There’s more SaaS start kits than SaaS startups

[ghaynes]

@deecruz Don't worry, I'm already working on an AI model that generates other AI models that generate arbitrarily nested starter kits. I'm

n

steps ahead. I have no idea what gets spit out at the end of all that processing of course, but that's for my customer's customer's customers to find out.

 

[hurdacs]

@deecruz Most people would rather be remora fish than attempt to be the shark. I don’t fault them. It’s fear that perpetuates all around us.

 

[3john3]

@hurdacs If u are good at tech sell tech why bother other things like customer acquisition and other things for growing revenue.

 

[hurdacs]

@3john3 I think selling tech IS customer acquisition.

 

[3john3]

@hurdacs It's like selling shovels in gold rush.

Making a SaaS is 15 hour cooking project for a good coder.

But running it is a grind.

They are selling templates more like passive income.

 

[hurdacs]

@3john3 Hey if you can do it more power to you. I think the premise of this post is that there are more people selling shovels on every corner than people coming to town to look for gold.

 

[3john3]

@hurdacs Sadly I can't I am from Data Engineering Side.

 

[deecruz]

@3john3 You’re a digger, per say.

 

[3john3]

@deecruz I am a lurker and a miser, watching a hands on Saas Tutorial on youtube and will try to modify it.

 

[mew]

@deecruz I think it's the result of indie hackers and solopreneurs catering to the audience know best: Themselves.

If you're stuck in the indie hacker Twitter bubble, there is a lot of talk about the difficulties of getting started, and the first ears it will reach is those of people with the ability (tech folk and devs) and willingness (following indie hackers because they want to be an indie hacker) to have a stab at it.

They then listen to the advice of the people they follow: Take an existing product with a validated market, niche down (switch up the stack a bit), and voilà, a new starter kit is born.

 

[greek2me]

@deecruz I’ll give my .02 cents on the topic. There are a small number of genuinely well thought out, useful SaaS starter kits in the market. The problem I’ve come to find with them is that you’re effectively inheriting someone else’s codebase and way of doing things, at a time in your product’s lifecycle where you need autonomy to be able to structure things the way you need.

I bought a well known, reputable starter kit awhile back and thought it was great, but choose to scrap it entirely once I started getting into the weeds of what made my product unique.

At a minimum they’re awesome for educational purposes and seeing how different packages / SDKs can be meshed together to make a MVP.

 

[lmr]

@deecruz They’re selling shovels during a gold rush. So many devs are interested in building a SaaS so they’re there to peddle their “buid your saas in a week” starter kit. Just like the entrepreneurship gurus on instagram talking about starting a business but never having had an actual one themselves.

90% of these up and coming SaaS apps are basically AI/email/marketing/productivity/dev tools for other SaaS founders and devs. I have yet to find an indie hacker actually building software for a vertical, businesses or people outside of the tech/marketing industries.

My theory is that software devs are not comfortable speaking with people outside of their industry so naturally they’re only comfortable building for the tech niche.

 

[deecruz]

@lmr It’s much easier to build a product that solves your own problem, than someone else’s. There’s just much less friction there. I think they build dev tools because they have dev problems.

 

[lmr]

@deecruz No doubt there are dev tools that have solved actual dev problems but if you think about the whole indie hacker ecosystem, most indie hackers are basically just making software for other indie hackers.

 

[p4ul0n]

@deecruz whats a saas start kit?

 

[femilon]

@deecruz Sell the cardboard to the businesses not the product to the people

 

[kennyleye]

@deecruz It's Easy money that's why. Templatize everything without having design expertise and then all websites look the same.

 

[newbeginning1996]

@deecruz Those who can't do, teach

 

[mcoop]

@deecruz As with most things, a few people made a lot of money with them, shared revenue numbers and now everyone else piles in and makes them

 

[boyton]

@deecruz Which SaaS starter kit is the best? Going to be pretty useful for me because I am just starting out.