- Micro-SaaS businesses,
they're all the rage right now, and they offer niche software products. They're almost always product-led, they're almost always with a
small, tiny team operating it. And almost always, they're
money-printing machines when done right. Now, I've done a lot of videos on building Micro-SaaS businesses, I'll
link to the playlist below. But right now with the advent of AI, GPT, and large language models, they're unique new
opportunities for building widely-profitable Micro-SaaS businesses. So on this episode, I'm
gonna walk you through exactly what makes for a great Micro-SaaS, and three concrete ideas that I have for amazing profitable
Micro-SaaS businesses. Hopefully, you'll either
steal one of these ideas, or, you'll be inspired
by one of these ideas to build your own Micro-SaaS business, and excel your path to
that next stage of growth. Intro. (air swish) (lively music) (beep) Everybody, welcome to
"Unstoppable," I'm TK, and on this channel, I help
SaaS founders like you, grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now, if you're new to
this channel, welcome. I drop an episode every single Sunday, with actual strategies and
tactics from the trenches, on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So, if you're new to this channel, be sure to hit the subscribe button (bell ringing)
and that bell icon, (bell chiming)
That way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode, with the TK energy. Now, if you're already part
of my SaaS Go to Market coaching programs, you're
part of this community, my people,
(icon popping) welcome back, it's really
awesome to see you over here. Now inside of the Go To
Market Program that I run with the founders that I work with on their go to market strategies, 50% and self-funded companies, and 50% are venture-funded companies. You notice I didn't use
the word "Bootstrap," mainly because I don't
really like that name. It almost makes it sound like it's lesser. Having worked with over 250 founders, half of whom are self-funded, and half of whom are venture-funded, there's one thing I learned, SaaS businesses are
incredible opportunities. And what makes for whether
you should be venture-backed, or you should fund it yourself, really is the function of
the size of opportunity you are going after. What that means is, if you're going after
a massive, huge market with a widely differentiated product, like maybe GPT4 and ChatGPT, then you should raise venture capital, because you wanna capitalize
on it as quickly as possible. However, if you're going after a very specific segment of the market, if you are being very specific
on the specific tooling you're bringing, if it's a smaller market, you're better off self-funding it, so you can keep all the
profits to yourself. There's no right, or wrong here. What matters is the
size of the opportunity, and the amount of funding that you need, to actually capitalize on it. This is where Micro-SaaS business has become really interesting. In this episode, I'm
gonna walk your through what exactly a Micro-SaaS business is, and three concrete ideas that you can use, or you can get inspired by, to build your own self-funded product-led profitable software company. If you're venture backed, and you're like, "Oh, this video is not for me." Well, you never know, maybe it'll inspire to actually
start a Micro-SaaS business. One thing for sure that I've seen, Micro-SaaS businesses
can start very small, and turn into massive
SaaS companies, as well. What starts out as a kernel of an idea, can turn into something huge over time. So if you started digging, go and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm, it just loves it when you do that, let's get into principle number zero, which is exactly what makes for
a great Micro-SaaS business. So, Micro-SaaS business
is what sets them apart, at least the great ones, from your normal SaaS company, is that they are
super-specific on their ICP. They are super-super specific, and niche. They're also very, very
specific about being a tool. They're not trying to be a platform, they're not trying to do
anything and everything. All they're trying to do is
solve a very specific problem as a software tool. And so, typically their
tied to an important and urgent problem, and they solve just that
piece of in the course of the workday of
whoever you are targeting in your ideal customer profile. One important caveat to this, is almost every great Micro-SaaS business still has a daily use case. If your tool doesn't hook into something, the worker, the employee,
or the person buying your software product, uses everyday, or has a
need for, every single day, almost always they don't end
up being that successful. And so, what I was saying with
great Micro-SaaS businesses, they focus on a very specific
ideal customer profile, even if it seems tiny. They come as a tool, like hey,
we just do this one thing, and we do it really well, and we solve this
important urgent problem. It hooks into their daily use case, so they can use that tool every single day to their job very effectively. And lastly, almost all
Micro-SaaS businesses are product-led. Meaning, there's no
sales process involved. You kind of just try it
out, or you pay up front, and you swipe the credit
card, and you use the tool. If you don't get value
from it every single day, you just unsubscribe. There's literally no
sales people involved. And typically what I've
seen work really well, is around the $30 a month price point. If you could charge
$30 a month, as a tool, for a daily use case, solving
an important, urgent problem, for a very specific niche of people, very, very specific
ideal customer profile, you will have a great Micro-SaaS business. And I've used this
formula countless times. In my last company ToutApp,
which ended up raising money from Andreessen Horowitz. We ended up growing it out, and then we sold it to a
market leader called Marketo. Started off as a Micro-SaaS business. No sales people, swiped their credit card, purely product-led. And over time, we realized
there was a bigger idea to pursue, a bigger problem to solve, and it got bigger and bigger. And now, sales engagement, which is the category
that ToutApp started, is a $5 billion category in itself. So, just because you're
starting off as a Micro-SaaS, doesn't mean that you have
to stay at a Micro-SaaS. Because what ends up happening
is you get customers. Customers tell you what more
they want from the product, and then all of a sudden, it can graduate to a full platform, which is really, really powerful. But also at the same time,
you can stay as a Micro-SaaS. There are plenty of sales
engagement tools today that just aren't Micro-SaaS offerings. They're super-tiny, they
solve a very specific problem, they charge $30 a month,
there's no sales people, so, there's different
ways you can take this. And it really depends on what you wanna do with your live, and the type
of business you wanna build, the scale of problem you wanna solve, and how you wanna approach
building a SaaS business. One of the reasons I love
Micro-SaaS companies, is for first-time founders. For founders just getting into software, this is a great way to start. You can start by creating a tool, you can solve a real need,
you can charge for it, you can build momentum, and
then you can grow from there, without having to seek funding initially, which is super-super powerful. So with that said, let's
go into three key ideas. Because I've done a bunch of
Micro-SaaS videos in the past. And I'll link to the playlist below. You don't have to go anywhere right now. But, what is particularly exciting, is the idea of AI, which is
taking the world with storm. Because now it's real AI. You can use the large language models, you can use GPT4, maybe five, maybe six, and depending on when
you're watching this video, to actually create really
compelling Micro-SaaS products. And the three ideas that
I'm gonna share with you, is gonna, one, exemplify
what makes for a good Micro-SaaS offering, that
follows these principles. But also, I think they're
really great ideas that you can run with, or be inspired by. With that said, let's
go into idea number one. The idea number one for
a Micro-SaaS offering that you can do, is you could
offer a curated data offering. And I'm gonna make these
ideas a little bit abstract. They're gonna be very concrete
in the implementation of it. I'm gonna make them a little bit abstract, so you can apply it in different ICPs. So you can take this idea, and say, "Oh, I wanna solve this with this ICP that I know really well. That way, it'll be more powerful for you, and you're more likely to get more value from this video. And if you're getting value,
smash that like button, for the YouTube algorithm, it really likes it when you do that. So for a curated offering, basically what you are doing, is you're going and saying, Hey, there's all these kinds of data, structured data, unstructured
data all over the internet. What I'm gonna do is collect and curate all of this date from
all over the internet, and I'm gonna make it available
in a Micro-SaaS offering in a very, very neat tool. So it can be a little data grid, it can be even an air
table that you start with. Where you can sift and
sort through the data, but you've curated that data, you brought together that data. You've remixed that data. That alone, you could say,
hey I can charge $9 a month because I've taken the time to
really pull in all this data for this specific group of people, to help them use it every
single day in their jobs. But, the power of this, where you can really get
into that $30 a month level, is leveraging AI. So let's just say you
have this data flowing in, and you're curating the data, and you're remixing the data, maybe you're doing some calculations. Some interesting things
can come out of this. The first thing that can
come out of this, is updates. Every single time data changes, or there's some new data, you can can send out a little alert through your Micro-SaaS offering, and an email every single day. Like "Hey, here's what's
new with the dataset "that we have been monitoring." The second thing that you
can do, is you can summarize. A lot of people are trying
to search the world, sift through all this data
for their specific verticals in their jobs, and trying
to make some sense of it. If you summarize for them, and say, "Hey, based on all the
data, and the updates, "here's a summary of what we're seeing." That can be $30 a month. And the last one that you can do, is you can deliver insights. You can look at all of this data, and you can start to do
your own calculations, your own summaries, your own trends, and you can start to provide that as part of your offering. And this in itself, doesn't
need a lot of manpower, it's just pulling in the right data, running some algorithms, and
doing these pieces, using AI. You can funnel in your dataset into GPT4, or another model, and start
to generate summaries, start to generate updates, start to generate insights, based on all this data that's coming in. Kind of like how you're
going into ChatGPT today, and it knows an entire world, and it can answer a bunch of questions, you can start to create a more customized curated data offering, where you give them access to the data, the updates, the summaries
and the insights, some of it generated
using AI, for $30 a month. Now needless to say, I kept
this a little abstract, and hopefully that's helpful, you could apply this paradigm
to a lot of different ICPs. You can apply this paradigm to a lot of different users and employees, different daily use cases
to solve their problem. And that's the power in this. You solve this very specific
part of their workday, where they may be researching something, or keeping tabs on things, except now they use your tool to get the update every morning, or the summary every morning,
or the updates every morning, that can be very, very powerful for a very specific group of people. And staying true to my promise, this could turn into something huge. It doesn't have to stay a Micro-SaaS, but it can start as Micro-SaaS. That's idea number one
for a Micro-SaaS idea right now in 2023, when
I'm recording this video. Especially with what I know
about Micro-SaaS businesses, and also with the advent of AI, all the tooling that is now available for little software companies to provide a lot of really powerful features. The second ideas is to essentially create a content creation tool. Now, there are a lot of
general content creation tools already coming out, because of GPT. Where, you have these
broad-based marketing platforms. Or you can create blog posts,
ads, and all of these things. Now, while those broad ones
are great, and they're there. You can get a lot more niche about this. Let's just say you wanna
target real estate agents on how they do Instagram
posts for their listings on a consistent basis. That's super-niche, but you're
targeting this specific ICP, that's something that
they're gonna have to do every single day. And, it's actually part of an urgent and an important problem. Because if they don't do that effectively, they don't sell the houses that they have, or they don't get enough pipeline, they don't get enough leads. You can get very specific with this. And the ideas around this, is your tool can ask your
ICP a set of questions. And they can fill these
out in little text boxes. You can then build your own model, and use GPT and you can then spit out a bunch of really interesting pictures, and posts, just specific to this niche. That's kind of interesting, right? And I use real estate
agents as an example, but you can think about
who has to create content every single day? A lot of people. If you can get specific
about those people, let's just say real estate
agents, or PR people, or demand-generation marketers
for B2B SaaS companies. You can get super-specific
around this and say, just for those people,
I'm gonna help them create really, really great content. I'm gonna zoom into that, and create really
interesting output for them. And that could be a Micro-SaaS tool that they use every
single day, for $30 month. Because every single day,
for about a dollar a day, you are adding value to their daily lives. And the jobs they need
to do on a daily basis. Are you starting to see the power of this? And again, I'm keeping
this relatively abstract, so you can apply to your specific ICP, so you can get super niche, and then again, you can grow from there. Before I go to the third one, I'm really excited about the third one, it's one of my favorites, that's why I left it towards the end. Let me just pause here for a second. Are you starting to see the power in this? Are you starting to see the power in leveraging this Micro-SaaS model, and all these new technologies
available through GPT, and large language models, and AI, to really bring interesting
solutions to the market for very specific groups of people. You can start to see how this could start a new great business. And then from there, you can keep taking the
profits home every month, or you can raise money, it's up to you. You're starting to see the power in this. Can I just get a yes
in the comments below? (air swish) That way I know you're with me. And also, smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm, it just really, really
loves it when you do that. And so do we, we put love in these videos. Also, you're in that stage
where you are pre-product. You're a pre-founder. You're starting to figure out, well, how do a build a SaaS company? Then, I encourage you to check out my 10 Point SaaS Business Checklist. You don't have to go anywhere right now. I'll link to it below, let's
go to idea number three, and also smash our like button
for the YouTube algorithm, he really likes when you do that. Idea number three is an age-old category for Micro-SaaS businesses,
it's truer than ever, and it's needed more than ever. Even though there are
millions of them out there. And it's essentially a
person productivity tool. That's how I would bucket this. And this falls under the bucket of, you could do a to-do list, you could do a notes application, you could do a goals
application, you name it. There's a whole bunch of
personal productivity actions that people do on a daily basis to manage their personal lives, and their professional lives. And most of the time these to-do lists, these note-taking applications,
these goals applications, is not really a personal use case, they wanna be better in their career, and therefore they use it. And trust me, there's always a market for one more to-do list. Everyone wants a new to-do list. Why? Because their current to-do list shows them what they haven't done. And moving to a brand new
to-do list with an empty list that they can start from,
makes them feel good. So, they'll always try a new one. Could churn be hot? Maybe, it depends on how
good your to-do list is. Pretty personal productivity
tools can be really interesting because now you're just
not creating a to-do list. Let's just say you have your standard app with a bunch of to-do's. Or, you have a notes app
with a bunch of notes that you've taken. Or, you have a thing of, a
goals bucket that you create. Any number of these
things could fall under this personal productivity
cloud, essentially. Because there's AI now, in
addition to the to-do list, you can take all this data, and you could feed it into GPT, or any other model that
you choose to work with, and then out of that you
can follow the same model. You can start to deliver some insights. It's like, "Hey, TK, you
were productive last week." Or, "When the weather is
great, you are productive." Or, "When you workout, you're productive." You can do some insights based on all the data you're collecting. You can also start to
summarize what you've done in the past week, based on the to-do list. You can also do predictions. Saying "Hey, over the last six weeks "you've done these items,
and you got them done. "In this coming week, here
are things you can consider." Or, "Every time it's the
fourth week of the month, "you tend to do these things." Or, "You're behind on this
goal, you should set this goal." You can do any number of these things, based on the data that you have. Again, could you charge
$30 a month for that? Maybe depending on how
powerful these insights, or these summaries, or
these predictions are. That's the power of this. These are three concrete ideas. I left them relatively abstract, so you could apply it to
any ICP, any specific niche, and urgent important problem,
and offer it as a tool. And the best part about this, is all of these are designed to be part of a daily use case that you
can charge real money for. And best of all, once it
starts to gain momentum, once you start printing money, these can become money printing machines, you can always go to investors and say, "I have this thing that just prints money. "And turns out, based on
my customer conversations, "there's a bigger vision here, "and I wanna raise money for it." That's what ended up happening
with my last company. And that was pretty cool. Or, right now I operate about
two Micro-SaaS businesses, and they just print
money, every single month. It's really cool. I
practice what I preach. And so, you can also
just let it print money. Whether it's as a side project,
a passive income stream, or, it's part of your main
business, it's up to you. And that's the power of
Micro-SaaS businesses. So, to recap, here is
what makes for a great Micro-SaaS business. You go after a specific
ICP, a specific niche. You are creating a tool,
not a whole platform, that solves a really urgent
and important problem that's part of their daily use case. And it's product-led, so
people can try out the tool, and swipe their credit
card and get value from it, and keep using it, because
they use it every single day. Here are three concrete
ideas that you can develop and apply it, using these principles. You can create a curated data offering. You can create a content creation offering that's super-niche. You can create a personal
productivity tool that uses AI, and all three of these ideas to actually deliver updates, summaries, insights and predictions to really take it up one more level. And that's the power of
living in this moment. It's an incredible time to be
building Micro-SaaS companies. And now you know the exact
principles to follow. These are battle-hardened
by me, over 15 years, being in SaaS, you can
follow these principles to build your own. Now you know exactly what you need to do. What you may not know, is if you got an idea, you don't
know how to stress test it. This is why I created my 10
Point SaaS Business Checklist. (checklist pops) It walks you through 10 key questions that you can answer to
stress-test your idea, and start to develop it in the market, without wasting months
(checklist pops) building the wrong product. You wanna grab a copy of the checklist, it's completely free. Just go to tkkader.com/saas-checklist tkkader.com/saas-checklist Super-easy, also linked to it below. And also linked below, you will get a link to our playlist, which
has all of the videos that I've done around
building Micro-SaaS companies. So you can binge watch them, and understand all of the principles. And you can tie it back
to these concrete ideas, which are brand new right now, given AI creating
massive new opportunities for building profitable
Micro-SaaS businesses. If you got value from this video, please smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do that. If you have a fellow
founder, a fellow team member that will get value from this video, if you're part of a
Slack group, or WhatsApp, please share this video in there. We just love to help as many
SaaS founders as possible. That's why I create these videos, put a lot of love in these. Also, I drop an episode
every single Sunday, with actionable strategies
and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business. Whether it's a Micro-SaaS businesses, or a massive SaaS business. Whether it's self-funded,
or venture-backed. I work with founders of all sizes. Anywhere from pre-revenue, all the way upwards of
$100 million revenue. (air swish) So be sure to hit that
Subscribe button, (bell ringing) and that bell icon. (bell chiming) And, you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. And lastly remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours
is gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK, and I'll see
you in the next episode, or inside that SaaS business
checklist, the link is below. Take care, everybody. (uplifting music) It is actually my
favorite, ah, there we go.
