👋 Hello, I'm Rob from Canada.

Feb '23 (edited) in General Discussion 💬

I come from a background in Engineering - a Diploma in Engineering Design and Technology, and a Degree in Mechanical Systems Engineering. I worked for Tesla at Gigafactory 1 (Reno, Nevada) during the launch of the Model 3 on the Manufacturing Engineering team. I've been involved with many engineering projects over the years, ranging from programming, mechanical design, prototyping, and more.

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to build SaaS. With my experience in prototyping, I knew to start small and focused - so I started out by developing a micro-SaaS application for Amazon Sellers.

People loved it - and because of my technical experience, I did a lot of things right. But the problem was, I'm not an Amazon Agency, Consultant, or Coach. So I couldn't really grow the software or the services on the business side.

So I took on an Amazon Agency as a client, and I built the software for them. They handle the marketing and audience building side of things, while I handle the technical side.

It was a perfect match.

We launched the product to their market on time, and on budget. We presented it to their existing audience, started gathering feedback, and built a community where they could not only evolve the SaaS towards product/market fit, but sell their existing services too.

That's when I had my first realization; that founders, consultants, coaches, and experts are in an amazing position to offer a SaaS product to their market - but they often lack the technical experience to pull it off.

Which leads to the ugly side of this story.

This Amazon Agency had projects with another developer that had been going on for years, without a single launch. Missed deadlines, buggy code, sub-par quality, unvalidated demand - you name it.

These are smart people. They had been successful in other types of business - but SaaS is a different beast. The developer they hired gave them no guidance, and just built whatever they wanted (badly).

Because the truth is that development is only 10% of the challenge - and the business is the other 90%.

So I worked with them to turn things around - and most that involved writing not a single line of code.

It involved strategy, validating demand, and making sure that what we build, SHOULD be built.

And that's when my second realization came. That there was not a lot of practical info out there on how projects like this should be approached from the business side.

And so that's why this group exists. It's not to teach you how to code, or create your own AI from scratch, or design a nuclear submarine software.

It's to discuss the business side of SaaS - the side that actually makes or breaks your success.

It's to show you how if you're a consultant, coach, or anyone who solves peoples problems online, that you too can be a SaaS founder without having to write any code at all - and without getting stuck in development hell.

It's to show you how to keep things simple, launch early, and leverage the resources you have to create a product your niche loves, while making money along the way.

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