Why being a SaaS founder is awesome? 💪

It is officially the third week of me being able to call myself a founder, and it is just awesome! Not just because it sounds cool but because you can drive your vision and showcase what you can do.

We are building our first SaaS product, UpEmbed. This will be a video marketing tool designed to maximize your reach and generate leads making every second of your video count.

We have taken the approach to building in public, meaning that everything we do, the highs and the lows, we share in public and get feedback from our potential customers and other founders along the way. This has helped us brand ourselves and refine our idea along the way.

It was our two-week anniversary last week, and I’ve written a post about what we’ve accomplished so far that you can read here.

So, my three weeks of being a founder have been incredible because of the following:

Getting out of the comfort zone:

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” — Zig Ziglar.

As an employee for over six years, I have had the fortune of working with one of the greatest companies (ContentStudio.io) with superhuman mentors and colleagues who’ve shaped my entire professional career and the outlook of what it means to be in a fast-paced startup environment. I joined when we were just eight people working on creating the world’s most awesome social media management app. As the product progressed, so did I.

Now, with our project UpEmbed, we are starting from scratch. We are not backed by any company or VC or have any user base to rely on to sell our product. Instead, we are two founders (Seerat and I) working on a product that can succeed.

The comfort of getting paid each month compared to the risk of months of hard work, money, sweat, and tears all going to waste is the barrier that stops a lot of potential founders from taking the leap of faith.

Unless you take the leap, you will never feel this adrenaline rush, the constant urge to push yourself to do more.

It does seem like a significant risk but then what if we win? What if we succeed? What if we become the most incredible video marketing tool the world has seen! It is in our human nature to break down barriers and fight for what we believe, and so it is on.

Building your dream:

“Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt.

UpEmbed isn’t the first in the market but it will be the only one you will remember.

This idea had been stuck in our heads for some time. First, we would share competitors and try to reverse-engineer their features until we realized they all left wide spaces we could fill. Then, we would share our findings, and the dream would seem more and more achievable.

And well, we are working on something we can proudly own. This is the ultimate push and has developed the urge to succeed.

Learning from others:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi.

Individually, I would have my own experiences and would learn from them. But then learning from others and their experiences at least gives you an idea of what will come and what to expect in similar situations.

It is now my hobby to daily read at least five different articles on marketing and business strategies. In addition, I would sometimes look up other founders’ stories on Indie Hacker to learn from their experiences and make notes on what we can apply to our product.

Also, the one-to-one sessions are the best! Since you can only make a SaaS product with other SaaS products, I would reach out to their founders directly and ask them random questions, and they would happily answer. This is the greatness of this community, everyone is accessible, and you can reach out to them directly.

Trying out new things:

“You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to.” — C.S. Lewis.

I have been a developer throughout my life. I’ve learned and experimented with many development processes and technologies in the past weeks alone that I never did before. This is also part of getting out of the comfort zone phase. It doesn’t feel enjoyable when things don’t work how I want them to. Still, the sense of achievement for accomplishing the hurdle is incomparable.

Also, something completely new that I am testing out is marketing. I am really new to marketing a product, so testing out all of the social platforms and analyzing what sticks. This is also fun because I interact with different people and share my ideas.

Networking:

“Networking is an investment in your business. It takes time and when done correctly can yield great results for years to come.” — Diane Helbig.

Ever since I started building UpEmbed, I’ve been able to reach out to so many founders, and the discussions are just amazing. I noticed that the conversation is never about them. It is always about the problem that they are trying to solve.

I never realized that just listening to people would be so much fun. There is always this feeling that we are part of a community and are willing to help others succeed.

You can make the greatest product in the world; if you fail to get people interested in it, all that effort is wasted. So communication is critical to any business’s success. We are actively engaging with other people because, at the end of the day, they are the ones we are building our service for.

There is still so much I want to write about what makes it awesome, but for now, I guess these points would be convincing enough 😎

Do share what you think? And what you feel makes being a founder awesome!
Please follow our social platforms to stay up to date on our progress and connect with us…

Founders:

• Muneeb Awan
• Seerat Awan

Website: https://upembed.com/

Product Journey: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/upembed

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