized process you can automate. Your MVS is possibly already being built manually by someone right now.. So go ahead and build the software that replaces their spreadsheets & outdated ‘hacks’ they’re currently using.
I sincerely hope you got something out of this article, take care!
Leave a Reply