Deciding on next startup, part 2
jasonleow • 22 Feb 2025 •
A month ago I wrote about how to decide on my next startup:
💵 Things that make money
- How much revenue are competitors making?
- Is there a reliable and repeatable distribution channel?
- Can I get to $10k/m with it?
💘 Things that people want
- Is this a real and recurring pain?
- Are people already searching and paying for it?
🦸♂️ Things I’m good at
- Can I see a line of sight to building it?
- Do I have the skills or can learn to build and market it?
- Do I have prior experience or special insight in the niche?
🤓 Things I like to do
- Is this a product/market/niche I like or interested in?
But found these today on X that described some of my points way better:
The ideal business for solo founders from a marketing perspective:
- Customers are problem aware and actively searching for a solution
- Growth loop opportunities help reduce acquisition costs
- Pricing is low enough to eliminate the need for sales but high enough to maintain good margins
- Once people start using the product there are significant switching costs
- A vast user base prevents reliance on just a few big customers
- Strong content opportunities with good search volume for bottom of the funnel keywords
––––––
Indie startups that meet this criteria -
- Tally Forms
- Paperform
- Instatus
- Hyperping
- ConvertKit
- Typebot
- Simple Analytics
- Systeme
What else?
The point isn’t to hit every criteria in the list, but enough of it. I think it explains a bunch of my criteria better than I could!
So let’s do a checklist for my two ideas right now:
| Criteria | Book writing SaaS | Canned Support SaaS |
|---|---|---|
| Customers are problem aware and actively searching for a solution | ✅ | ✅ |
| Growth loop opportunities help reduce acquisition costs | 🤔 | 🤔 |
| Pricing is low enough to eliminate the need for sales but high enough to maintain good margins | ✅ | ✅ |
| Once people start using the product there are significant switching costs | ✅ | ✅ |
| A vast user base prevents reliance on just a few big customers | ✅ | 🤔 |
| Strong content opportunities with good search volume for bottom of the funnel keywords | ✅ | ❌ |
So book writing SaaS seems to be the better idea. But more competitive, while the canned support SaaS is more niche – which isn’t captured in the checklist. So is SEO keyword opportunities and current revenue of competitors. But canned support – no idea of revenue potential.
Hard decision.
The best approach? I feel it is to timebox the canned support idea and just launch an MVP and see what happens. Then build the other idea and grow it in SEO over the months. Ambitious? As long as I scope it properly, can be done.
1 project the usual indie way of ship fast and scrappy.
1 other project for long game, slow and steady shipping.
And see if they’ll meet in the middle by the end of the year.
Will be interesting to see how this will pan out!