Manually build your automated solution

Do things manually until you make sure that what you build is what your clients WANT.

Almost all of the entrepreneurs get it wrong. They have a vision that is amazing… and… 80-90% accurate. And that’s great, since your vision is, at best, square one.

Now if you are doing things wrong, you lock yourself up in a basement, sometimes an expensive basement if you’re VC backed, and build the perfect solution. With all the bells and whistles. Perfect. For those users that you built it for. Who do not exist.

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes” - Winnie the Pooh

Most businesses stem from necessity. Scratching your own itch is always recommended. Let’s deconstruct that for a minute - You had a problem and you solved it for yourself and said: “hey, maybe other people like me would like my solution?”.

Let’s dive even deeper - You had a problem and solved it for yourself manually. Since you solved it for yourself, you built a solution held together with duct tape and zip ties. It’s not shiny or fancy or nothing, but it gets the job done!

If you were to show this solution-providing monstrosity of a product to someone, you’d probably die of shame on the spot - this is not a product, it’s a hack at best!

“If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” - Reid Hoffman.

So that dream you had, where everybody is pointing at you and laughing?

That doesn’t happen to entrepreneurs, not in their early stages anyway.

I mean, sure, if you created a mammoth of a company and got on stage in front of thousands of people and completely flipped out (like Tom Cruise on Oprah), yeah that could happen. But right now, no one is actually going to give you that kind of attention, and most people realize you’re just starting out and need good advice.

So when should I start showing people my product?

Yesterday!

Yes, your spreadsheet with formulas. That one that’s only good for 80% of the cases, which you need to manually fix the outliers. Get feedback. Now!

The worst thing you can do is wait for a “launch” to show people what you’re working on. Get used to showing people your work in progress. This has two great advantages - First, you get real-world feedback on what you’re working on which is pure gold. But of even more importance, you start getting used to feedback and critique. Good entrepreneurs are hungry for that - they eat it for breakfast. They can’t wait till you stop telling them how wonderful what they’ve built is and finally get to the “but” part.

But I can’t charge for that!

I know what you’re thinking, I’m even embarrassed to offer it for free. No one in their right mind would ever offer that product for free, let alone charge for the product.

But… what about the result?

Yeah, let’s let that sink in… are you providing a result that’s useful?

“People don’t want quarter-inch drill bits. They want quarter-inch holes.” - Clayton M. Christensen.

Always remember, and it’s really easy to forget - you are providing a solution to a problem.

And while a lot of people are sticklers for design and features, most of us just want our headache to stop.

So I can charge for that?

No!

Definitely not!

You can’t charge for your half-baked product.

But you can charge for the solution your product produces.

I know that’s very confusing, how can I charge for something I’m not allowed to let them use?

(Drum Roll) Enter the services domain.

How can I separate my product from its solution?

How did your oranges get to the grocery store? Oh, I know, you don’t care!

That’s right - it might have been a million-dollar machine that uses AI to pick oranges. Then again, it might have been a bunch of college students trying to make some extra cash on the weekend picking oranges.

When you went to the corner store, you didn’t stop to think about orange picking. You just had oranges on your shopping list and were delighted to find them stacked neatly on the shelf.

If you offer a service and not a product, no one cares how you get the job done.

Can anything be turned into a service?

Well not everything, but almost everything.

Let’s say I have to turn in a report every week to my CFO. This report takes me the better part of an hour weekly! And the worst part is I hate it. It’s boring and repetitive, I feel so stupid creating the report that I started patching together shortcuts every week. Now, 40-50 minutes of weekly boredom has been cut down to 5-10 minutes of hacks and copy-pasting. All your colleagues are asking your help to set it up for them as well. You’ve reached out to some friends in similar companies and they’re all saying the exact same thing. You’re on to something!

Now just build a SaaS MVP with a few minimal features, 3-6 months work.

Great, get started today!

But you’re the one who told me the report was weekly. Read - It doesn’t have to be handed in at a precise time. I have all the data I need and spend an hour (or a day if I procrastinate) before I hand in the report. Come to think of it, my colleagues sometimes email me their spreadsheets and I create the report for them.

Charge for the service, of course!

Yup, if your colleagues are fine with emailing you the data and getting the report a couple of hours later, what about getting some clients through the door?

That’s right, create a landing page, demonstrating the “service” - give us your spreadsheets and we’ll give you a beautiful report, easy peasy. For all they care, you’ve trained a circus elephant to create the report.

So when do I launch my SaaS report maker?

That’s simple - you’ve already launched it!

Let me explain. Someone sends you a report. Then, through a lot of manual use, but also through software (and yes, Google Sheets is software!), you create a report.

That’s right!

Your solution is already a SaaS product, with a single customer - you!

Now focus on what’s important - marketing and sales.

Find out how many people are willing to pay for this solution and how do you reach them?

Then you start collecting data. You start getting reports from employees of a variety of businesses. Maybe you start noticing patterns. Maybe there’s a segment out there that you could service with very few features.

All this time, you start noticing the most interesting intersection in your Venn diagram - easy to automate meets frequently used.

Magic!

That’s right, your software builds itself.

If you offer a service where you create reports as a service, and you build software to help you with that service, at some point that “internal tool” will be mature enough for your early adopters.

You start letting a select few use the tool directly, and through careful iteration and observation, start shifting the business from a manual service to a SaaS.

Final Thoughts

If you try to build the perfect SaaS, you’ll get it wrong. It’s that simple.

But if you build a tool to help you provide services, that tool will ultimately end up being the right tool for your customers to use by themselves.

And guess what?

Your clients are paying you to build this tool, one contract at a time.

Have you ever built the “perfect” SaaS to find out that your clients aren’t happy with it?

Have you ever built something that could have been offered as a service initially?

I’d love to hear about it!

Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash