How to launch a Micro SaaS in 10 steps?
If you want to innovate fast, launch soon, iterate quickly and stay relevant without needing to hire big teams and raise significant funds – Micro SaaS might be the way to go for you! Click to read How Micro SaaS is leading Mega Democratization of Digital Entrepreneurship and find out, or if you are already in, proceed to the 10 steps.
Micro SaaS is a software platform (web/mobile app) that enables users to have a very specific task done quickly and without installing any software, nor buying subscriptions for a big SaaS platform.
Micro SaaS founders can often get by with bootstrapping and a small team of experts on-demand, quickly reaching the breakeven and enjoying the lifestyle with comfortable income and minimized stress. Many micro entrepreneurs actually prefer to stay micro. In addition, they prefer being solo founders with a few freelancers chipping in.
- Find a li’l task to be done
Think of a little task, specific and repetitive, that you and the people from your line of work, hobby or lifestyle would like to have done by a tool. Make it really, but really, specific in terms of the function itself, as well as the target audience and the use case. While niching down is advisable for any product, it’s fundamental for Micro SaaS. Think of a food booth that does only one snack but does it really well, and is open only a few hours per day, but exactly when you are leaving the party and is situated on your way home. That midnight snack is worth more to you than a high-end restaurant with an elaborate menu where you need to make a reservation, arrive at a decent hour, select the meal, wait for it to be prepared and, yes, leave a fortune. That’s nice when you are with a group of friends for your bday, but not on a random night alone.
- Lay it on a canvas
Within your lean canvas, define the exact problem, solution, value proposition and target audience, and be very specific about it. Remember: favorite snack, exactly on your way home, exactly when you need it and when everything else is closed. Talking about others being closed, check out your competition. You don’t want to be one more with the same snack, on the same street…
- If in doubt, survey out
If you are not sure the pain is strong enough for the solution to be paid for, or you doubt the solution approach itself, get out of the lab and talk to your potential users. It doesn’t have to be an official survey, fx you can engage in a community forum, noting down what people are looking for, complaining about, recommending etc.
- Break it and scope it
Break it down – top down. Understand what the software needs to do in order to deliver the exact task done efficiently. Then see if you can drag something of your MVP (Minimal Viable Product). Remember that even micro products can be exaggerated for an MVP scope. Focus on the value proposition and nothing more.
- To include or not to include
Go out for Expertise as a Service and get some product management hours to help you revise the MVP scope, specify the features and create the roadmap.
- To code or not to code
If you are not a techie, talk to a tech consultant and get an overview of your no-code and code options. A software architect / fractional CTO type of consultant can also advise you on the usage of clouds for keeping and running your code and data etc. Nowadays it’s all in the cloud which eliminates a lot of the headache around hosting, security, maintenance, scaling… Select the tech approach and understand the approximate development timeline.
- Collab and collab good
By this time you should already have some remote team collaboration tools and workflows in place.
- Make it pretty
Get some hours of a UX designer to make sure your product is eye-catchy, intuitive and comfortable to use.
- Build!
Contract a software developer, get more precise estimations for the features highlighted as the highest priority by the product manager. Iterate your dev, always gathering feedback, even if only from your close network. You know, the neighbor who enjoys similar snacks. But 5-10 of them please, for useful data.
- Aaand… launch!
As your micro platform takes its form, get some branding and marketing hours to prepare for the launch. And then launch. Launch soon. Join the mega pool of micro platforms, gather user feedback, monitor metrics and keep repeating the steps above. You are not necessarily looking to create an international restaurant chain, but make sure your snack booth has the hottest spices.
What do you think? A micro coming up? Let me know!
