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Is it possible to completely build a SaaS to a point where it requires no more building? All that's left to do is marketing?
I've been thinking about this for a while. Is it realistically feasible to build a SaaS product to a point where it requires no further active building or maintenance? All we do from that point is just market it? If it is possible, how do we know exactly?
I know @levelsio has achieved something close to this. But I wonder if a product will ever stop demanding new additions or changing existing features.
What're your thoughts?
I know @levelsio has achieved something close to this. But I wonder if a product will ever stop demanding new additions or changing existing features.
What're your thoughts?
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No, and anyone that did any dev work will tell you the same. You still need dev experience. There will always be bugs, and constant fixing.
It depends on your definition of 'requires no more building'.
Markets and people change all the time. Because of this, there will always be something that can be improved.
Because of this, it depends on where you draw the line. I have realized that I want my products to be 'done' as soon as the MVP is shipped. Then, depending on traction I continue working on them, or focus on marketing, or move on to other products.
If you stop getting feature requests and bug reports, it likely means users don't care anymore and your revenue will trend toward zero when people inevitably churn
In reality, there are always issues and things that come up. All software requires a bit of maintenance to keep operating with things like:
- Security patches to libraries
- Random outages
- Feature requests and bugs that important users want fixed (again, users will keep asking for stuff if they care about your product, and if they don't care about your product and you do nothing to retain them they'll churn)
- etc
When you start spending a lot of time on-call for issues, it might be time to either make your software more resilient or hire someone to handle the on-call pages for you, but you never really stop completely. You can just limit your exposure to problems.
Checkout @levelsio wip progress, he is constantly fixing and changing things
But ser, I want my AI to do everything....
Is it possible? Yes. I've done it and I know many others who have done it.
But it can't be done with all saas businesses.
Your competitors will take this as an opportunity to work harder than you and end up outperforming you and putting you out of business.
I once believed in this "build once and customers will come forever" thing (really wished it was possible!), but in reality you end up constantly improving your product to keep up w/ your competitors. Maybe not all the time, but it's not 0% work when looking on a long-term perspective.
At least that's speaking from my experience building
#crisp ; maybe on some niches it's not needed and much more relaxed.
This. I WISH more of my competitors got complacent. It'd make it a lot easier for me (but way less fun because I enjoy fierce competition).
Innovation is half the fun for me. I bet if I were creating a SaaS product, it'd be even MORE fun!
I agree, I do as well enjoy competition. We've had a phase were competitors were not really innovative anymore with
#crisp, going upwards to enterprise, and it became a bit boring for us product-wise, like "we made it, there's nothing else to be done". AI has resumed the competition race, and it's never been more exciting to wake up in the morning!
As someone who isn't a developer but a user, absolutely not.
These companies tend to go out of business because they're not listening to their audience/user base and adapting their product to their needs. Products ALWAYS evolve.
Evolve or perish.
Besides that, technology isn't perfect all the time. Even the best developers deal with bugs and need to make patches (and other tech stuff far above my pay grade).
The goal shouldn't be "create something and never touch it again." It should be "create it, build a community around it and get people to love it, then get it to where you're able to stop actively building as much so you can put more money into marketing while you also update/upgrade the product."
You shouldn't stay in that startup phase forever.
looking at all the replies here it seems that the concept of building 12 products a year is fundamentally flawed.
I didn't subscribe to the idea of 12 products a year, but I did naively subscribed to the idea that you can be done with one SaaS and move on to another. I guess it's an illusion. If I care to build 2 products, I need to be able to invest split energy into them in some shape or form as long as I own them.
Disagree. I think the whole point of 12 startups in 12 months is to build and ship until something starts to show traction, then go all in on that thing and sell or shut down the other startups that aren't worth your time. So you're never really maintaining 12 at once, you're maintaining 1.