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Sanket Kogekar
@sanket-kogekar 1 week ago

brutal truths for saas founders:

- nobody cares that your product uses ai.

everyone uses ai now. it's not a differentiator. it's table stakes.


- your biggest risk is building something nobody wants.

ai makes building easier, but customer validation is still hard. skipping it kills startups.


- most ai saas tools are features, not products.

you need a solution to a real problem, not just a cool demo.


- if you can't sell, you're screwed.

the best product almost never wins. the best distribution does.


- building is 20%. getting users is 80%.

coders love building. but saas success is in growth, marketing, and retention.


- churn will silently kill you.

you can get signups, even sales. but if users don’t stick, you’re toast.


- you probably overestimate how much people care about your product.

customers don’t want to “explore” tools. they want solutions that save time or make money now.


- no one wants another dashboard.

users are overwhelmed. if you're building a tool, embed it in their workflow or make it invisible.


- your first 10 customers matter more than your first 1,000 signups.

vanity metrics kill focus. chase feedback and dollars, not upvotes.


- vcs aren’t stupid.

if you’re pitching “ai for x” without data, defensibility, or distribution, they’ve seen 10 of you this week.


- launching on product hunt doesn’t mean shit.

it’s a traffic spike, not traction. it won’t fix a weak product or zero pmf.


- there is no passive saas.

even with ai and automation, you’ll be fighting fires, updating features, and supporting customers.


- your idea is not special.

execution, timing, positioning, and speed matter 100x more.


- your tech stack doesn’t matter to customers.

they care if it works, solves their problem, and is easy to use. that’s it.


- you will underestimate how hard it is to grow.

especially past $10k mrr. every growth stage is a new slog.


- bootstrapping is slower than you think.

it’s also more real. but expect years, not months, to see serious returns.


- copying other successful saas won't work.

what worked 2 years ago doesn’t work now. context has changed.


- you must know your customer better than they know themselves.

if you can’t articulate their pain better than they can, you won’t convert them.


- ai alone doesn’t create lasting value. workflow integration does.

a gpt wrapper is easy. getting it to actually do something useful daily is hard.


- you will want to quit at least once. probably more.

especially when sales are slow, churn is high, or you hit a feature wall. that’s normal. doesn’t mean stop. means fix something.


good luck.

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DG
@dg_
1 week ago
I'm been trying to find the "algorithm" that truly helps you know you are building something people want.

I've been thinking PMF might be the problem, or at leat the way we think about it.

Maybe it is not really about the product, or the market, but something in between. Maybe it is about common beliefs that a group of people (your target audience) has, and what the entrepreneur has to do is to influence those common belief in a way that the audience feels/sees they are indeed getting a lot of value out of the product.

Anyway, this is just a train of thought. Nothing too shaped yet.
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