Why shouldn’t you do SaaS? I will tell you 4 points by talking about my frustrating processes: time, energy, money, and psychology. If you are not a bit crazy, close the tab immediately and run away!
Processes for SaaS
1. Time:
The SaaS business model goal is to generate regular income from a certain customer base. However, this means that customers must trust you. Building trust is a time-consuming process. Especially to ensure the continuity of your business, it is inevitable that customers will ask questions about how long they will use your product. It’s all about what you do, though. My NotionPlus product is a product model that should never close. The template builder needs to know that when they use this tool, it will never shut down. That’s why I’ve extended the domain until 2027. I know some curious people are looking here. They need to know that I’m going to show that I’m going to continue until 2027. And that’s where the problem starts.
Your product may be something that shouldn’t be used over and over again. But if you do that, you might lose a regular customer. It takes a long time for your regular customers to become regulars. This is inevitable, especially if you are not lucky or knowledgeable!
I’ve been working on N+ for 1 year and I still haven’t broken the $100 MRR, and you probably won’t either. Really satisfying numbers will not come immediately. If you quit your job and try to do SaaS just to be an entrepreneur, your sinking rate is very high. SaaS is hard.
The processes are difficult. It takes a lot of time to deal with all processes. You need to do constant A/B testing. It takes time to reach satisfactory money. It takes a lot of time to develop. It takes time to close mistakes. Marketing takes time. Especially if you’re a solopreneur, you’re finished! 🙂 All this waste of time is gone from your life.
2. Energy:
Just as important as time management is energy management. It is not always easy to work in a fully focused way. Entrepreneurs may find it difficult to manage their energy correctly while focusing on various issues during the day. If you have a habit of procrastinating or are undisciplined, a SaaS business may not be for you. It can be particularly challenging for those who work alone. I had a similar situation when I was developing NotionPlus; I was dealing with a legal problem while I was working on my project. Such situations can seriously drain your energy and demoralize you.
Everyone researches time management, but there is one issue that is overlooked: energy management. It is not easy to work in full focus. You can work 8 hours a day, but how much of it is real work? Most of the time, you waste time on irrelevant things and you lose energy in the same direction. If you can’t manage your energy (and you won’t be able to manage it in the first place), you won’t be able to manage your time and you will be demoralized by not achieving your goals. This is a vicious circle.
In an emergency, your energy is destroyed. Personally, while I was developing NotionPlus, I was dealing with a lawsuit. I got sued for something ridiculous (I got sued for embedding a YouTube video, which is a feature and can be turned off. But they didn’t turn it off and I used it in one of my attempts, but I was still sued. People are weird.) I struggled for months and finally won. I was completely relieved. I was going to start the new year from scratch because I used all the money I earned on NotionPlus for lawyer fees and all the money in my pocket after I quit my job. It was a ridiculous issue. I won, but now I was at the bottom.
As I started the new year, I was excited on the one hand; it was an entrepreneur story. However, my happiness did not last long, and this time another lawsuit was filed on YouTube, claiming that there was unfair competition in the video I directed people to entrepreneurship and software. 🤦♂️
It is very difficult to understand people. In addition, last year I was defrauded by my university for 100 thousand ₺. I was able to solve it by spending ₺5000 and consuming a lot of energy.
You never know what will come from where. Life is a pain in the arse! I have to manage my life and my work somehow. And you are very likely to have this situation. You have to have contingency plans, you will need to keep your energy and improve the product even when you are mentally at the bottom of the ground. I have a solution for all this, but that’s a topic for another article.
3. Money:
You can buy time and energy with money. But if you don’t have money and you are a bootstrapper, then your job is quite difficult. You can buy time and energy with the money you earn while working in a company. However, you will lose energy and time again because you always have to check the quality to keep it at a standard, even if you work with freelancers or paid tools.
The costs of SaaS can be high. Of course, this depends on your target audience. B2B may have less traffic. But B2C can be a little more difficult.
When you want to advertise, you also need cost. Money goes from everywhere and if you can’t manage it, you will go bankrupt. 🙂
You will lose money in emergency processes. You will borrow money like me, but maybe it won’t even be for your business. You will deal with your invoices and taxes. You must know how to manage money. If you don’t know, you will suffer a lot. Again, learning to manage money is a process that takes a lot of time and energy. You have to keep trying.
You also have to learn the law when money is involved. An entrepreneur friend of mine told me this one day, “If you have a company, you have to know 50 percent law and 50 percent laws.”
One of my 2024 goals is to learn the law. This is where one of the most difficult parts comes into play. I’m in Turkey and I’m going to learn Turkish laws, but I also have to learn the laws of America. And of course, I have to learn the laws of other countries.
This is really crazy! 🤯
4. Psychology:
A SaaS business requires managing all processes and your personal life. The challenges of starting a business alone also include psychological resilience. Dealing with negative comments, legal problems, and general life difficulties is not easy. Running a business on your own requires intrinsic motivation and resilience. The thought of “what if they are right” can often be a mental challenge.
You cannot turn back the clock and your youth disappears piece by piece. I am 26 now and I am very scared to be 27. The economy in my country is very bad. Everything is overpriced and I am struggling with many bills. You will struggle too. Maybe your family will want a house and you will start life with negative numbers.
You are struggling with this mind and trying to improve the product. It doesn’t work! It’s buggy! You get sued for other products or content! You work for 1 year and you don’t even earn minimum wage! Time goes from your life! You still want to continue and you have to deal with people’s bad comments. Because someone comes out and says you are doing a bad job. (I experienced this yesterday. I shared it on X.) You try to read and listen to books. (Think like Ted while writing this article, I’m listening to your book.) Because you have to improve yourself. You can never stop! There are always negativities and you try to take out the positive ones piece by piece. You try to live with the grains and the words “what if they are right” circulate in your mind. You feel that you are like a snake eating its own tail, yet you continue.
A normal person can’t stand it. Because it’s stupid. Why do we do it? Because we’re crazy. Because we bet our lives on the 1% dream. We are working for a life that we wish we hadn’t tried and that we can say that we tried until the last minute of our lives.
It takes a lot of time, energy, money, and psychology to build a well-functioning SaaS. If you think you can’t deal with all that, don’t do it! Close this tab and get out of here immediately!
I will write another article focusing on the solutions to this article. Beware! The next article may turn you into an irreversible lunatic!
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