| 章节 | 认领 | DeepL机翻 | 翻译 | 校对 | 润色 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | juzheng | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
| 2 | juzheng | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
| 3 | juzheng | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
| 4 | 加肥猫 | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
| 5 | 加肥猫 | ✔︎ | ✔︎ |
第二章：什么是一个好的微型SaaS想法？
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Since I started blogging about Micro-SaaS, the overwhelmingly most common question is something like: “Store locators, hmm, seems like such a simple idea. How can I find an idea like that?”
自从我开始写关于微型 SaaS 的博客以来，绝大多数最常见的问题是这样的："商店定位器，嗯，似乎是一个很简单的想法。我怎么能找到这样的想法呢？"
I went into elaborate detail in this blog post about all the different ideas I worked on before Storemapper to emphasize that I don’t really know a straightforward method that works without failing. In fact, failure and trial and error seem to be essential parts of the process.
我在这篇博文中详细介绍了我在 Storemapper 之前所做的所有不同的想法，以强调我真的不知道有什么直接的方法可以找到一个绝不失败的好想法。事实上，失败和试错似乎是这个过程中必不可少的部分。
However with the benefit of hindsight, and from talking with other Micro-SaaS entrepreneurs, I do think there are certain elements to look for in a good Micro-SaaS idea.
然而，在事后分析看来，以及通过与其他微型 SaaS 创业者的交流，我认为在找寻一个好的微型 SaaS 想法时确实存在某些必要因素。
In Chapter 3 we’ll dig more into methods for finding business ideas. But first I want to turn the entire premise on its head. It is far more important that you develop a fast and effective way to reject business ideas than finding ways to come up with new ideas.
在第三章中，我们将进一步探讨寻找商业想法的方法。但首先我想把整个假设转过来。找到一种快速有效的方法来拒绝一些想法，比寻找新想法的方法重要得多。
I call this approach The Meat Grinder and into it in further detail in this post. The Meat Grinder is a quick way to determine that a business idea is in fact a bad one for Micro-SaaS. Every section on what makes a good idea, can also be inverted into how to identify a bad business idea. A big part of the rest of this book is about refining your Meat Grinder process. We’ll dig deep into building a minimum viable product, customer acquisition strategies and pricing and business economics so that you’ll be better equipped to quickly assess ideas on each of the Meat Grinder questions. If you are motivated to build your own business it is likely that you will come up with lots of potential ideas. The trick is to figure out which ones won’t work and move and the worst, and most common, pitfall is to get hung up on one flawed idea indefinitely. The Meat Grinder is a series of tests, based on what makes a good Micro-SaaS business idea, that allows you throw out ideas, a critical part of the process of coming up with an idea that is a good fit for you. As you read through each section below think of how you might use it to identify weaknesses in some of your current SaaS ideas.
我把这种方法称为 "绞肉机"，并在这篇文章中进一步详细介绍。绞肉机是一个快速确定一个商业想法实际上是一个糟糕的微型 SaaS 想法的方法。 关于识别什么是好想法的每一章节，也可以倒过来说是如何识别一个坏的商业想法。 本书其余部分的很大一部分是关于完善你的绞肉机过程。我们将深入探讨建立最小可行产品、客户获取策略以及定价和商业经济学，以便你能够更好地在 "绞肉机"的每一个问题中去快速评估每一个想法。如果你正在动力十足地建立自己的生意，你很可能会产生出很多潜在的想法。诀窍是要弄清楚哪些是行不通的，然后采取行动。最糟糕的情况，也是最常见的陷阱是无限期地吊在一个有缺陷的想法上。绞肉机是一个基于什么是一个好的微型 SaaS 商业想法的一系列测试，它让你可以扔掉一些想法。这其实是找到一个适合你的想法的过程中的极为重要的环节。当你阅读下面的每一节时，想想你如何用它来辨认出你目前一些 SaaS 想法的薄弱环节。
I’m not going to lie. Finding a good Micro-SaaS idea is hard. Micro-SaaS is a niche within a niche. It’s an amazing business model when you can make it work. But it’s hard enough to pull off running an entire SaaS business by yourself with a mediocre idea. So it is worth spending a good deal of time carefully considering business ideas. Getting even just a few of these criteria wrong can turn into a huge waste of time and money.
我不打算撒谎。找到一个好的微型 SaaS 想法是很难的。微型 SaaS 是一个小众中的小众。如果你能让它运作起来，这其实是一个让人吃惊的商业模式。但是，以一个平庸的想法为起点，独立完成整个 SaaS 业务已经很困难了。因此，值得花大量的时间仔细考虑你的商业想法。因为即使只是弄错了其中的几个标准，也会变成对时间和金钱的巨大浪费。
【译注】意思“绞肉机”是一系列的评判标准，来判断一个想法是不是个好想法。如果你在评判的过程中判断错了几个标准，后面就会费时费力
There are two components to this rule. First, your potential customers should already be spending money on the pain point your product solves. I’ve met a lot of would-be entrepreneurs with really ingenious product ideas, but their target customers are al- ready solving the problem for free with spreadsheets, email, whiteboards or nothing. Never underestimate how hard it is to get a business to start spending money on something they previously were not spending money on. Even for a small business the friction of finding the first contact, THEN connecting with the manager who decides the budget, THEN waiting for internal approval on in the budget request, can add up to enough to kill your customer acquisition funnel. It is much easier to sell a product in a category where the business already has a budget allocated.
这条规则有两个组成部分。首先，你的潜在客户应该已经在你的产品所解决的痛点上花了钱。我见过很多准企业家，他们的产品想法确实很巧妙，但他们的目标客户已经在用电子表格、电子邮件、白板或什么产品都不需要来免费解决这个问题了。永远不要低估让一个企业开始在他们以前不花钱的东西上花钱这件事是多么困难。即使对一个小企业来说，找到第一个联系人，然后与决定预算的经理联系，然后在预算申请中等待内部批准，这些加起来足以杀死你的客户获取漏斗。在一个企业已经有预算分配的类别中销售产品要容易得多。
【译注】这里作者是用toB来举例说明你的想法应该针对那些B已经在花钱的需求上。其实toC也差不多意思，可能会稍容易些。
The second is that you must be 5x cheaper or 5x better. You won’t have the time or resources to do the high touch sales to walk a customer through the incremental value of a 25% improvement. Your product must be obviously, hilariously cheaper or better because you will have a hard enough time just getting the right customers to your landing page. In the case of Storemapper, our customers needed a store locator and their alternative was paying at least $1,000 for a developer to build one from scratch. When I launched the product it was $5/month. Even with later price increases, Storemapper is still massively cheaper and better compared to building one from scratch. This is the beauty of going after a true niche. It can be surprising how often businesses, operating in segments too small for billion-dollar startups to go after, are making do with (and paying for) some truly awful, 15 year old garbage software that you can come in and radically improve upon.
第二是你的产品必须便宜 5 倍或好 5 倍。你不会有时间或资源来做高接触的销售，以引导客户了解 25% 的改进的增量价值。你的产品必须明显地、滑稽地更便宜或更好，因为你光是把合适的客户带到你的登陆页面就够难的了。在 Storemapper 的案例中，我们的客户需要一个商店定位器，而他们之前的选择是支付至少 1,000 美元让开发人员从头开始建立一个。当我推出 Storemapper 时，它收费5美元/月。即使后来涨价了一些，Storemapper 仍然比从头开始建立一个便宜得多，而且更好。这就是追求真正利基市场的好处。令人惊讶的是，那些在细分市场上的小企业，对于数亿美元的初创公司而言由于规模太小而不愿涉足，只能使用（并支付）一些真正糟糕的、15 年前的垃圾软件，而你可以进来并从根本上加以改进。
All this adds to up to your conversion rate from free trial to paying customer. If your target market is already spending money and you are 5x better/cheaper a very high percentage of customers will stick around after their trial. I’ve seen estimates that for large VC-funded SaaS companies the rate of conversion from free trial to paying customer is around 5-15%. Storemapper’s has consistently been above 50% which is much closer to what you need to succeed with a Micro-SaaS.
所有这些都会提高你从免费试用到付费客户的转化率。如果你的目标市场用户已经在花钱了，而你的产品比它好/便宜5倍，那么很高比例的用户会在试用后坚持使用。我见过一些估计，对于大型风险投资的 SaaS 公司来说，从免费试用到付费用户的转化率大约是 5-15%。Storemapper 的转化率一直在 50% 以上，这更接近于你所需要的微型 SaaS 的成功。
In Micro-SaaS you do not want to follow the Silicon Valley “Zero To One” theory of creating something completely and totally new. Existing competitors serving the same underlying demand are actually a very good sign. Yes, if you have an idea and there are ten nearly identical products already then you should probably move on. But if you search and you can’t find a single product or service addressing a similar need, it is probably a sign that there is not much of a market.
在微型 SaaS 领域，你不想遵循硅谷的 "从零到一 "的理论，去创造一些完全的全新的东西。存在为相同的需求服务的竞争者，实际上是一个非常好的迹象。是的，如果你有一个想法，并且已经有十个几乎相同的产品，那么你可能应该继续前进。但是，如果你找不到一个解决类似需求的产品或服务，这可能是一个没有多少市场的迹象。