Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] What's up, founders? And welcome to the In Demand podcast, where we talk all about how to troubleshoot growth for your PLG SaaS. I'm your co host, Asia Orangio, the CEO and founder of DemandMaven. And I'm Kim Talarczyk, client services manager at Demand Maven, where we help SaaS companies reach their toughest growth milestones.
[00:00:22] All right, Kim, let's get into it.
[00:00:27] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the In Demand podcast. This is another Asia reacts to RSAs.
[00:00:35] And this is where I pull up.
[00:00:39] This is where I pull up posts from the subreddit RSAs, and I react to what founders are publishing, what they're saying, what they're stuck on, what they're doing to grow their businesses.
[00:00:52] RSS is pretty interesting because it's a lot of micro founders. So, like small, very early stage, sometimes pre product, sometimes they're. They're less than 10 camera, less than 25 KMR.
[00:01:03] What I love about these stories is they're always just so incredibly interesting, but then also lots of myth busting to do. So much myth busting to do. Okay, all right, all right, all right. I'm super excited. Okay, so we have our first post by no ground511.
[00:01:20] I quit my job to build an AI SaaS. It flopped. The boring backup idea is now making me more in a month than I used to make in a year.
[00:01:32] Yeah, we're gonna get into it. This is the AI SaaS edition.
[00:01:37] Okay. I was working at a performance marketing company as a developer and designer. Decent job, stable income, but I hated it. So I started experimenting on the side with two ideas before making any moves. First idea was an AI tool that generates product photo shoots and thumbnails. Felt like the smart bet. AI was everywhere. Seemed scalable. Seemed like the future.
[00:01:58] Second idea was just building simple business websites at a fixed price, delivered in seven days. No complex tech stack. I used wireframes and AI tools to speed up the build. Nothing revolutionary, honestly. Felt almost embarrassing to call up to call it a startup idea.
[00:02:14] I quit my job without knowing which one would work. Went all in on both. The AI tool died quietly. No traction, no real differentiation. Nobody cared enough to pay. The website thing started picking up. Slowly at first, then faster than I expected.
[00:02:28] Here's a part I actually think made it work. I built a simple form where business owners fill in their details. I build them a free preview of their homepage, and they only pay if they like what they see. No upfront risk for them. That one thing removed the biggest Objection. Most small businesses have when hiring someone they do not know. Now I am making more per month than my old annual salary. I am based in India. So before anyone does the math, assuming crazy numbers, the comparison is against Indian tech salaries, not Western ones. But the gap is still real and it feels surreal.
[00:02:58] The lesson is not just take risks or just start. It is that the idea that felt too simple, too obvious, too unsexy was the one that actually had demand behind it. I was so focused on building something that felt impressive that I almost ignored the thing that people actually needed. If you were sitting on an idea right now that feels too basic to work, that instinct might be worth questioning. I wrote this post because I just want to share this to someone.
[00:03:19] I've nobody to talk to.
[00:03:22] Okay, so this is what's so interesting about AI SaaS.
[00:03:28] It's one of those conundrums where the thing about AI SaaS that's so interesting is pretty much anyone now, and I'm going to say any founder, entrepreneur, or even someone like relatively technical, pretty much anyone, can launch something that either was built with SaaS leverages SaaS. It's easier than ever to use.
[00:03:54] Sorry, I should rephrase. It's easier than ever to build and launch something using AI. You can do.
[00:04:00] You can either implement AI, you can build an AI tool, you can use Claude to build literally anything that you want or lovable or whatever.
[00:04:09] It's easier than ever to either use AI to deploy SAS or to add AI to your existing SaaS.
[00:04:16] But the thing about AI is that it is contextual. Just like any feature set or any market opportunity, it's highly contextual to the market and it's highly contextual to the user and the customer at the end of the day that you're trying to get to use the thing.
[00:04:33] So I would say it's not.
[00:04:36] We have to do a little bit of separation of certain cognitive ideas. Like it's. There's a little bit of a cognitive distortion. So we call this outcome bias, where you look at the AI sas, it flopped, and you look back at the fact that it was AI SaaS and you think, oh, it flopped because it was AI. But what I actually think is it's not that it was AI. It was probably more that we just didn't have the idea super dialed in for the right audience, for the right problem to solve.
[00:05:07] And those things still have to make sense. So the way that we deployed AI in this particular tool or product, that has a huge impact on the context that that's in is going to have a huge impact on if it's going to work or not.
[00:05:26] So I would say it's probably not that it was AI SaaS and that's what made it more or less successful because let's see, the AI tool died quickly, but the website thing started picking up. Okay, but the second idea was just building simple business websites at a fixed price delivered in seven days. Yeah, so he's using AI to like, I'm assuming he's a he. They're using AI to do this like really fast.
[00:05:47] And at the end of the day though, I just want to make sure like we're not cognitively distorting how we built something versus the problem or the challenge that it solves. So I would say it's probably not the AI SaaS inherently that made it flop. Like the fact that it's in AI SaaS is not why it flopped. It flopped because we didn't have again, we weren't solving the right pain point for the right audience who has a high enough willingness to pay for us to make a business out of it. That's really what makes us SaaS succeed or fail.
[00:06:20] At the end of the day. It comes on a product market fit and it kind of sounds like they started out with a idea and then as they learned more, another idea kind of maybe popped up. So the simple business websites had a fixed price delivered in seven days. No complex tech stack use wireframes and AI tools to speed up the build.
[00:06:36] Yeah, I mean it's a. So service market fit is also a thing. So if you're running a service. So SaaS is software as a service and the assumption is that you're using software to accomplish a thing that you know, you, someone in theory could do for you manually. But you can also just run a service. Like you can run a service business business and use tech to scale that.
[00:06:58] They call it tech enabled service if I'm not mistaken. So this is like an AI enabled service. And service market fit is just as important if you're running a services business.
[00:07:07] So I think this makes sense and I'm super proud of this person for identifying when something isn't working instead of potentially double down, doubling down on something that doesn't actually support you or creating being sustainable, that's the worst thing in the world.
[00:07:25] It happens. It's very common and there's no shame if it were to happen to you. But all that to say, ideally we don't do that. It's. This is interesting though. I, yeah, I think I Think we're going to see a lot of this where the tech space in general is going to learn and get really clear on where does AI make sense and where does it not make sense. There are a million AI tools that have like sprung up overnight and, and there are going to be even more. And it's going to. This is going to continue to happen. Like we're going to see more and more founders. It's easier than ever now to build software and I think we're going to see AI tools and AI platforms and AI systems pop up overnight. And it is going to be such a fluctuating part of the market.
[00:08:07] Some of it will create value, but I think the large majority, it's going to be just like any other business. It kind of doesn't matter if it's AI or not. If you don't have a really solid problem that you're solving for an audience who can pay and what they're willing to pay is enough to sustain a business.
[00:08:24] It's kind of. It's not going to matter if it's AI or not.
[00:08:27] I think several things can be true. It's not mutually exclusive is really what I'm trying to say.
[00:08:32] That was an interesting one. I'm going to say congratulations on figuring out what people are willing to pay for. That's honestly one of the hardest parts of running a SaaS business. And this sounds like it's more of a service AI or tech enabled service business. But that's still a business and if it's paying your bills and making you happy, who cares? Who cares? Anyway, congratulations. I hope it works out super well.
[00:09:01] All right, we have this post. Oh, this is. I remember I stumbled. I haven't read the whole thing. It's. I know it's super short, but I just thought it was so interesting. We might look at the comments. Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product?
[00:09:15] I have a guess and I'm gonna. This post is super short, so we're gonna cover it really fast. But I have a couple of guesses. This is from Mert Dinkman.
[00:09:25] Mert Dickman.
[00:09:27] What a funny name. Feels like building has become the easy part.
[00:09:32] AI helps write code. Deployment is easier than ever. I was just saying this infrastructure is cheap, yet Getting the first 10 real users feels harder than building the actual product. Curious if other founders feel the same. What was harder for you? Building or getting attention? Oh, I mean it's going to be getting attention 100%. The thing about being a technical founder and this is what you have to remember because all things are contextual in the world of business.
[00:09:56] Your context is if you're a technical founder and even if you're non technical AI today, you know you can vibe code your way into a successful product.
[00:10:07] It's easier now than ever to code. And if you're a technical founder and if all you've ever done is code, of course building is going to feel natural to you. Of course it will. Like if you didn't have a whole career as a marketer, especially not a SaaS marketer or a SaaS CEO. Like if this is your first venture ever, if you've never been a business owner, if you've never known what that's looked like, even as a service provider, of course this is going to feel more comfortable for you. It's what you're used to. You had a whole career potentially as someone who developed and coded for someone else and now you get to do it for yourself.
[00:10:42] But it's not just for you now. It's for hundreds of users, dozens, thousands, millions in some cases.
[00:10:49] And of, of course, like let's. So let's first have compassion for ourselves related to our ability to.
[00:10:56] Or our desire, I should say, to want to get into our desire, to want to stay in our comfort zone. Of course, like it makes sense, makes total sense.
[00:11:07] But all that said, if you want to build something that sustains you, even if it's a lifestyle business, if you want to build something that makes a mark in a particular industry and you've got a team and you're hitting 1 million, 10 million, even 50 or 100 million, ARR, you're gonna have to get out of your comfort zone a lot, a lot, a lot. There's a lot of getting out of your comfort zone. You're going to have to do.
[00:11:30] Let's read some of the comments.
[00:11:32] Distribution is the toughest part these days. The thing is, as a builder, your safe zone is building. And marketing is like the leg days. But if you do marketing for a while, you're. You'll find patterns about what works for you and what is not. And you build the skill over time. Just need to lock in. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It is getting harder and harder now than ever before to distribute your product. And it's more competitive. They spin up overnight.
[00:12:00] Your greatest defense is going to be how dialed in you are to the problem that you're solving and who you're solving it for. Product market fit. And not just product market fit, but also product market model and channel fit. Are you charging the right things? Do you have the right plans? Is your pricing strategy on point? And then also what channels are you using to acquire your customers? If you can really nail those four quadrants, you're going to do great and you're going to do great potentially without raising a whole bunch of money in funding. So I want you to get really, really, really dialed into again. What is the problem that you're solve that you're solving for who and what is their willingness to pay? Because if those are not true, it kind of doesn't matter how much marketing you do, you're going to be filling a leaky bucket and you're going to have people churn, not convert, and it's not going to go nearly as fast.
[00:12:55] But in those early days, particularly if you're a technical founder, if that's your zone of genius, that's where you need to be focused. And then you're gonna. To me, learning marketing is easy. And this is speaking as someone who like, I am not a developer, I'm not an engineer. I have my technical moments. I have my moments of, of being technical.
[00:13:11] But for the most part I'm not a developer. I'm absolutely gonna leverage like cloud code and cloud cowork for help with anything technical.
[00:13:20] And I can tell you the marketing is actually easy. It's far harder to build something that people care about and want to pay for. Way harder. Spend your energy there and then as you go, you will build marketing as a muscle, just like how this person is describing it. And you don't have to be, you don't have to be a marketing genius guru, you don't have to be Seth Godin or Rand Fishkin to do this exceptionally well.
[00:13:48] As a early stage bootstrap founder, you, you can do minimal marketing, you can do MVP marketing and it be exactly what you need. And you can, you can ride that wave for as long as you can until you can afford to get more help and not have to worry about it. The best case scenario is, you know, hiring either a fractional CMO or a head of marketing who can just kind of think about all this for you and then you don't have to worry about it as much. But even, even in that scenario, you've got to get to that place where you can do that.
[00:14:12] Cool.
[00:14:14] Yeah. Comment of the day. Design a visiting card with your app details and a hook point. Keep at least 50 cards with you. Always share with any potential person. Just leaving one in carded spaces. It's cheap and it works interesting I feel that. I feel this. But do you know what? I love the challenge. I love the journey. Yeah, I mean, it's all about the journey. The end point. There's always a new end point. There's always a new milestone.
[00:14:34] Part of the process that makes all this fun is just the exhilaration of getting paying customers, making them extremely happy. And if you care about building a team, great. But if you don't do your thing, that's whole part of the process depends on what it is. Have just launched a tool that is premium to a lot less than established competitors.
[00:14:54] It's down to trust. I suppose I expect it to take some time. I mean. Yeah, yeah. You are always going to be faster than your market and your market. It takes time for them to react to like what you're doing. And the entire, the entire market might not be ready for you yet, but there's going to be a small portion who is. And your goal is to reach that. You know, find out who those people are. That's the whole point.
[00:15:16] Cool. I love this. Alrighty. Let's get to another one.
[00:15:21] Oh yeah. Oh, I thought this was. I remember stumbling upon this and I thought this was interesting. Okay, so this is from aggravating Sun 7665.
[00:15:28] Repositioned my SaaS from freelancer CRM to client portal for designers. Here's why.
[00:15:34] Built a client portal tool two months ago, positioned it as a CRM for freelancers. Got 250 visitors, 50 signups couldn't grow it. The problem was obvious. Freelancer CRM is an SEO graveyard, Honeybook, Dubsado Bonsai and 50 Indy tools. Own every keyword the the industry that the software category that you pick has a huge implication on how easy it is going to be to get your first customers and effectively go to market. I'll talk more about this in a second.
[00:16:01] I was spending $0 on marketing competing with companies spending 50k per month on content. Yes. So I niche down web designers and brand designers specifically. Okay, so CRM for web designers and brand designers. Why them?
[00:16:15] They constantly deal with where are my files from clients. They duct tape, Figma, drive and slack and stripe for client communication. The no login needed for clients feature is genuinely killer for them. Their projects have clear milestones, Discovery, mood board, logo, website, brand guidelines, changed all the landing page copy, demo content, meta tags, comparison pages, zero back end changes. The product already worked for designers. I was just describing it wrong. Early signal. The conversion messaging resonates way more when it says your client keeps asking where are My files versus manager clients. The free tier Clint space would love feedback on the positioning. Does this niche feel too narrow or about right?
[00:16:53] Yes.
[00:16:54] Okay, here's the thing.
[00:16:57] Your software category is going to have a huge impact again on how easy it is going to be to go to market. If you choose a software category that is too big and too broad like CRM, especially freelancer CRM like that is huge. There are a million bajillion tools and it's gonna be really, really, really hard for anyone to stand out unless you raise a bunch of money. But there are certain categories of software that are just extremely overcrowded. If you just look main primary category, which in this case would be CRM. So if you try to think about, okay, well how do I get customers who are looking for CRM? Well, that's a huge, that's a huge category and like you're gonna have to have a lot of resources to effectively compete in that space by yourself.
[00:17:42] Niching is a concept that is relatively specific. The alternative would be focusing, which I'll talk about here in a second.
[00:17:52] But niching basically says, okay, I'm a CRM for this really hyper specific audience. In this case it's brand designers and website designers. And you could get even more specific and you could say I'm targeting specifically SaaS company like SaaS brand designers or like SaaS website designers. Like that's even more niche. Niche, niche, niche. Right. So you can, there are levels to how niche you get. You can get even more niche and that certainly can work.
[00:18:21] I find that is a bit easier for most bootstrap founders who don't plan on raising funding and who definitely don't plan on like scaling out like a big, you know, a big old team.
[00:18:31] Like if that's you, then a niche is the easiest way to think about going to market.
[00:18:40] It's also one of the easiest ways to enter into a market regarding a beachhead.
[00:18:47] So a beachhead is basically like this is the very first customer profile or segment that we're gonna go after. What is a segment? Well, a segment is exactly what we just described, but it actually gets even more specific.
[00:18:58] So like let's say you're looking at the United States brand designers who specifically do brand projects for SaaS companies. I mentioned the United States already. But maybe they are also solo. So they're not, they don't have like, they're not a big old agency and maybe they offer like a really specific type of project or maybe they, they are making a certain amount of revenue per year. From their brand design work.
[00:19:22] Those are other like other things to kind of pre qualify people to define your segments. That's a segment. You could expand that segment by saying, okay, it's brand designers and website designers. And you could expand it even further by saying it doesn't matter if they're SaaS. It could be any website designer or any brand designer of any industry. Or you could say I'm only going to focus on folks in the tech space.
[00:19:44] So tech brand designers and tech web designers, like that's who I'm going to focus on. And that, that's a broad enough category within that, within that industry sector that makes that worth it for me.
[00:19:56] The more niche you go, the smaller your pool is. But again it depends on your goals from like a lifestyle perspective.
[00:20:05] You can kind of do whatever you want as long as you're taking care of yourself. And even then you. Some people like, some people have like a full time job and run their bootstrap thing on the side and, and that is enough and it makes them happy. I think what you need to get clear about is well, what are your actual goals and how committed are you to reaching those goals? Because you might find that this is your beachhead opportunity, meaning it's where you're gonna start, but it's not necessarily where you're gonna land forever. So you may start with brand designers and website designers, but maybe over time you add on different segments, maybe different industry sectors. Like maybe you start focusing on people in tech but you expand beyond that, maybe like into health or retail, cpg, et cetera. Like there are so many different directions that you can go in.
[00:20:47] I love that you're focused.
[00:20:50] So this is kind of where we get into the difference between niching versus focusing. So niching is I am this type of tool for these type of people forever. And if you are outside of that, you're don't use us. You could, but I wouldn't want you to. If you're a brand designer or website designer, I want you to use my product. Especially if you're in SaaS or tech or whatever that's a niche. And when you niche it, what it says is you're relatively committed to staying that way for a long time or at least like for the foreseeable future. And to some degree a great, the best example I can give is a company called Roaster Tools. They are a.
[00:21:31] Oh, let's see if I can remember how they position they. When I worked with them. They were a coffee slash roasting operations management platform for coffee Roasters specifically, their niche is coffee roasters. They're not targeting any other manufacturing category or entity or potential buyer at the time. At least it was. It's called roaster tools. It's for roasters. If you're a coffee roaster and you aren't a super franchised out coffee roaster, if you're like, you know, small, local, maybe you've got a few locations, but you're not like, you don't have like hundreds or dozens of locations across the nation, at least at the time. It might be different now, but they are specifically designed for a very niche portion of the market, and their growth is fundamentally determined by how many new roasters are entering into the market at any given time. So when the roasting industry grows, roaster tools as a product in general grows, and then when that category contracts, roaster tools may see slower growth.
[00:22:40] So that's hypothetical. I don't actually know, but from what I remember, their industry was very much dependent on how many new coffee roasters are entering into the market and how many new potential total. Just market people can we. We actually acquire?
[00:22:55] That's niching. If roaster tools were to suddenly say, okay, we're not just going to target roasters, we're not. We're also going to target like ice creameries. And what's another, like, super niche creamery is a good example. They're maybe like, I'll just use creamery because that's easy. Like, let's say roaster tools. Like, okay, like coffee roasting. Great. Let's now expand to creameries. So ice cream shops, ice cream parlor parlors, mom and pop ice cream places.
[00:23:24] Well, for one, their, their brand indicates that they're for roasters. So they probably would have to rebrand to something more generalized that would, you know, support creameries as well. But that would mean that they are no longer niching necessarily, or at least they're expanding their niche. You could argue that they're still technically niched, but if they were to add on that segment, what we're actually doing is we're probably, we're not really niched anymore or as much.
[00:23:54] We're really focusing. So there's niching and there's focusing. Focusing basically says, I have a product. It's relatively horizontal. Like it could fit maybe a handful of sectors or segments.
[00:24:04] But I'm gonna focus on this first one as my beachhead.
[00:24:08] The best example of this in real life is actually Convertkit, which is now called Kit. So Convertkit, they're an email marketing platform for creators It's a very large branding, it's a very big sector, big segment creator. The creator space is huge. There are many different types of creators and they have all kinds of different needs, wants, et cetera.
[00:24:28] And creators weren't where they started, at least as broadly they started.
[00:24:37] They were still technically creators, but they started very specifically and focused on food bloggers. That was one of the very first beachhead second segments that they targeted.
[00:24:47] And that beachhead segment was where they were focused. They didn't niche, they didn't say we're for food bloggers and only food bloggers forever. That would be niching, kind of like what Roaster Tools is doing. We're for coffee roasters in theory forever until we rebrand or expand. And we may never do that. But Convertkit, they said, well, we're not going to niche necessarily because that wouldn't be conducive to the goals of the CEO and the founder. The founder wanted to scale out a unicorn like they wanted to. They didn't. I don't think they took on funding to my knowledge in the early days they might have, but they really wanted to grow and scale this thing as big as they could get it within reason. And while still being making it fun, you know, to do so, they instead they focused. And a focus is very different. A focus basically says you can stay focused on a particular beachhead market or whatever for however long you need to until you move on to the next one. And focusing is different.
[00:25:44] I am on this long rant, not gonna call it rant. I'm explaining this though, because the software category that you pick has a huge impact on how fast you're gonna be able to grow. And if you care about fast growth, I would be ideal. It would be very beneficial for you to stay pretty focused on something and you might not have to niche, although you certainly could.
[00:26:08] And you do have to kind of think a little bit about, you know, this person said am I too niche? And I don't. I think, I think that question is actually deeper than it seems cuz it's more related to your goals. Well, like what are your goals and how fast do you want to get to where you want to get? You know, everyone dreams of having the multimillion dollar ARR SaaS, but the work that it takes to get there is significant and it's a lot. And you're probably not gonna do it by yourself. It's possible, but it's rare. It's rare to have a bootstrap SaaS making more than a million with just you usually you have a team. So if you don't like managing or working with others, if you kind of like being solo, like those are things that you have to consider.
[00:26:48] And so I would say like, there's no wrong or right answer in terms of like, how niche do you go? It's ultimately dependent on what you want to do and what you want to accomplish and what you like what would make you feel great.
[00:26:59] And that answer is different for everybody. And I think at the end of the day, like, if you're a bootstrap founder, you can kind of do whatever you want. You're not like, that's the blessing and the curse in some ways of not having VC funding, you know, there's no one telling you what to do. You make all the rules technically and running your own thing and living by your own rules is the point for bootstrappers.
[00:27:21] If you take VC funding, the implication is you're, you want to, you're really motivated and driven by creating a very large impact on an industry in some kind of way and you're comfortable with the risk and also you're comfortable with having a boss essentially, which would be your board, the VCS and you know, whoever else is invited the board. But if you take on VC funding, the, the expectation is this is either going to become a unicorn or it's going to become, you know, some 10 or 20x opportunity for us and it's going to pay off is really what they're thinking. We're going to have a good exit. That's really what the whole goal is for someone who's taking on funding and you know, you want to build a team, you want to lead, you want to achieve a scale that maybe would take 10 years to do if you were to do it Boost draft.
[00:28:08] So all that to say it depends on your goals.
[00:28:11] I, I think, I love this. I think aggravating Sun 7665, you definitely, you are demonstrating a master class in positioning for sure.
[00:28:24] I think though, where you go from here is totally up to you. And it's based on your goals, it's based on where you want to go and who do you want to be like, like what, what would best serve you? Because it2niche doesn't really exist except for the one that doesn't align with your goals because again, if you're Bootstrap, you can do whatever you want.
[00:28:43] I hope that that helps. I hope that these were interesting stories and posts and I hope you took something from this. If you're, if you're still with me at the end.
[00:28:53] This was fun. AI is going to be an interesting element to all of this. And I. Yeah, I just think it's going to be such an interesting ride for the AI SaaS companies.
[00:29:04] Okay, thanks again for watching. If you liked this episode, please let me know in. In whatever way makes the most sense, whether that's sending us an email, hitting us up on any of the channels that we're on, LinkedIn included. And then, of course, if you're watching on YouTube, would love to. If you enjoy this content, please let me know. Okay, thanks so much for listening and. Or watching. If you're watching. And I'll catch you on the next one. Bye, guys.
