Why you should consider building a SaaS company

I think before considering to build a SaaS, it's worth just building an agency or service based company. When you've got that going well, get into SaaS. I give this advice, because I think there is valuable experience in running a consultancy/service based agency. For one, it teaches you how to deal with clients, and how to manage relationships.

When moving into SaaS, you'll need to be a master of client retention and lead generation. And the only way to do both of these functions well is to have some skill or experience dealing with clients. When you are building a SaaS, you probably won't have many clients, and the one you do have shouldn't be guinea pigs.

An approach you can consider to building a SaaS company is starting from open-source projects like HashiCorp. There are many advantages:

• fast POC & iteration, the community is very welcoming
• can start from a side project
• find PMF even before founding a company

And a lot more. But be careful about your project type (it may not be suitable for open-source) and the license you choose.

The biggest reason for setting up a SaaS company (from me analyzing hundreds of interviews) is the founder working/owning a service-based business and seeing multiple clients having the same problem.

I think one of the main difference between bootstrapped and VC companies are the way they acquire their paying customers. Since bootstrappers have less money we have to get creative. I find that following the "audience first" approach helps a lot in increasing the chances of success

I'm self-funding my Saas, but this data is good because it gives you an idea of how much others budget for things like sales and marketing, research and development etc. You'd be surprised at how often this is overlooked because you think you'll do everything yourself. In reality, you always need more money for these things if you want to see faster growth.

Great info for newbies wanting to launch in the SaaS space. I think the numbers can often be skewered by a few of the bigger SaaS companies, so I agree that it's important to pay attention to those in your niche of a similar size.