How to Build a SAAS - things to Consider.

so somebody asked me how do you build a SAS so that's a pretty involved subject you could probably do a a whole course on it but I'm going to give you some Bolder points here that I think you find useful I've built a couple SAS two or three three SAS products in my time so I have some experience uh yeah so rule number one when you're building a SAS you have to know the business domain that you're jumping into one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a SAS developer first of all SAS is short for software as a service this is you building a piece of software that's going to provide some sort of service for people now you got two classifications of a SAS product you got B Toc and B2 uh B2B so B2B is business to business so you're building a piece of software where you're uh helping some business so it could be I don't know a uh payroll processing system so you would sell to business owners your business selling to other businesses B2B then you have b2c SAS which is any software that uh end users would use You could argue that Facebook is a b2c or Studio web my SAS is both a B2B and a b Toc so I have people who are individuals who purchase my interactive course training and I also sell access to Studio web to schools and colleges and independent educational emies because Studio hoab has a whole bunch of stuff in there that schools would want classroom management student management Etc anyway so you got those you got those two classifications of assass products whatever the case if you're developing a SAS you have to really understand the business well so if you were looking to sell a SAS into the accounting industry for some sort of accounting function whatever it may be you have to know accounting well so maybe your partner's accountant or maybe you've dealt with accountants quite a bit and they say you know what we could use a piece of software it does X so on so forth the biggest mistake that people make when they get into the SAS building business when they get into the SAS business is that they make assumptions about an industry but not they are not really aware of right and you figure well I got this great idea for accountant and though you're not an accountant and you don't know what accountants do and what they really need you figure a this would be great for accountant so you put all kinds of time and effort you build your SAS and you go out there and then you find out the accountants don't really need this they don't want this so you have to be aware first and foremost of the business need so that's why I talk about I've talked about this in many many videos over the years domain knowledge domain knowledge of a domain that you're looking into you you have to have good you have to have that good domain knowledge to jump into anything so that's the first uh rule of SAS business you have to know the domain so that you can make a uh a reasonably accurate assessment as to the need that that particular industry may have so you can develop a piece of software for that number two you have to um you have to get your prototype out as quickly as possible as quickly as possible you don't want to uh waste tooo much time writing super solid code that scales and has air trapping and all kinds of stuff like that no waste of time why because what you're going to find and I've seen in my uh experience building SAS and other people's the product that you originally envisioned as a SAS developer will probably change radically once you get it up and running and you have user actual users using it so if you put all this extra work and effort into creating super solid code that's um you know it has air trapping and all this kind of stuff as I just mentioned you're going to have to tear that apart rewrite it anyway so the first version your Alpha of any SAS product should be quick and dirty as possible break all the rules well not all the rules but most a lot of the rules you just want to go in there Bo boom boom boom get it out as quickly as possible quickly as possible so that you can get people using it so you can get feedback and then you can figure out you know what the app really needs to do number one number two you may find that your idea may just crash right away so you've only invested X as opposed to 5x writing super lock solid code don't make that mistake uh people do that I've seen that many times as it relates to what I just talked about don't worry about scaling this is one of the biggest when I watch these Junior nerds who I'm pretty sure these YouTubers and Tik Tok nerds who who claim to be expert developers I can tell pretty much that they've never done anything in the real world because they'll say oh scaling is so important scaling scaling oh you got to scale your app the app is scaling is my app going to scale 99.9% chance that your app will never need to scale let me say that again there's a 99.9% chance that the app you develop will never have scaling issues will never need to scale that's just a fact of the matter we're all not building the next Instagram or the next Google or next Facebook or the next Tik Tok you know don't worry about scale that's the last thing you should be concerned about when you're developing the uh MVP the minimum viable product your first version of your size scale is most of the time by the way scaling issues comes down to uh proper database structure proper database access so when people start telling you about scale scale scale they're they don't know nothing nothing nothing it yeah no forget about scale how about the language people ask me what language should I use what language step well it depends on the type of product so if you're doing um if you're doing a mobile app I would do an iOS first simply because uh Apple iPhone users and iPad users users are more likely to spend money so I would use you know if I had to do something native mobile which not which which would not be my first choice by the way but if I had to because the needs of the product required that I had that lowlevel control that only native development will give you I would do an iOS first as opposed to Android first simply because iOS people tend to spend more so you know that's number one number two if I'm doing mobile app if I could do it without mobile native technology meaning using a flutter or just a responsive website pwa that's my first choice why because it saves time and money one codebase all platforms as opposed to having to write in Android with Java or cotlin and write for iOS with swift or objective c if it was strictly a web app which language would I use it would either be PHP or JavaScript PHP or JavaScript why because they're light and they are Nimble that is why that is why my first choice is PHP because it's just easier to configure and get going uh ven node with Express for example if you're developing something really really simple and trivial but it could still be a profitable then I would definitely use PHP I have seen projects by the way where uh people have made a lot of money just developing something on Excel like some Excel VBA uh code and they sell this Excel template with all this VBA code in there and they make they made a lot of money selling it you know not billions but they made Millions so don't discount hyper nishe little applications that only might take you a few months to build on your own that could be very profitable for you as an individual so that's also there the key to SAS development I think in the end is to be very light and Nimble don't make the mistake of uh uh bringing a battleship to a gunfight I don't know if that's an expression or not if I like to use this if you have to move a chair let's say you have a chair let's say you want to move this chair this is the chair you want to move you know that's all that's all you're going to move you don't want to go out and rent a big huge truck 18- wheeel truck you get a minivan right or you get an SUV when you're are building your first version of your s product you want to uh think of it that way you just want to get it out quick quick and dirty use light and Nimble languages light and Nimble Frameworks light and Nimble databases don't worry about scaling don't worry about Rock Solid code because you're going to have to tear that Cod apart anyway so there you go everything I teach by the way whether it be this video or any other video is based on personal experience personal experience I'm ancient I'm old 169 years old so I've seen a bunch of stuff that haven't seen probably so uh there you go don't get married to a tech uh that's another piece of advice like databases people get hung up oh what database you're going to have your favorite some people like postgrad some people like Oracle personally I just use MySQL because it's just it's it's everywhere it's easy it works all right I hope this is useful I'm Uncle Steph [Music]

Channel: Stefan Mischook

Views: 10,122

Keywords: developervlogs, developermentoring

Id: 8VpnGNaQXAk

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024