4 tips for launching your micro-SaaS with a full-time job, with no-code
Hello, I’m Domenico from Italy. I have a full-time job as Business Analyst for a fintech… Buuuuuuut, I have co-built and co-sold 3 micro-startups during the last 9 months!
How?
Let me show you 4 simple tips for launching a micro-saas project with a full-time job.
Premise: This is just my experience, so it may not be in line with what you want. But if you have other tips, comment on this article!
Tip 1: Manage your time!
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a fan of programming. I don’t mean coding, I mean to program everything in detail: from the working day to the management of money, to the management of TIME.
Time is the only resource you can’t buy, and that’s what makes people rich.
To start a successful micro-saas you absolutely have to start managing your time well. I state that my micro-startups have always started outside working hours. So managing full-time work and side projects is damn crucial to a good launch.
Unfortunately, I’m not here to tell you that you can start your own successful project by working 5 minutes a day. Let’s dispel this myth.
But I am a strong advocate of efficient work. This means that I love managing my time to the fullest for everything. So spend at least a couple of hours a day on your side project. I do it in the morning, just awake, or at the end of the working day. I have to admit: I do it on weekends.
Use the tomato technique to manage your time.
Tip 2: Frugality
I have to admit: I discovered this word not so long ago.
I was talking about it with my current partner in Omega’s adventure (do you know my last adventure? Take a read here). I wanted to express the ability to accomplish more, with little (as the mantra less is more).
And so I discovered frugality. By the way, this is one of the principles of Amazon, which reads like this:
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.
I believe that many times the instinct of humans is to do as much as possible and work hard to achieve a goal, when then maybe you can change perspective and see that you can achieve the same thing, doing less.
This should not be associated with working less. This should be associated with working efficiently. Our body always needs rest.
Tip 3: No-code movement
This advice is only for non-programmers (like me).
I have an economic background, and I’m currently majoring in International Finance, but one thing I’ve always loved was that inner will to want to build something from scratch. Not being a programmer, I always tried to avoid software/applications, but then something changed.
We all know that the world of no-code is constantly expanding, and I have to say that I’m also seeing it on my Twitter profile. Everyone is approaching this field for 2 main reasons in my opinion:
- Accessibility
- Simplicity
The no-code market will dominate the next wave of software, but I’m not saying that.
Thanks to the no-code I was able to work on incredible projects, with incredible people. So if you’re not a programmer and want to launch something of your own, learn the no-code now. You can learn it anywhere and for free. On Youtube, we are full of such tutorials.
And to get started, check out the best no-queue platforms here
No-code can definitely boost your business and your side project during your full-time job because it allows you to create and launch simple MVPs in days and not weeks.
Tip 4: Validate before going all-in
Do you know what is the first cause of startup failure? Look at this chart:
One of the reasons you should validate your product before going all-in is this. Very often we make a mistake, which I also learned firsthand: we believe that what is good for us, can also be good for others. But they are not in professional life, but also in everyday life, including love relationships.
But this is absolutely not true.
So how to avoid launching your product with 0 users? Simple: validate it. Before going further with it, I’ll tell you what happened in October.
With Omega, we launched AI Alfred in September (a product that allows you to summarize articles online using only AI and article URL -> read more here).
We had validated the product in September, but something was wrong: users registered (to date 163), but none was a premium user. We then analyzed the situation, and we came to a conclusion: the product has a market, but had not been launched in the correct way.
People wanted to use it, but there were sore spots where the user crashed: for example changing tabs on the browser to copy and then paste the URL on the dashboard, and then summarize the article. It was an extra step that most users didn’t want to make.
So we decided to pause the product and work on a much more state-of-the-art version, and that could meet all the needs of users, which we understood during the two months of testing. If we hadn’t validated the product first and then talked to users during October, we never would have known, and it would have been a real flop.
So what is the strategy I started using to validate the product before building it? I anticipate that these steps have led AI Alfred to get almost 100 emails, with no product yet!
We’ve followed this rule using a simple process:
1. Sign up for free on yep.so
2. Build your simple landing page in seconds. You can see here what we’ve reached in 2 weeks. Conversion rate 14%
3. Share it with your community
Where would I share the landing page? The answer is it depends, but I can tell you what I used for the last startup:
- Kernal Ideas -> tip: you need to publish updates, otherwise you’ll not have engagement
- Reddit communities -> I can suggest you these subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/sidehustle/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/roastmystartup/
- Medium -> It seems weird, but I wrote a long article on Medium, getting 9 emails from 30 views
- Indie Hackers Community -> this is one of the best places where you can share your startup. I got viral with one of my last posts! These are the numbers I reached:
Once you have the first emails, you need to validate the product.
What did we use for doing that? Bubble-free plan.
We built a simple dashboard, with the basic feature of the product. We started sending emails for Beta Access in a very quick way. We reached more than 10 product feedback in less than one week.
Your goal in this stage needs to be very simple: try to understand what people want, and what you can ship in a very fast way. One important point here -> fast execution. You don’t need to focus on product design for months. You just need to ship it.
Opinions?
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Contact info — you can write to me here
Personal Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/DG_9_6
Omega Studio Profile: https://twitter.com/theomegastudio
