Building a micro SaaS business can sound easy because of its scale. But it is still a business and you must treat it as one. Don’t just assume that because it is not a huge project it will be an easy way of making money.
You still need to put in the work, do your research, make sure that you’re following a process, and find solutions to the problems you will face along the way.
But to get a better understanding of what a micro SaaS business is, let’s compare it to a typical SaaS business.
| SaaS | Micro SaaS | |
| Size | A larger company with tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees | A company run and operated solely by the founder or a very small team |
| Focus | A wide range of services | A very niche problem |
| Revenue | Typically high revenue | Typically low revenue |
| Customer base | A wide customer base | A small but specialized customer base |
| Funding | Usually multiple rounds of investment | No external capital investment, self-funded |
| Running costs | High running costs due to its size and tooling needed | Low running costs due to low need for tooling and small size |
| Location | Usually location-bound, on-site responsibilities | Highly flexible, remote work |
| Growth objectives | Ambitious growth targets | The founders can set the growth objectives as they desire |
| Complexity | Complex processes and structure | Simple processes and structure |
So even though a micro SaaS is a niche product with less competition, you must have a good plan in place. Otherwise, your chances of success will decrease drastically.
Steps to building a micro SaaS
Now, that you understand that a micro SaaS is a simpler and not an easier business, let’s see how you can build one. This is not ‘the way’, but one of the ways to do it. Searching online, you will find information on different steps and have to see which option works best for you.
But, ultimately, I think that the best way is the one that keeps you going and increases your chances of success.
Identify a problem or need in the target market
When coming up with an idea for a micro SaaS business, there are no clear steps you can take. Usually, it is just based on observation combined with a problem-solving mentality.
So, pay close attention to the people who will be your potential customers. Be where they are online or offline. Join forums, Facebook groups, or subreddits. Go to meetups, events, or any other places where you can interact with them.
By doing this, you will most likely find something they are struggling with in their business. Something small enough that you can build, but big enough for them to pay to have it solved.
Find a solution and research the market
Once you have an idea, think of different ways of solving it. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad ideas. You just want to get into the flow of coming up with solutions.
Also, look at the competition. See what they are doing to solve the problem. And check what their customers like or dislike about their way. All this information can help you differentiate your micro SaaS product.
When you have a bunch of ways to solve the problem, look into simplifying them. Think of what would be the easiest way of implementing them in terms of time, money, and external help. Then, choose the simplest one.
Validate the idea with your target audience
Once you have an idea of how to proceed, you will have to see if people are willing to buy your product.
This step involves collecting feedback on your assumptions and listening to your target audience. You will need to engage with your target users. Conduct surveys and interviews, or start online discussions to understand their needs and pain points.
Build and launch a minimal viable product (MVP)
After you have the idea, you know how you want to tackle it, and the target users confirmed they would buy it, it’s time to start building.
At this stage in the process, it is crucial to keep it simple. As you work on your solution, you will come up with new improvement ideas and cool extra features. But you need to keep your focus and only develop what you have discovered in the previous steps.
The main goal is to build something as cheaply and as fast as possible. Anything extra will cost more resources to implement.
Iterate on the feedback you receive from users
Once you have built your first product version and have your first customers, collect feedback. Users will contact you for support and they will ask you two important questions:
- How to do certain things
- If they can do certain things with your product
The first question will give you important feedback on the interface’s ease of use and your documentation. If users can’t figure something out, look into the issue and check how you can improve the clarity.
The second question is important for your product’s development and new features. Keep track of what users would like to use your product for and try to incorporate the most frequent requests.
Example – how to build a micro SaaS product
All the information above is a good starting point, but I thought it would be more helpful to use them in an example. Hopefully, it will help you come up with some ideas.
Let’s start with the given variables:
- You are a marketer with good or extensive knowledge of the ecommerce industry.
- You also have some intermediate Python skills or know someone who does
The issue
You heard that a lot of ecommerce businesses are struggling to get more traffic to their website. Most of them were relying on paid traffic but with the rise of large marketplaces (Temu, Shein, AliExpress, etc.) came an inflation in click costs.
Because of the increased costs, their ads are quickly eating up their profits. So, they decide to switch to a more sustainable and cheaper traffic source: organic traffic.
But, there’s a problem: a lot of Shopify store owners are struggling with increasing user engagement with their blogs. They are looking for a way of keeping the users on their websites and getting them to read more articles.
So, you came up with the idea of creating a small Shopify app that would add a ‘Related articles’ section at the bottom of the page.
The research
To check whether the problem you have found is something users would like to solve, you will need to do some research.
So you can attend a few meet-ups, join Shopify-related Facebook groups, and the Shopify subreddit.
In the meantime, you can also build a simple scraper bot to download all the data from the Shopify app store. Or you can hire someone on Fiverr to do it for you.
From the data, you also see that there are a few competitors, but the app category is not oversaturated. So there’s also a good opportunity to stand out.
Next up, you can use AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing AI, etc.) to summarize the pros and cons of the apps with a lot of reviews.
Here’s an example:
Act like a Shopify app developer. I want you to research the competitor’s app reviews.
I give you the URL <insert app URL> of the app listing that you will be analyzing. Browse all the reviews of the listing before performing any writing so that you understand what the users say.
Summarize the users’ comments in 5 positive and 5 negative points that can be used in developing a better app to compete with the one you are researching.
And here is the result:
After you have gathered the information from the users and the reviews, you can go a step further and conduct a survey and interviews. This will help you clarify the importance of each feature and see which ones are must-haves and which are nice to have.
Landing page + ads to create a waiting list (bonus points for advance payment)
The execution
At this point you have everything you need and can start working on the app, right? Well…yes. But I would say that the previous steps only helped you to discover if people are interested in your idea. Now you have to check whether they are willing to buy your solution.
And the best time to check this is before you start building your app. If you can sell your product before building it, you can make sure that you will have customers from day 1.
To do this, you can use a landing page builder and create a sales page. Here, you can explain what the app will do, your USPs, pricing, or any other information you want your customers to know.
At the bottom of the page, you will include a sign-up form for them to join the waiting list. And that’s how you get your first customers and get the confidence that the users see the value of your solution.
Now, you can start building your micro SaaS product. But here comes the hard part: keeping your focus on the basics.
While you are developing your app, you might come up with a lot of additional ideas:
- AI-powered suggestions
- Geographical variables (show articles mentioning more expensive products for users from wealthier countries)
- GA4 integration for reporting
- A/B testing
But you need to keep it simple. Remember: speed is key. Your MVP doesn’t need all the bells and whistles. These will just slow down your development and will increase the costs.
Keep these ideas in a backlog and after you have launched your app, see if your users ask for additional features. If they do, work on those. If they don’t you can repeat the research phase and slowly integrate the features you have thought of.
