章节 | 认 | DeepL机翻 | 翻译 | 校对 | 润色 |
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1 | Mao | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
2 | Mao | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ||
3 | 壹树 | ✔︎ | |||
4 | 壹树 | ✔︎ | |||
5 | ✔︎ | ||||
6 | ✔︎ |
第三章:寻找微型SaaS商业创意
<< Back to Chapter 2: What Makes a Good Micro-SaaS Idea?
<< 返回第2章:什么是好的Micro-SaaS想法?
As I mentioned before, the most important part of ending up with a good Micro-SaaS idea is throwing out a lot of them. But there are a few good ways to prime the pump and look for new ideas. Here are a few methodologies that I’ve developed or generalized from other Micro-SaaS entrepreneurs.
正如我之前提到的,想要得出一个好的Micro-SaaS点子,最重要的就是要舍弃一堆其他点子。当然,也有一些好方法可以给我们的思维源泉注入活力以便于我们寻找新点子。以下是我自己用过的还有从其他Micro-SaaS创业者那里归纳总结的一些方法。
Eat your own dog food as they say. This is the classic example of how to build a product company and it does work. The most commonly cited example is of course 37signals, a design firm that built a project management tool, Basecamp, for their own internal needs. They realized other firms might need a similar tool and started selling it as SaaS. The software business quickly eclipsed the design business and now they can hardly be called “Micro” with millions of customers. Here is the origin story.
Another great example is Josh Pigford, the founder of Baremetrics. Josh was running another Micro-SaaS business and was struggling to get some basic financial metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue out of his payment processor.he hacked together a minimal product that anybody, but first and foremost his own business, could use to instantly get SaaS metrics from their payment processor. Realizing lots of other business owners would have a similar problem, he opened it up as a product and shot up to $8,000/month in six months.
This is a well tested strategy but it has two big problems at this point in time. First the idea of scratching your own itch has been around and popular for a while and second the type of people who build software businesses tend to be somewhat similar in their needs. There are only so many itches to scratch for a software entrepreneur and at this point a lot of them have been sufficiently scratched. Slightly paradoxically, this is in fact part of the reason why now is such a good time to build a Micro-SaaS business. Scratch your own itch has been around so long, that for almost everything someone trying to build a software business needs, there are 15 other software businesses selling pretty great solutions for it. Once you hit on an original idea, you can often use those other itch-scratchers’ off the shelf solutions rather than having to build your own internal tools.
Pieter Levels, the creator of Nomad List, has a good solution to the over-saturation of scratch your own itch. In his book MAKE he suggests that if you live an interesting or unique life, you will generate new and unique itches to scratch. In his case he was living a digital nomad lifestyle, traveling around the world in a backpack while building a new startup every month. He needed to figure out the next best place to live each month comparing data like cost of living and internet speed for cities all over the world. So he scratched his own itch, crowd-sourcing a basic dataset and built a site to help other digital nomads connect and solve the problem.
If something about your life is really unique, then you can use scratch your own itch in that area. If you are a freelance graphic designer in San Francisco who likes yoga and green juice, you’re going to need a different strategy.
俗话说的好,吃自己的狗粮。这是最经典的开创软件产品公司的方法,而且的确有效。最常见的例子就是37signals,一家设计公司为自己的内部需求建立了一个项目管理工具Basecamp。他们后来意识到其他公司可能也需要这样一个的工具,于是开始以SaaS的形式销售。结果这个软件业务很快就使他的主业设计业务黯然失色,现在他们拥有数百万的客户,很难再被称为 "小微"。具体的故事在这里。](https://medium.com/@jasonfried/basecamp-the-origin-story-f509fdd725f8#.rhxmmqqba)。)
另一个了不起的例子是Josh Pigford,Baremetrics的创始人。Josh 当时正在经营另一家微型SaaS企业,想从他的支付流程管理软件中获得一些基本的财务指标,如每月经常性收入。他编写了一个最基础的适用于任何公司(当然主要是给他自己)的软件, 用它来从支付流程管理软件中迅速获得SaaS指标。当他意识到许多其他企业主也有类似的困扰的时候,就把它作为一个产品开售,销售额在六个月内达到每月8000美元。
这是一个经过验证的好方法,但现如今有两个大问题。首先,解决自己的痛点这件事已经流行了挺久了,其次,建立软件业务的人的需求类型往往有点类似。对于一个软件创业者来说,痛点总是有限的,而现如今大多数痛点都被人尝试解决了。有点矛盾的是,这其实也是为什么说现在是建立微型SaaS业务的好时机的一部分原因。因为人们解决自己的痛点已经很久了,几乎每个软件业务中涉及到的那些需求,都已经有15个其他的在售的替代解决方案。一旦你有了一个原创的想法,你往往可以使用那些现成解决方案,而不必写自己的工具。
游牧名单 的创建者Pieter Levels,对痛点的不足有一个很好的解决方案。在他的书MAKE中,他建议,如果你过着有趣或者独一无二的生活,你就会产生新的独一无二的需求。在他的例子中,他过着数字游牧的生活,背包环游世界,同时每月建立一个新的创业公司。他需要每个月比较全球各地的生活成本和网速等数据,来找出下一个最佳居住地。因此,他为了解决自己的痛点,众包了一个基本的数据集,并建立了一个网站,帮助其他数字游民相互联系和解决这个问题。
如果你生活中的某些事情真的很独特,那么你可以在这个领域解决自己的需求。比如你是旧金山的一名自由平面设计师,却喜欢瑜伽和绿汁,那么你就需要一个不同的策略。