In a previous post I stated that one of my goals for the year is to:
Build a SaaS business with 1k in monthly recurring revenue before the baby is born
In the past few months I have delved into two different markets while attempting to hit the 1k monthly recurring revenue mark. These markets have not been ripe. I will discuss what I learned from each of them in future posts.
But this week we will reset and begin studying yet another market in search of problems for which to build a software solution.
Here is the current plan:
Week 1 – Locate a niche and gather contact info
– Choose market that fits the appropriate criteria (see Carl Mattiola’s article)
– Evaluate various niches in the market
– Settle on a specific niche
– Find an email list of at least 2000 for the niche
Week 2 – Begin contacting the market
– Send 50 emails a day through Streak (I will detail how I use Streak to reach out to a market in a future post)
– Tweak emails for higher response rates as we learn more about the niche and its problems problems
– Begin idea extraction calls wherein the market articulates their problems
Week 3 – Locate a specific problem
– Once around 500 emails have been sent, we need will step back and evaluate the market
– Is there a common problem?
– Is the problem painful enough that they want to pay to have it resolved?
Week 4 – Evolve a solution to the problem
– Futher clarify the specific problem and start sketching a potential solution
– Start to reach out to developers who can build the solution
– Create mockup of the solution to use for pre-sales
– Get first pre-sales
Week 5 – Prepare to build
– Clarify the marketing message for the solution
– Get estimate of total build time from developer
– Determine cost to build
– Determine number of total pre-sales necessary to eliminate risk
– Continue pre-sales
– Determine exact number of pre-sales in order to green light build
Since our baby is set to arrive around New Years, I have chosen an aggressive schedule in order to try to meet my goal. I am realistic that the software solution will likely take 12 weeks or more to build. Part of the challenge will be for me to remain hands off and allow a third party developer to do the development so that I can focus on the business.
You can expect future updates as I work through this process and work through the plan further. I look forward to sharing both my successes and my failures.