S5E7 – From Idea to Income: How to Build, Launch & Scale a Successful Micro-SaaS With Alex Urquhart

Are you wondering on How to Build Launch & Scale a Successful Micro-SaaS? In today’s fast-paced digital world, micro SaaS platforms are making waves and for good reason. As our guest describes it, micro SaaS is a streamlined version of Software as a Service that addresses specific problems with targeted solutions. Unlike traditional SaaS, which aims to cover a broad range of needs, micro SaaS focuses on niche markets, often created by solo entrepreneurs or small teams. This trend signals a shift toward more specialized, affordable, and user-friendly software that truly makes an impact.

In this enticing yet intriguing episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast, host Joran Hofman sits down with Alex Urquhart, the founder of Market Science, to discuss micro SaaS more specifically, how to build, launch, and scale a successful micro SaaS.

Why Micro SaaS?

What makes micro SaaS so appealing? Its simplicity and efficiency! Alex emphasizes the importance of honing in on one user, one pain point, and one solution. This straightforward approach cuts development costs and makes scaling much easier. Take early successes like Calendly and ChatPDF: they started as micro SaaS platforms focused on single tasks—scheduling and document interaction—before growing into broader solutions. By staying targeted, developers can move faster and validate their ideas in the market quickly.

Niche Focus for Success

One of the key benefits of micro SaaS is the emphasis on following best practices. These platforms encourage creators to target niche markets and clearly define their value. In a crowded market where users face countless options, having a clear focus is essential. The low barriers to entry and potential for bootstrapping make micro SaaS an attractive choice for many budding entrepreneurs. Plus, with lower operational costs, founders can keep control over their vision without needing massive investments.

Adaptability is Essential

However, navigating the micro SaaS landscape comes with its challenges. As Alex points out, being able to pivot quickly is crucial. Entrepreneurs must adapt their solutions based on user feedback and market changes. This agility is vital since new competitors can pop up in no time. Staying focused on user experience and continuously improving is key to sustaining growth and outpacing rivals.

Watch on YouTube

A Well-Rounded Skill Set

Launching a micro SaaS requires a diverse skill set. Founders need to wear many hats, from product development to marketing. Understanding the target market is vital, often stemming from personal experience with the issue at hand. For those without direct experience, thorough research and connecting with potential users for feedback are essential to ensure the product truly meets their needs.

Building a Strong Presence

Transforming a micro SaaS startup into a sustainable business requires strategic growth and marketing. Initially, this might involve traditional marketing tactics and tapping into personal networks. Over time, building a personal brand and engaging with communities through webinars, podcasts, and other content can boost credibility and foster a loyal user base. These efforts can lead to organic growth and a thriving community around the product.

In summary, micro SaaS presents an exciting opportunity for entrepreneurs willing to put in the effort. By focusing on specific user needs, staying adaptable, and cultivating strong networks, founders can turn their micro SaaS projects into successful and sustainable ventures. With the right approach, the future of micro SaaS looks bright!

Key Timestamps

• (0:49) – Importance of Understanding the Market
• (1:15) – Introduction of Guest: Alex Urquhart
• (1:44) – What is Micro SaaS?
• (1:56) – Defining Micro SaaS
• (2:36) – Examples of Micro SaaS
• (3:18) – Why Build a Micro SaaS?
• (3:23) – Benefits of Micro SaaS
• (4:14) – Positioning and Product Messaging
• (5:08) – Low Objections and Pricing
• (6:06) – Low Running Costs and Expectations
• (7:04) – Simplicity in Micro SaaS
• (7:09) – Skills Needed for Micro SaaS Success
• (7:39) – Grit and Tenacity in Micro SaaS
• (8:37) – Pivoting Quickly in Micro SaaS
• (9:32) – Product-Led Growth in Micro SaaS
• (10:26) – Validating Ideas in Micro SaaS
• (10:58) – Identifying a Niche for Micro SaaS
• (11:47) – Utilizing Personal Experience
• (12:37) – Finding Gaps in Established Products
• (13:39) – Simplifying Existing Solutions
• (14:30) – Importance of Repetitive Tasks
• (14:34) – Passion in Solving Personal Problems
• (15:11) – Research and Understanding the Market
• (15:17) – Building an MVP for Micro SaaS
• (16:23) – Testing MVP Viability
• (17:20) – Validating Before Building
• (18:05) – Generating Leads for Micro SaaS
• (18:49) – Outbound Strategies for Early Users
• (19:39) – Building Connections and Research
• (20:25) – Launching with Early Customers
• (21:16) – Community Engagement
• (22:10) – Sharing Knowledge and Building Value
• (23:00) – Building a Personal Brand
• (23:37) – Scaling Micro SaaS
• (24:19) – Challenges in Scaling
• (25:11) – Fast Followers and Competition
• (26:15) – Growth Loops and SEO
• (27:09) – Marketing and Ads in Scaling
• (28:02) – Supplementary Income Strategies
• (28:44) – Transitioning to Sustainable Income
• (29:34) – Proof of Concept and Testing
• (30:33) – Validating Demand Before Launch
• (30:53) – Common Mistakes in Micro SaaS
• (31:05) – Being Open to Pivoting
• (32:03) – Avoiding Rush to Automate
• (32:52) – Manual Processes and Validation
• (33:19) – Starting a B2B SaaS Company
• (34:12) – Being Manual in Go-to-Market
• (35:11) – Building a Personal Brand
• (36:12) – Community Involvement and Networking
• (37:07) – Scaling Towards 10 Million ARR
• (38:10) – Detaching and Hiring Right People
• (39:02) – Importance of Founder Presence
• (39:56) – Leading with Culture
• (40:15) – Summarizing Key Points
• (41:18) – Importance of Validation and Research
• (42:24) – Final Thoughts and Resources
• (42:50) – Contact and Closing Remarks

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Alex Urquhart

In those early days, people come back. If you’ve researched and you’ve had a good connection with them and got to know them and they believe in what you’re trying to do, going back to them, keeping a register of those people you’ve spoken with. I do in terms of research, but the name, the company, the email address. And going back to them first, a task that takes 30 minutes, for example. Could you get it done in a couple of minutes, like one or two minutes or less? Don’t try to go, Hey, we’re going to try and revolutionize the way people order their food or something like that, which is still great. But in terms of micro-assessment, what can we do in our day-to-day work or an hour, even personal lives, things that take half an hour or so? How can we really nail that down? What’s that repetitive structure that’s frustrating that we could close that gap really easily? 6-12, 18 months is spent understanding the market, whether your product or developer or marketing or sales or whatever that is. I think ideally being from the area understanding the users. If you are a user, that’s even better.

[00:00:49.670] – Alex Urquhart

If you’re someone who uses it a lot or someone who’s had that pain point, that’s a good place to start. If you don’t have that person, research the crap out of it. It goes up to maybe three or four meetings a week. I reach out to people for 20 minutes for some research to pick their brains about a couple of concepts or try to diagnose their jobs to be done or just really get as much information as I can because there definitely is confirmation bias for your own ideas.

[00:01:15.170] – Joran

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about micro SaaS, more specifically, how to build, launch, and scale a successful micro SaaS. My guest today is Alex Urquhart. Alex started his career in sales, moved later to go-to-market, head of marketing, and is now advising companies on their product marketing. He does this with a company called Market Science. Next to this, he’s also a mentor and growth mentor, and he shares a lot of content on LinkedIn as a sub stack about SaaS, product marketing, go-to-market, and everything else related to startups. Welcome to the show, Alex.

[00:01:44.100] – Alex Urquhart

Thanks so much, Joran. Great to be here, mate. I feel very privileged.

[00:01:47.280] – Joran

Let’s just dive right in. We’re going to talk about micro SaaS, how to build, launch, and scale one. But let’s start with the super basics. What is actually a micro SaaS?

[00:01:56.670] – Alex Urquhart

Probably the simplest version is just in the name. It’s a simpler version of software as a service. So subscription-based servicing. The way I like to frame it is we think about basic functionality. One user, one pain point, one solution, one persona. Instead of using a SaaS in terms of enterprise level, it could be B2C or marketplaces. I want to think about micro SaaS. A lot of them are B2B versions of it, but basically very small scale SAS, single-point solutions, and typically a differentiator is run by one person. You hear about these people called indie hackers or free glances that can build on their own. So single-team micro-SAS that can be run by one or even a part-time person.

[00:02:36.660] – Joran

So one user, one persona, one solution, one person actually building it. It’s keeping it small.

[00:02:42.880] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, I think that’s my personal definition. I’m sure that There’s a lot of other microsas experts out there, but my personal definition is a single use case, single persona, single pain point. I’m sure we’ll get to in a bit of it. There’s some examples I’d argue potentially Calendly back in the day. It was a single use case, single pain point that they solve. There’s other ones out there from I think Chat PDF is now a big one as well. You can upload a PDF, ask it questions using AI. The Hemingway app, I don’t know if you ever used that before. That’s a pretty handy app. It helps you simplify your words, your text. It’s just one page as a whole app. Very simple, but plugs are usually a common, but painful point that people just go, I want this little thing taken care of.

[00:03:18.740] – Joran

Why should people consider building a micro SaaS?

[00:03:23.140] – Alex Urquhart

I think, I will caveat again, there’s some people I’ve met who are micro SaaS veterans. By no means is it the easy option. I think all startups and all founders have their own journey. But I think for micro SaaS, I love it personally and I advocate for it. I think originally I did a post about this on LinkedIn and it got some attention off the back of it, is that it forces you to do best practice. As I said before, single use a single problem, be very specific with the problem, test it, find a… If you get built an all in one with those old coin phrases when it comes to products, if you can’t really nail, okay, what are you doing this for? Who are you trying to help in what way? It also forces you to start with a niche. We always talk about nailing a niche in startups. We always talk about finding a pain point, finding a specific user in a specific channel. I think the idea with micro SaaS is that you’re forced to do it. So I think number one is definitely force you to do best practice. You can’t really develop the crap out of something and hope it works.

[00:04:14.380] – Alex Urquhart

The other one is positioning and product messaging. I think one of the biggest issues in B2B SaaS today is people struggle to articulate what they do. There’s a lot of really great experts coming out at the moment, but being able to say if you’re, say that Calendly example or chat PDF It’s pretty easy to frame what you do. You can explain the functionality of it. I help do this. You upload a PDF, you can ask questions. Really simple. People get it. If you have the problem, it rings pretty true. I think for the perceived effort of customers, that’s another one as well. Now, more and more, we’ve got, I think in the last couple of years, it’s increasing by 20 or 20, 30% every year of the number of SaaS applications we use as professionals is growing. I think there’s resistance to change. People are just flooded with it. They don’t want to adopt a new product. They don’t want to spend more budget. But something that’s smaller, cheaper, easier, single use case that you can basically get value out of almost immediately, I think that’s another bonus. Low objections to pricing as well as is another pretty important one.

[00:05:08.620] – Alex Urquhart

You’ve got a few where to sell, which I’ve done in the past, sold enterprise-level SaaS. You’re talking about multiple stakeholders, multiple value props, timelines. You’ve got huge heaps to jump through for security and procurement. But if you look at a simple plugin, ideally with the credit card payment, get started quickly, less objections, less friction, people more open to it. As an example, I always use Adify. Have you ever heard of Adify before? They’re doing really well. So I use those guys and I pretty much purchase it on the spot. They basically do a plugin for YouTube videos that they give you summaries of it or the transcript or just stop points. It saves me so much time when I want to watch an hour’s webinar Instead, I’ll just jump on that, click a button, and it’ll give me the quick breakdown to see if that’s of interest to me. That’s $3.99 a month. Just buy it straight away. They’ve got 500,000 users, 2 million ARR right then and there for a pretty standard tool. Low running cost is the other one. There’s less of a need to go and get investment. You haven’t got to build a really complicated dev team or a product team and go through it.

[00:06:06.620] – Alex Urquhart

A lot of these guys are really talented, but they can build a heap of these micro-sasses just off the back of… I know a couple of them who do it part-time. On top of their full-time job as well. Simpler running costs, lower prices, lower expectations as well. You sell a $2,000-a-month SaaS product, that comes with expectations for support. What you get out of it if people don’t get what they want, they put up a fight. But smaller ones, it’s, I need to do this one problem I need to fix. If you can fix it, great. I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole on it, but I’m also not going to expect a half hour meeting with your support team. That’s probably the four or five main ones. My favorite one being that simplified messaging, simplified go-to-market, and also the less need for investors, not ragging on any investors out there, but I think too early on, sometimes that investment can sway the vision of the product as well, and you get more freedom. It’s easy to bootstrap, and you can steer it in any way you want. Seeing some of these micro sasas start with this niche or simple process and then build out from that and create more and eventually turn into a decent-size SaaS product if they wish to go down that path.

[00:07:04.740] – Alex Urquhart

In the early days, it’s very simple, small barrier to entry, and it gets the customers in faster. Nice.

[00:07:09.990] – Joran

I think that’s a really good reason why to start. I guess the follow-up question I would have here, simple doesn’t always mean easier, right? Because a simplified go-to-market, sometimes it’s even harder to really nail down your go-to-market if you want to make it super simplified. I guess to turn into my next question, what skills or knowledge do you think are needed to actually succeed in a micro SaaS, things are going to be simple and simplified and smaller, but you have to do everything probably yourself as well. What do you actually need to be successful?

[00:07:39.120] – Alex Urquhart

That’s a good question. I’d say, I think similar to that whole, and I hate the phrase founder mode, but it’s that grit and the ability I don’t think with any product, we can build it and hope for the best. It’s having the ability to go out there a lot, particularly in the early days, and learn a lot what the process is, because I think the catch is as well. As much as a low barrier is fantastic, it gets to the market a bit faster, gets some users, validate your product. The bad part of having a low barrier, as we all know, is people can come in easy, but they can leave easy. So if we’re not really justifying a niche spot day to day workforce, it can lower that and people can leave quite quickly. So I think the skills that do micro SaaS Just old school tenaciousness. There’s some really good X-Marketers or salespeople who are willing to just go out there cold call or cold email, meet people and try and validate the product. I think having the ability to pivot quickly is another one as well. So I guess if you make it for argument’s sake, an emailing tool, and you go out there and some people like it, some people don’t, it’s not hit in the mark, you’ve got the room to build on top of it.

[00:08:37.930] – Alex Urquhart

You can still iterate and grow a product and refine it. But with microsas, the beauty of it being small, simple, and cheap is that if you pivot too much, you’ve pretty much got to start again in a way. And I know I’m doing run right now with a partner of mine, and he’s got, I think we’ve done maybe two or three pivots so far, very basic MVPs. But we try to validate as much as we can. We ask as many people as we can. We keep super lean. And then we go, yeah, this is not really feeling like someone find it interesting, but people aren’t necessarily wanting to pay for it. So maybe we got to think about this problem again. So I think having a decent level of understanding of product-led growth, or that’s a very broad statement, but in terms of understanding, you are UX product marketing and the ability to market and sell and on board and get people active on a product that doesn’t need a lot of handholding. In saying that, like all startups in the first day You’ve got to be quite manual. You’ve got to get people up and running.

[00:09:32.130] – Alex Urquhart

You’ve got to get your hands dirty. But over time, I take that AtoFi company for an example. If you’re charging four dollars a month and you look at a return period of six months, you’re looking at $24, right? You’ve got to try to figure out a way to find them, get them on board, activate them, and keep them retained. Some PLG best practices. How do you engage with the market? Are there certain things like growth loops? And for those of the growth loops being when people send you an invite and it’s powered by Calendly for the freemium tier, you can use it. It helps build that traction or helps build more people to come to your platform. So I’d say being very good with UR, UX, being very good with product-led growth and being able to pivot very quickly, being able to move to another idea in the early days, at least. So It’s going to be married to your idea because if this simple, smaller solutions, the beauty of them are that they’re simple and they’re small. And if we overcomplicate it, build on top of it, you got to be willing to burn some stuff some days.

[00:10:26.180] – Joran

Yeah. And I think this is a good example of simple doesn’t always mean easy in this case. You mentioned you need to be able to do a lot of things. You need to quickly validate your ID, being able to sell, be good with your UX, like that code. You will need to be able to do a lot of things to build a microsize. We’re going to break it down. We’re going to talk about build large-end skills. Let’s start with the first question. How can somebody, if they’re convinced they want to build a microsource, can you walk us through the process of identifying maybe a niche market or a specific pain point when they want to build a microsource?

[00:10:58.050] – Alex Urquhart

I’m always a big advocate of founders creating products from industries they’re familiar with or at least have a lot of exposure to. It’s like the number one thing with new products is learning all the nuances. If you go to a new company or a new industry you’re not familiar with, the first 6-12, 18 months is spent understanding the market, whether your product or developer or marketing or sales or whatever that is. I think ideally being from the area understanding the users, if you are a user, that’s even better. If you’re someone who uses it a lot or someone who’s had that pain point, that’s a good place to start. If you don’t have that person, research the crap out of it. It goes up to maybe three or four meetings a week. I reach out to for 20 minutes for some research to pick their brains about a couple of concepts or try diagnose their jobs to be done or just really get as much information as I can because there definitely is confirmation bias for your own ideas. And there’s no perfect linear path to this. But these are ideas that I consider. My partner is a developer who’s helped me on this.

[00:11:47.380] – Alex Urquhart

He always says, think about a task that takes 30 minutes, for example, and could you get it done in a couple of minutes, like one or two minutes or less? Don’t try to go, hey, we’re going to try and revolutionize the way people order their food or something like that, which is still great. But in terms of micro-assessment, what can we do in our day to day work or in our even personal lives, things that take half an hour or so? How can we really nail that down? What’s that repetitive structure that’s really frustrating that we could close that gap really easily with? And that being the same before about A to five, and I like their version of summarizing the transcript really quickly. You can export the transcript, put it in ChatGPT and do those things as well, but they cut those steps down for that as well. So I think thinking of processes in your work or different areas, if you can cut that down to ideally a minute. The other one I think is really good is that, if a blessing and a curse, the SaaS industry right now is, I hate to keep saying flooded, but it is just full of products.

[00:12:37.790] – Alex Urquhart

There is a product for everything. And now I feel these products are getting better. So there’s just so much going on. And that some of the bigger players, the HubSpots and the sales forces and the Mailchimp, those guys so big and they start growing laterally soon. I think that’s all the other day, Notion is getting into email now. I think Mailchimp is now almost a full CRM. They get bigger and bigger. Whilst they’re growing as this behemoth, the opportunity is, I think that sometimes within their suite of tools, there’s usually something they’re not doing very well or something that they could be even missing. And something I like to do as you go through like product pages, Capterra, SourceForge, all these different areas, and you try to find the ratings of the products that get like one star. And if someone’s, I hate this part of this product or Salesforce annoys me that it doesn’t do this thing. And finding those gaps, I think within the larger, more established platforms out there and going, can I do it better? And the third part to that would be, is there parts of it that people say someone wants to buy HubSpot, but they only want to use it for this one piece of it?

[00:13:39.000] – Alex Urquhart

And it’s maybe instead of a pipeline, maybe that’s all they want in a system. They just want to automate the pipeline. Is there a system out there? I know Pipedrive and there’s some other ones out there. Can you break that down into a symbol of use case of it? Like who was it? Same as HubSpot with their BCC email, the BCC email that tracks all the emails and loges it to the profiles of the people. If there’s something small and you just want to pull out and go, I’m just going to use that piece, I don’t need to have the full suite of the CRM. I just want to take this one recording piece. And if someone’s willing to pay for that, but like I said, that comes back down to you can’t get away from it. Best practices for going to market, who’s the product for, what they want to use it, are they willing to pay for it, and what pain is going to solve. I I think those are a few areas that I look at and really try to think. I think one of the best ones is what’s something in your day to day work or your team’s day to day work that takes 20, 30 minutes or an hour that is repetitive, ideally on a monthly basis that you could cut down for a couple of clicks of button.

[00:14:30.440] – Alex Urquhart

Easiest had been done, but I definitely see some amazing work out there.

[00:14:34.840] – Joran

Yeah. I think if it’s something you experience yourself, you’re going to have a lot more passion with it rather than you’re going to find something by either researching or checking the negative reviews, which is a really good one. Still, you won’t be as passionate, probably as you experience the problem yourself, and you’re basically going to fix your own problem.

[00:14:54.760] – Alex Urquhart

100%. I think just on the last point, if you’re familiar with the problem, the old saying, if there’s no product for this, then why? Sometimes there’s a good reason. Sometimes people have tried and failed pretty hard on it. If you’re in the industry, I realize now why no one’s done this, or I don’t know why no one’s done this. So yeah, I completely agree.

[00:15:11.880] – Joran

Yeah, and that’s where the research comes into place. Check if somebody actually tried to do it already before you.

[00:15:17.350] – Alex Urquhart

Yes.

[00:15:18.350] – Joran

Let’s say things work out or things look good, research looks good. We’re going to build an MVP. What steps do you recommend for building the MVP, so the minimum viable product? How would you test it viability? We already talked about making sure it has a pain point, but how do we make sure that you can go further with it?

[00:15:36.610] – Alex Urquhart

I think there’s a lot of crossover to standard MVP, building the base use cases of it. The one I do now is I do a really standard product marketing, go-to-market pitch deck, just a pain in the use case, and a couple of concept images of what I see it working and how it working. The beauty of Microsoft, that’s really simple. It doesn’t have to be 15 pages and different dashboards. It’s hopefully just a really small version of it. I think testing that, and I’ll call these meetings and I’ll ask people go through their jobs to be done and what are they doing here? What are their pain points, what they love, what they need? I’ll show them the product at the end and be like, This is what I’m thinking. That version of it has saved me a lot of time and money of people getting to there and going, This is cool. I think I had six meetings by the sixth one that just said, This is cool. I love the idea. I get it. I’d probably use it, but I wouldn’t pay for it. I’m like, Okay, good to know. There’s back to the drawing board on that.

[00:16:23.600] – Alex Urquhart

Thank God we didn’t put any code into this. I think that one there of going to those areas, I think the simple pitch deck, it’s not perfect, but at least I’m talking to people who have a full-time job and they’re exploring, as you said, a micro-sass or playing with the idea, I’m the biggest advocate of crawl, walk, then run. Don’t build anything quickly. Don’t try to scale it too quickly. Get the foundation blocks done first. I I think spending the time, like I know one of the ideas we did, it was a very basic website and it was really bare minimum data we put in the back. And I could probably share it, but it was the idea of people commenting a lot. I know people on LinkedIn a lot, they’re forced to interact with posts. The algorithm forces you to interact before it rewards you. There’s a lot of flooding of AI comments, and I’m sure you’ve seen them out there. There’s the same generic comment that’s set under each thing. I was like, Surely there’s a faster way to do it, not all AI, because that’s not working. But what if instead, if you’ve written, say, 100 blog posts or yourself on this podcast, and what if it could read your existing content?

[00:17:20.510] – Alex Urquhart

I’m sure there’s nuggets of gold in there that you could pull out and give yourself a quote of, Hey, here’s an idea to add to this post. Here’s something I can add. We’ve drawn a very basic version of it. We I tested a couple of times, some good, some bad. But when I say MVP, this thing was very basic. It was just enough for me because I was probably one of the users. I could test it and have a bit of a play with it. So I would say there’s no different advice from normal SaaS. Don’t rush into it. Don’t build too quickly. Validate the crap out of it and wait until you hear the same response over and over again. Refine my pitch. Eventually, if I keep hearing the same feedback, ideally good feedback, I go, okay, there’s something here. I spoke about you before we started this podcast about another idea I have and you shared a very similar sentiment that probably last couple of you have spoken to as well. I find that very interesting. There’s something with a clear pattern there.

[00:18:05.240] – Joran

Want to learn how Expandee made over 100K in a year by having other people recommending them? By simply listing their affiliate program in the ready to This marketplace, they receive with new affiliate requests which turned into traffic, which turned into recurring revenue. Want to learn more? Go to getreadythis. Com. I like the idea you bring building a pitch deck before even writing a line of code. Validate your ID, and if people are not willing to pay for it, then at least you have to spend a lot of money and effort and time into building something. But let’s say ID is validated, so we’re going to go to the launch phase. We now build a super early MVP of the microsize. How do we generate first leads, attract first-time users for a product which is super simplistic, right?

[00:18:49.630] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, for sure. I think in the early, like I was going, this might go against my sentence before, but I think definitely knowing the PLG side of things. If you’re an SEO expert or know someone there or you’ve got a certain area you think you can slot yourself I’ve been into that. But I think bare bones right at the beginning. I just have never worked anywhere that you can get away from it, but good old fashioned outbound within reason. But don’t spam your market. But being able to reach out to people, crawl, walk, run. If you’ve ideally done the previous steps, you should know your You should know your positioning, you should know your messaging of what you need to say, the pain point you’re going to validate. I think something that is really handy is those research stages. It’s funny, right? When I say to someone, Hey, can I show you my product? No, maybe not. But if I say, I’ve got this idea I’m building an MVP for. I’d love to get your feedback or I’d love to see what you think. Then all of a sudden, there’s substantially more acceptance rates and people go, Yeah, I’d love to check it out.

[00:19:39.220] – Alex Urquhart

And it’s ironic because it’s somewhat of a bit of a sales pitch anyway. You’re just explaining your idea, and if it rings true to them, then they’ll come back to it. So I’d say a lot of the times I’ve done that in these early days, people come back if you’ve researched and you’ve had a good connection with them and got to know them and they believe in what you’re trying to do, going back to them, keeping a register of those people you’ve spoken with. I do in terms of research, but the name, the company, the email address And going back to them first, and I know there’s companies called like SCORE app. If you’ve heard of SCORE app before, they do some pretty cool stuff in terms of waiting pages. So they’ll do ones like sign up for your expression of interest. And they’ll say, here’s this idea we’re building. It’s coming soon. And it’ll ask you some questions. It’ll say, What’s your main use case for this? What’s your pain point for this? How much would you pay for this? And it’s a qualifier. But if you can get enough people to go through that, fill that out and go, Hey, I’ve got a little database now as I release this.

[00:20:25.480] – Alex Urquhart

And if you’re feeling up for it, you can do the whole build in public, send them updates of what you’re doing. But I think that And the research section of find those first customers is a pretty solid area because they’ve probably built report with them. They probably know what you’re on about, and they’re probably more willing to try it first. So I think launching that first, finding a first couple, the first one is saying, do some outbound, being comfortable with outbound. I know some people aren’t, but I think having the ability that if you have built something that you love and you do know who you’re targeting, it’s so much easier than just mass spam in your market. So I think going after those ones. But I think long term, ideally, I’m a big fan of building your own personal brand. And I know for some people, it’s like pulling teeth. It’s a lot of effort and it’s not an immediate payoff. But I’ve worked with many founders who take the time to join communities or join Discord groups or LinkedIn groups or even just local communities or try to think of any other ones, even just like local meetups, like people in person or conferences.

[00:21:16.780] – Alex Urquhart

I think getting into that industry, depending on what you’re doing and being renowned more and more, that helps people build a following for you. If you start talking about it or build in public, you get some people coming through. There’s something called the Lean Marketing is what I call it. And pretty much that’s, for example, if I was to build a content creation tool as a Microsoft tool and I did a webinar about the best practices or I shared my research or I found, hey, here is what the top 50 content creators deal with. They’re three biggest problems or something like that. And I did say a webinar going to different community groups. So if there’s like, as I said, a Discord group or a LinkedIn group or just a local community or a slack group of people that gather and they talk about content marketing, then offering and saying, I can give a free webinar about this. You share your insights. I try to keep it 98 % not selling, two % promotion at the end of it. But just going there and saying, hey, this is what I’m doing. Speak about your journey.

[00:22:10.980] – Alex Urquhart

I’ve interviewed 50 people. I found that everyone has the same niche problem. What I’m seeing is that I feel the industry is going in this direction. Here are some quotes I’ve received. People, for the most part, like to hear that stuff. They like to hear, Oh, cool. What did you find out? What are the issues there? And if I’m a content creator, what other people are saying that I’m not aware of? Then at the end, all this research And what I did to create this product. We got to launch. If anyone’s keen, feel free to have a crack at it or if it’s an association. If you’re a member here, you get five % off or whatever that is. But basically tapping into communities that already exist and leading with value first. I think that is probably the most valuable thing, and it’s probably the least costly version of it, less invasive, and it definitely adds to your brand, too. So if you cement yourself as this person expert in this area, it’s really valuable long term. And they’ll probably start following you on your sub stack or on your LinkedIn as well. So I’d say those three.

[00:23:00.880] – Alex Urquhart

Number one, don’t get away from the outbound. Number two, be more involved with communities. Or three, just try to share knowledge in a way to promote what you do.

[00:23:08.880] – Joran

Yeah, and these two are the last two I really like as in lead with value and join webinars, join podcast, share your knowledge. Then At one point, people are going to find out like, Hey, what does Alex actually do? Or what does Jorn actually do? They’re going to check out your product or join your newsletter. Then at one point, it starts compounding over time. You just build up this audience the same way you mentioned with the waiting list, build up an audience you own, which then you can follow up with if you have your new Microsoft or you actually have an MVP ready.

[00:23:37.580] – Alex Urquhart

100%, yes. If you’ve done it, if you’re passionate about it, you’re from that industry, I think people respect that. You’ve got a big idea. I think people love to follow great ideas. I think just sharing it and getting amongst it, it’s so surprising. You can pitch them and you can email them and you run ads on them, but just sharing your passion and showing something and helping them always has a far better outcome.

[00:23:55.710] – Joran

I think these are really nice ways of marketing. This is probably the launching phase itself. It sounds easy as we just discussed it a couple of minutes, but this does take quite a bit of time. If we go one step further, you gave examples at the beginning of the podcast where companies went from Microsoft to more normal SaaS. If we look at microsas, how is the scaling part different than scaling a normal SaaS?

[00:24:19.730] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, I’d say probably the point before about being very cognizant of your margins and your PLG side of things. Eventually, when it comes to scaling it, you got to have your processes done. You got to be able to break both technically and within the market as well, having the ability to take on more customers, sticking to that. But I guess, again, back to that barrier of entry point, the blessing and the curse is easy in and easy out. So if you do see success, if you’ve used very low tech tools and you’ve built it over three hours or something like that, not saying that’s much hard to do, you can get fast followers as well. So I think that’s a massive risk that’s really worth thinking about. I think the idea of micro-assass, the long term vision of, say, if you take HubSpot, find a piece they’re not doing you go do it really well and then go back to them. I think that’s a really cool exit plan as well. You know where it fits in and you could probably resell it back to them. It is a good proposition back to the people that could slot it into their stack.

[00:25:11.210] – Alex Urquhart

So I think the scaling, being very cognizant that you will have fast followers. And if it is very easy to spin up and low barrier to entry, then you will get people coming up to you pretty quick. But I think, yeah, paying attention on the positive side, paying attention to your PLG, having enough analytics to really look at your customer journey. I’d say if a lot of it is SEO or referral, or if you’re looking at affiliate marketing, for example, you’ve got a lot of people coming in for low sales touch experience because that’s ideally microsas. You can’t really sustain a large sales team for most parts. Having the ability to track those metrics across there, where are they coming from, where are the bottlenecks getting stuck at, what point are they getting activated? Basic SaaS best practice because a lot of micros SaaS by nature will probably be a lot of PLGs. Nailing that quickly, keeping really in tune with your UI UX. So not if you get to a certain point, you’ve got to start interjecting with support services or sales services down the line. But I think looking into growth loops, and again, that’s another saying that sounds good, different in practice.

[00:26:15.930] – Alex Urquhart

But I think exploring those different areas. And I’ll use that example again from Calendly where you share the link and it prompts the person receiving the link if they’d like to join as well. Looking at those ones there as far as scaling it is going to be a most cost effective version of it. I know there’s things Miro as well, I think. If you’re brainstorming on a board, you invite someone in, it prompts them to sign up for their own. There’s a bunch of different areas. So I think I’m always a big fan of low cost. If you can prove something low cost, it’s got the right fit. If you can prove something organically, it works. And then if you can build it out from there. But I’d say scaling as cheap as possible, your PLG best practice, your growth loops. If maybe as a costing, you’d probably look at more MLG, so marketing-led growth, looking at ads. And hopefully by this point, you’ve already done your research first, you’ve launched with your first customers, You should know very clearly type of buyers, why they buy and what they use it for. At that point, I think so much marketing doesn’t work because people don’t do those first stages.

[00:27:09.480] – Alex Urquhart

I’m hoping that Microsoft forces people to at least nail that really well. So have the ability to have, hey, I know the three types of people that buy it. I know exactly what they look like. I know what they want it for and how they want it. Running ads with that as their product marketing messaging behind that should have a higher effect. So social ads or promotions or any of those areas. Let’s say the growth loops It’s obviously looking through your SEO, PLGs, and there’s other ones I’ve seen do quite well as supplementary to services. It’s probably been the other way around. There have been a services business that adds in the microsource, and that way they’re not really weighed down and forcing this thing to be hugely successful with thousands of users, it can grow on the side as well. Depending on the type of business you want to use it for, if you’re a consultant and you’re just using this as a supplementary bit of income, great. But if you’ve got to scale it to 10 grand a month, 200 grand a month, or whatever that is, you’ve got to really think about the low cost versions of bringing those customers in.

[00:28:02.450] – Joran

Yeah. This is going to tie really well into my next question. People start this because they want to have a lifestyle business, or at least they want to replace their income with a micro SaaS. You’re doing it somewhat yourself as well. You have an agency, but you’re also thinking about building your own micro SaaS because you probably want to have something on the side which is also going to drive revenue for you, which is not always reliant on your time. You gave a lot of advice already, so keep your margin in order, make sure you have your in order to make sure you have the growth loop working, the product, that growth motion in place. Are there any other strategies or maybe advice you would have for people who want to go from a side project or an MVP to an actual sustainable income resource for them?

[00:28:44.810] – Alex Urquhart

I’d say similar to that one before around the testing, I know there’s another really handy one, another very successful micro-SAS developer who said originally, when you’re testing that, do you want things paid for? Try to do something manageable on the side. Research is pretty flexible in your own time. If you look at terms of doing POCs, I know if this somewhat goes against my whole PLG stance, but in those early stages, finding someone who believes in what you’re doing, who gets it, who has the pain point. I’ve seen ones go, Hey, we’re not sure about this. We think this is the right area. Doing a three-month proof of concept. I’ve seen a lot of people do this and work really well saying, Hey, we’re just going to start small. We’ll catch up once a week to test what you’re doing. If you hate it, if you love it, we’ll check out what you’re doing. In three months, if you hate it, and this is the worst thing in the world, then no stress. We can shake hands and call it a day. Looking at that, validating demands earlier on, having those conversations, dedicating time to it.

[00:29:34.550] – Alex Urquhart

I think I’ve tried the whole idea of going from a full-time job to your own startup. And I think there’s all those different stories of getting investments and so on. If you transition, that always is messy and It is always much more work than you think. It’d be great to do it nine to five for both jobs. It’ll be awesome, but it never is. Testing, validating the hell out of it until you get really consistent feedback that you can almost predict what the next person is going to say. Doing those POCs, and a couple of them, one’s really good, but then trying a couple people and doing three-month versions of it. If you love it, keep going with it. But the reason I like the POC is that if it’s not what you think, say one person loves it, but six others hate it. And I’m not sure if I’m going to keep doing this or not. This is not very good. You’ve at least got that out at the three-month mark or six months or whatever that time limit is. So I think doing that transition, researching the crap out of it, validating with a simple MVP as possible, because I think we pay so much attention to the supply side of the market instead of the demand, taking that time to really assess the demand, like I was saying, expression of interest pages or waitlist pages, right?

[00:30:33.050] – Alex Urquhart

If you can get people to enough traffic to it to at least validate and go, why would you use this? What would you use it for? Give me a list of people. If I can have 100 people on a waitlist for a product idea, it fills me with more confidence that I’m like, hey, I’m happy to go back to part-time. We’ll take a couple of months off launch this thing and see if I can get it going. I think being really clear on the demand is so important.

[00:30:53.360] – Joran

I think that’s really good in my next question. What are the common mistakes? I think one of the common mistakes is not looking at the demand side. Are there any other common mistakes you see when people try to build a micro SaaS?

[00:31:05.230] – Alex Urquhart

I think being too tied to the product. This probably goes for any industry. I always think there’s two types of startups, right? There’s product obsessed and customer obsessed people. I find when you get product obsessed and you’ve got an idea and I’ve been guilty of it. You go down the rabbit hole and you don’t want to let go of this micro SaaS. It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s to the point, it’ll just be great. I don’t want to overcomplicate. I can build it. Just not being afraid to go, Hey, this is not going to work. I’m actually going to focus on the pain point more and keep pivoting around that. The other thing is, I know when people work full-time and they do this as a side project, totally understandable. I do it as well. We seem to rush to automate very quickly, rush to scale things very quickly. And again, this goes tenfold to normal SaaS as well. But that crawl, walk, run, I keep on back to it. But it’s try some ads, for example, try running ads, or try an affiliate program, or try different things. But if you haven’t yet had enough time where you’ve done it manually and heard the same response and got the same outcomes over and over again, just don’t rush to sink a lot of money into it.

[00:32:03.880] – Alex Urquhart

Because I’ve seen people who sink a lot of money into the product, pour money into ads or pour money into affiliates or partnerships or sponsorships in all these different areas just to find out that 4 % of their market actually care about this thing. Yeah, I think validating it, focusing on the demand and not rushing to scale it. When you’re doing a new part time, you’re doing outside of your work hours, we’re all exhausted. It’s a lot of work. And you just want to plug something in or hire that person, spend a lot of money and just bring them in so they can do the lead gen stuff. I’ve definitely had my fair share of those calls. But it’s so important in the early stage. It’s not just getting those first customers, it is validating it. And it’s not just your first couple of MVPs. It’s continually trying to go, does the market consistently want to buy this? And if so, great, because I think that then feeds into your future. Do I keep this simple microsas and just triple down on it, or do I look to build a couple of different areas to this and maybe build it out to a full sas product?

[00:32:52.960] – Joran

Love it. We’re going to move a little bit away from microsas because you are in B2B sas in general as well. I might come to ask you to repeat yourself even more with these questions, but feel free to do so because we’re going to create summary episodes out of these. When we let go a bit of the micro SaaS and when we talk about building a B2B sas company, what advice would you give a founder who’s just starting out and growth the 10K monthly recurring revenue.

[00:33:19.390] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, I think, and maybe I’ll say in a different, more practical terms, I think it’s not being afraid to be manual with your go-to-market because I think I understand why we want to just automate it or do the magic of SEO. And all of a sudden all these people start flooding to our products and these great words that I’ve even mentioned in this podcast around PLG and growth loops. But I think in the early days, I genuinely don’t see a way around it just being very manual and not being afraid to I still stand by this. I think everyone needs to at some point, 6-12 months, ideally 2 years, go work in sales and go do it from the front ends. Go pitch people in the meeting and figure out how to get around objections and figure out your positioning because you’ve got to say it on the spot or I go to a conference. I did it for a customer the other day and I would have pitched it 30 times in a row. By the end of it, I was watching their reactions and what was going to work and not work. I got back and then rewrote a big deck for a lot of their product messaging for their website in a bunch of different areas.

[00:34:12.660] – Alex Urquhart

And it was just so much clearer and saved me so much time. It was exhausting and uncomfortable in certain areas, but just not being afraid to be manual, not being understandably. If you’ve got investment, you’ve got runways, holding out on it as much as you can, I think bootstrapping as far as you possibly can, because then you retain all the creative And I think sometimes markets need time. There’s a couple of industries I work with now where they need a bit of time before the product, they educate the market, or they build up awareness and attention, so the interest. And it does take time. You look at enterprise products, you’ve got sales cycles of 6, 12 of 24 months long. I think you’ve got to have that patience to really see it come to fruition. I think being manual on that, I think the first 10K, and I’d even say this is probably a precursor to all these ones I mentioned a little bit before, but I really think now is to be a successful founder, you’ve always got to have a really good personal brand is becoming super important. And so I always try to say whatever you’re in, if you’re a developer, if you’re a product marketer, or a product manager, or sales, whatever you’re in, start creating your own content.

[00:35:11.910] – Alex Urquhart

Just become known a bit and just get your name out there, because If you’re someone like yourself, you’ve worked really hard for this podcast, fantastic. If you hypothetically were to launch a product tomorrow, you’ve got an owned audience already. And that’s 99% of the heavy lifting. There’s something now that people are saying it used to be products 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago was the differentiator to success, but now it’s your distribution. Can you get in front of the right people fast enough in a short period of time? And if you’ve got that personal brand, you’re going to come at it with so much more trust. You’ve got a bunch of people that like you, admire you and trust what you say. Then endorsing a product is just takes out 10 steps. I think looking at your personal brand, not being afraid to do things manually, getting incredibly involved in the communities. If you are a marketer making marketing products, great. You probably already got a network. If you’re not, then this advice will be goes twice for you is just get involved with as many areas you can. I think I was saying to you the other day, it’s working with a client now, and they say they’re not marketers, and they say they’re not salespeople, but they are so active in the community in this particular industry.

[00:36:12.830] – Alex Urquhart

They travel to all the capital cities in Australia, and they do speaking spots, networking events, coffee meet-ups and all these things. And they are now renowned throughout the whole community. I haven’t spent a cent as far as ad spend. Of course, traveling and effort, but they’ve built this personal brand now that people come to them and say, Hey, I spoke to Simon who met you two years ago. He loves you guys. He wants to be a part of it. And when we’re looking at scaling, doing things like regular webinars or regular newsletters or content pieces, they’ve already got this huge audience. And we’re just nurturing them now. We’re not trying to start from scratch. I would say the whole crawl, walk, run, distribution. I think there’s a quote, and I can’t remember who the person said it, but they said the first time founder is obsessed about the product, second time founder is obsessed about distribution. And it’s once you can have the perfect product in the world, but until you can get out there in people’s eyeballs, and definitely attention is a very scarce resource. So spend the time to create that attention first through your personal brand is one of the biggest lessons learned for me.

[00:37:07.250] – Joran

Nice. Then let’s assume now we reached 10K MRR, and we’re going to make a huge jump towards 10 million ARR. What advice would you give SaaS founders here?

[00:37:18.580] – Alex Urquhart

That’s a good one. If I was doing that, I would probably retire. But so the companies I’ve worked with, I think the ability, and this is where I think there’s a big catch-22 when it comes to startup, because I think the best founders in the early stages are the ones who are frankly chaotic. They get out there, they do stuff, they try stuff, they throw things at the wall, and they keep it going. I think that probably gets you to your first 10K, in my opinion. That gets things moving. But having the foresight, the humility, and the self-awareness to go, Hey, this business is more important than my vision for it. I still need to keep it there. But being able to, I think the ones I’ve seen that do really well, can detach themselves in the right areas very well. I think looking in terms of going to 10 mil in the early days, I think all startups start with founder sales, and they should, as I was saying before. But then they bring people in, they bring marketers in, they bring sales people in, they bring customer success people in, and they attach and let people slot into those roles.

[00:38:10.550] – Alex Urquhart

So I think growing to the 10 million is being able to detach your way out of areas and being able to let go of certain things. I think there’s also those quotes you hear about people saying, Hire great people. Or what’s that Steve Jobs quote? It’s don’t hire smart people and get them to tell you what to do or something like that. And I do agree with that to an extent when they take ownership. But I think also, back to that personal brand point, having that founder person at the head of the snake is so important, even to 10 mil or beyond that. I think it’s so important because people, and speaking with a marketing head on people love people. They like brands and they’re into things like Nike and Apple. As far as brands, when you ever hear about brands, it’s always Elon Musk, right? Or Jeff Bezos, or it’s always the person. It’s never usually the brand. So I think leaning on that personal brand, detaching yourself out of the operations, but staying in the front of that. And these are very generic terms, but I guess I’m seeing the ones where I see a lot of these companies when they reach these points start to fall down.

[00:39:02.760] – Alex Urquhart

And I think it’s like sometimes founders go, done my job, I’m going to step out and give it over to someone else. And I think you are the visionary, you had the idea. I think you need to be involved in some way. Once it scales to that point, if you’re looking at 10 million ARR, you probably need to look at more like culture. And I know, again, that’s a very generic comment, but I think I see so many awesome businesses with great products start to deteriorate when the culture is not led well at the top. There’s like accountability or seeing a founder of 10 million ARR a company who is willing to go to a conference, do a speaking spot or jump on a call or lead from the front and keep that accountability. I think this hands free syndrome can crush a lot of really great companies when they detach too much and they just let everything go well from there. Bringing the right people in, keeping them involved. But great founders need to sit on top of it the whole time, still be in the driver’s seat to some extent, still have their personal brand and still give the company something to lead toward.

[00:39:56.770] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, as far as the technical side of things, I’d probably have to, depends which It’s a product it is. If it turns into an enterprise product or a B2C or whatever it is. I think that varies a bit. But I think the companies I see scaling well and sustainably tend to have a really good culture that starts from the top down. Sounds like a bit of a self-help talk, but it is so true. A good founder at the top is worth its weight in gold.

[00:40:15.400] – Joran

Nice. Love it. I am going to try to summarize. Where we go all the way back to the beginning, micros SaaS, it’s a simple version of a SaaS. It has one user, one persona, one solution after one person building it. It is going to force you to do at a best practice or start really niche. Why should you consider it? It has lower pricing, less objections, low running costs, low expectations. We will need to be able to pivot quickly, validate your ID, being able to sell, be good with UI, UX, PLG. When you are going to build, find the ID. Ideally, have the pain point yourself, be in the market you’re going to build within. If not, research it a lot. Check negative reviews on review sites. Let’s see if you can break it down into a small product. Before even writing a line of code, build a pitch deck so you can actually validate your ID when you’re able to launch it. Do outbound but not mass spamming. Ask for feedback instead of selling people. Build up a waiting list. Leverage a survey to qualify people and build a database from that. Leverage other communities by joining webinars, podcasts, but lead with value first and then sell.

[00:41:18.070] – Joran

Focus on the long term. When you’re ready to scale, PLG has to be in place and working. Keep your margin in order. Get insights into your analytics, but remember, easy in, easy out. So make sure you handle You will have to look at growth loops and know where your micro SaaS fits in. You can also make your SaaS exit ready by the example of HubSpot you gave. And then know where are your buyers and why are they buying? And ideally, start building a personal brand as a founder. Some common mistakes, don’t rush into things, crawl, walk, run, not looking at the demand side, keep validating, be customer-obsessed, not product-obsessed. Then when we go more broad towards B2B SaaS, or not not being afraid of being manual when you go to market. Go work in sales, try to figure out how to deal with objections, start creating content, start building that personal brand. If you want to start scaling towards 10 million AR, do more webinars, content pieces, bring in the right people, go from chaos to detaching yourself from certain areas, but not too much because you will need to be leading at the front while also building a good culture.

[00:42:24.360] – Alex Urquhart

Well, that’s way more succinct than I could have done it. Thank you for that.

[00:42:28.360] – Joran

We don’t need AI for that.

[00:42:30.870] – Alex Urquhart

Yeah, 100%. There’s a product that they improve manually. It’s done.

[00:42:35.820] – Joran

We’re going to link towards your LinkedIn profile, your sub stack newsletter, the lead marketing funnel you mentioned. I think you have an article regarding that as well. I will link also towards ADIFI. The example you mentioned, if people want to get in contact with you, Alex, how would they do?

[00:42:50.730] – Alex Urquhart

Probably best, I think, the sub stack and then say LinkedIn. I’m usually pretty active on there. Should have some messages on that one. I’m always happy to chat and meet more people. Just send us a message or a connection to envoy.

[00:43:01.960] – Joran

Cool. Well, do for people listening, we’re going to add a poll again to this podcast, so make sure you answer it. I know if you actually like a podcast or not, and we can create content for that later. Make sure you leave a review if you haven’t done so yet. So let’s beat your Spotify algorithms. Thanks again for coming on, Alex.

[00:43:19.150] – Alex Urquhart

Also, thanks for having me, Max. And thanks again. Keen to keep listening on.

[00:43:23.020] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show, if you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at want to know more about Reddit, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.