6 Great SaaS MVP Ideas

Hello SaaStronauts!

In this issue:

• Important Factors in Choosing a Successful Niche
• 6 Great SaaS MVP Ideas
• Copy Something That Works
• Creating the Perfect Name for Your SaaS
• How to Instantly Recognize a Good SaaS Idea from a Bad One

🚀 Let's blastoff!

🤔 Important Factors in Choosing a Successful Niche

• A niche is a focused area of a larger market that can help you differentiate from competitors in the same market.
• Successful niches previously-unidentified fill holes in markets with underserved customers.
• Stick in areas that you are knowledgeable, then find subtopics within that area to niche into.
• Try to solve the large pain points your niche audience has.
• Getting your target audience involved in the creation of your MVP is essential.

Our takeaways from "How to Find Your Business Niche". Read this article.

💡 6 Great SaaS MVP Ideas

• Most startups fail because they create their product with false assumptions about what their users want, or there aren't any customers who want the product at all.
• Creating an MVP (minimum viable product) allows you to test your ideas with real customers before investing a ton of time and money.
• Types of MVPs...
• A software prototype is a smaller version of the actual product that includes just a few core features. It is the most complicated form of MVP.
• Product designs can just be created easily with design software, or even just a hand drawn sketch. They can give visually show how your product works.
• Demo videos explain your product in video form with visualizations, possibly of what your product might look like in action.
• Landing pages can help you measure interest by collecting emails. You can later market directly to these emails if you launch the product.
• Piecemeal MVPs rely on existing third party tools wired together to demonstrate how the final product could work.
• Wizard of OZ MVPs market the product as if it is a finished solution, when it's actually still in development.
• Some successful MVPs...
• Amazon initially bought books directly from distributors and shipped to customers manually on every order.
• AdWords Express made users think it was auto-writing copy, but it was powered by students manually writing ads.
• Zappos founder started by taking pictures of photos from stores to see if anyone would buy them online.

Our takeaways from "11 Standout Examples of Minimum Viable Products". Read this article.

✂️ Copy Something That Works

📛 Creating the Perfect Name for Your SaaS

• The right name can help potential customers better understand your product, make it more memorable, and help you stand out from your competitors.
• Generate a large list of names with various strategies including descriptive words, dictionary words, made-up words, blending words together, and even misspelled words.
• Your name should be easy to remember and easy to pronounce verbally.
• Avoid words and sounds that have a negative connotation. (Early in Amazon's history they went by the name Cadabra, but changed when it was pointed out the name sounded like "cadaver".)
• Look at your brand and other products that exist in the same market. Picture your name existing on the same list as theirs. Does it stand out?
• You can do formal research and poll potential customers on which of your name ideas they prefer.

Our takeaways from "How to find the perfect product name". Read this article.

👍 How to Instantly Recognize a Good SaaS Idea from a Bad One

• Don't start your SaaS business if any of these important pillars are missing...
• Viability: Can it make money?
• Feasibility: Can it realistically be made?
• Desirability: Do enough people actually want it?
• Use your own product to solve your own problems (aka "dogfood") your product to instantly find out if it's actually useful or not.
• If the problem your product solves is a small or infrequent problem, it might be hard to make money. Try to solve frequent, or large problems.
• Make sure your pricing actually works for your target audience. Charge high if you can, but expensive solutions may not work if your audience is used to cheap tools to solve the same kinds of problems.

Our takeaways from "How To Find BRILLIANT SaaS Ideas". Watch this video.

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