526: Is There Too Much SAAS?

In today’s episode of the startup chat, Steli and Hiten talk about if there’s too much SaaS.

In the startup world, there are a lot of SaaS solutions for different industries and niches. One of the reasons is that it’s become so easy to build a SaaS product and founders are doing just that. Unfortunately, this leads to oversaturation and standing out is a challenge.

In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how people are building a lot of software right now, bottlenecks that affect selling a SaaS product today, advice for founders looking to start a saas company and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic.

01:15 Why this topic was chosen.

01:37 How people are building a lot of software right now.

02:04 How bottlenecks affect selling SaaS today.

03:07 The current state of the SaaS industry.

04:16 How it’s easier than ever to build a SaaS product.

05:31 What customers think about the current state of SaaS.

05:59 How the market might go in the coming years.

07:36 If founders should be worried about competition.

08:01 Advice for founders looking to start a saas company.

3 Key Points:

• People are building a lot of software right now.
• I think there are all kinds of bottleneck today in selling SaaS
• It’s easier than ever to build a SaaS product.

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to answer the question, isn’t it too much SaaS? So this is another infamous episode that’s based on a tweet that you made, and that tweet was based on a ton of work and exposure that you’ve had in this area, I assume. But you recently tweeted something that stood out to me and it kind of stirred the pot a little bit, a lot of people that, a lot of friends, a lot of people that are respected, the SaaS space responded to it in one way or another. So I felt like that’s the perfect material to unpack for our listeners. So let me ask you, maybe you tell people a little bit about that tweet and what proceeded there. What made you write about that? And then let’s just unpack this question of there’s too much SaaS and what does that mean for founders out there that are currently building their first SaaS product or running a small SaaS product?

Hiten Shah: Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of SaaS, so what I tweeted was this idea that nobody you don’t talk to people and they’re all like, “Hey, I want more software.” You know?

Steli Efti: Yeah.

Hiten Shah: And the reason I tweeted that is because people are building a lot of software right now. There are new sort of products coming into the market all the time in almost every category and there’s people making very good living building the software too. So the comment was more like, I see a lot of software that’s being built and then whether it’s no code or things that people are just building really quickly and then kind of considering it a project, and then they end up moving on. And so that’s one scenario. Another scenario is I think there’s all kinds of bottlenecks in selling today that selling SaaS that just didn’t exist before, because there was less SaaS. So we’re seeing things like if you’re in certain markets, you need a number of features that are parody for the market, which basically means it takes you more effort, more time to build the product you need to build, and you might take it to market and people might have expectations that you were not even expecting until you actually built it and gave it to them. So, yeah, there’s just a lot going on in the world when it comes to software and SaaS and kind of all aspects of it. So that’s kin