Steps to build a perfect MVP for your SaaS startup
Building a SaaS startup can be a little challenging process, thus building your first MVP that tests your SaaS idea, you can get lost from the path and won’t be able to complete your MVP.
You can spend weeks or months building something that has less value in the market and no one wants to subscribe for it. Thus in this article, I’m going to help you find the right approach and steps to build your first MVP for your SaaS.
But before we start, I have written a book on marketing if you want to take a deep dive into marketing and know how to get long-term paying customers for your SaaS, “Marketing Strategies to Grow Your SaaS” which will cover all the necessary steps and strategies in depth to help you take your SaaS from scratch and get some real paying users.
“I’m considering that you have already validated your idea and you are pretty confident that it will work. If you have not done it make sure you validate your SaaS idea first before doing any development.
Make sure you have done your research on market demands, audience size, and other things as needed.”
1. Focus only on USP 🔍
Building an MVP is all about the USP of your SaaS product, you don’t have to overwhelm it just because your competitors have tons of features. If you keep adding features on top of features you will fail for sure.
You just need to pick 1 problem that is there in your competitor and just focus on building the SaaS product around it. Once you have provided your MVP to your focus group you can see their responses, then you can work on adding more features or upgrading them.
You also need to take care of feedback that you will receive from your users, not everything needs attention you need to categorize these features as, Must Have, Nice to Have, and Later Phases. These three simple categories are what you need, you can create an Excel or Notion template for this work.
So make sure you focus on only USP in your MVP and do not overwhelm it.
2. Development Requirements 🧑💻
See it’s not always that you need to write some code to build your SaaS MVP or hire someone to do so. There are mainly 3 approaches to how you can tackle the development of your SaaS MVP.
👉 First, you can make use of some No Code/Low-Code platforms like Bubble, Softr, Flutter Flow, Airtable, or even Notion to build your first MVP of your SaaS. For this yes you need to have the knowledge to use these tools.
Go with this approach only when you don’t have much expectations for the growth of SaaS because shifting from a No Code to custom code can be tough sometimes.
👉 Second, The second approach is you can have human automation behind the scenes, so for example your SaaS validates the user's LinkedIn profile instead of creating some kind of code. You can have 4–5 people to do the work.
Go with this approach only when you have money to pay for the hours of them and you are confident that this SaaS will work once you shift it to real code automation.
👉 Third, The last option is to use code, you can either code by yourself or you can hire someone to do the coding for you.
Go with this approach only when you have bigger plans for your SaaS and you can expand it more in the future.
If I were in your place I would take the combination of the First and Second approach. I will create a basic frontend dashboard using No Code/ Low Code and then I will apply some kind of human automation to update the numbers every day manually.
3. Strict Timelines ⌛
Time is money, you need to create strict timelines for the development of your SaaS, and this is not only about coding and designing. It’s also about how long you can try to validate or run your SaaS MVP.
A lot of times it happens that we make something but the market does not need it, then we make iterations of it and again we find problems and demands coming.
This is a never-ending cycle if you are not able to make a profit or at least the money that you are spending to run the SaaS you should stop it and try something else.
If you follow these steps you will find yourself in a very good position and will be able to sustain your SaaS business for the long term. If you have any doubts or feel I have missed anything please feel free to comment down below I would love to check it out. :)
Also, if you want to take a deep dive into running a successful AI-based SaaS business and want to know all the key strategies and points, I’ve written a book “Cheat Code for Building AI-Driven SaaS”. This book will provide you with extensive guidance and you will find your path for building your AI-based SaaS.
