How to Start from Rock Bottom

I’m currently getting started as a SaaS founder. I’m 3-4 months actually focusing on this journey, still learning every day, and it’s hard starting from rock bottom.

Here are 3 tips that helped me get started:

1. Surround yourself with a community

Surrounding myself with a community helped me get into the mindset of being a SaaS founder. While being in the community for a bit, you pick up on little things that founders do. For example, knowing what tech stack to use, learning tips for your landing page to convert, or even how valuable different platforms can be for your SaaS. All of these things I picked up on made it easier to know where to go and get started.

Here are some general platforms that I use that have helped me get into the mindset of being a founder:

• X / Twitter

• Reddit

• Discord

Being in the community and learning from other founders has helped me a ton, I see what they’re doing and get motivated to work on my craft.

2. Taking Action

I know many people (including myself) fall into the trap of consuming knowledge without taking action, and while it may feel good to learn something new and feel like you’re progressing, it has a negative effect when ALL you’re doing is learning something new, but not putting it to good use.

One way I try to combat this is to never have a 0% day for my SaaS. This means that I try to do something every day for my SaaS, no matter how small it is. This can be just making a tweak on a feature for the day because I had no time to do anything else, or focusing on marketing and sending out emails for the day. As long as it’s related to your SaaS, anything that improves it will suffice as not having a 0% day.

The only drawback is that you don’t want to focus on only little improvements, there are days when you want to make drastic changes for the betterment of your SaaS, so use your better judgment to know when to make drastic changes, and when to make smaller ones.

3. Don’t become attached to the product

Especially if you’re a technical founder (as I am), you find it easy to get attached to your product. As a maker, in the past I tend to work on projects for months without any traction, just trying to make minuscule improvements, thinking that the better the product is, the more people will flock to it when it’s done and finished.

THIS ISN’T THE WAY

Truth is, most of your products will fail.

Don’t take it from me, if you’re in the community or about to be, you’ll realize that the founders who “made it” tried with at least 10+ products beforehand to get where they are today.

They build, see if it’s going to work out with users, if it does, they keep going and see where it takes them, if it doesn’t work out, they drop it and move on.

If you’re too attached, you’ll tend to work on one product for a long time even if it isn’t picking up any traction or doing well at all. If you’re able to know when to move on, then you can fail quickly and take what you know to the next project.

The great thing about this is that it means you will eventually have to succeed if you keep failing, as long as you’re learning from previous experiences, you’re always going to improve until you make a winner.

Always stay consistent.

— Michael