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Ask Me Anything About SaaS ( I'm building my 7th )

Boogie

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Okay, I'm starting to feel your message much more. I've been wondering for the last few hours whether I've ever helped people with programming .. and yes, I told them how to start and how to choose programming languages and what are the possibilities in an IT career. Maybe should I build SaaS which helps beginners to feel less lost in this new world and shows them some roadmap? But on the other hand, wouldn't be an e-book the better form in this case? ;p

There's another way of approaching this that might help if you're thinking of things for programmers.

Think of some utilities that help programmers. Given your experience, what would help you? I'm thinking of things like postman. That might have been programmed as a personal use project to help the user create and inspect API's (I don't know or care what the origin story is, it's just for example). Now probably thousands of people use it daily. Check out the plans available on at postman.com.

I wrote a tool once to dump database table structures, graphically formatting them, and showing key fields and types - something that could help me. That was back in the stone ages, but I probably could have sold it back then because we didn't have the database browsing tools we have today and the dev cycle was slow looking up all that info.

I, with two others, once wrote what was essentially Crystal Reports for Unix - a graphical report layout and generation engine powered by custom computer languages that we created to intercommunicate and describe data, sorts, layouts, etc. I was an employee of the company at the time. They sold it to other similar companies with similar issues. Old example, but still pertinent. You can even turn your competitors into clients if you develop in a niche you're already serving in another capacity. Actually, one of my former co-workers on that project is working on delivering a similar solution to a different company in a different niche that still has reporting needs that aren't being met.

There's a huge market of tools that are available for Azure in the marketplace. If you know Azure and the needs of Azure programmers or companies that are using Azure, you would know to produce something and you'd have a marketplace that's already been built. Check the marketplace out for ideas - Azure Marketplace | Microsoft Azure

Similarly, there's an AWS marketplace - Start selling in AWS Marketplace today
You might check it out for ideas of the types of things that sell there.

Business markets are real and potentially extremely profitable. To me that beats the heck out of trying to learn and sell into a hobby.

The idea of helping someone still applies to any of this. For example, going back to the postman example above, if you've helped explain API's or validate them or help someone create them, then you have some knowledge that could have gone into creating something like postman. Then finding your audience and building it is much more approachable and it's easier to comprehend, design, build, maintain, and improve.

A friend came up with the idea of using machine learning in a particular niche. I will not discuss this except for the following. He will make millions with it. It's mainstream enough to be profitable but offbeat enough that people have not thought of approaching this particular problem. He has no competitors that I know of. He helped people get some machine learning resources then I think their needs were revealed and he went from there. The pockets are deep. Again, I won't say anything about this business.

I'm not saying to duplicate any of these ideas as products, but if you want to target programmers or companies that develop software, you might consider that type of approach to thinking of them.
 
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goognin

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Hey @eliquid,
Thanks for this initiative!

I've rummaged through the Q&A and haven't found anything about CAC.
Could you please specify a magnitude of CACs for B2B SaaS co's you know?

It would be super-awesome if you can break down into cost of trial users and cost of paid subscribers.
 

eliquid

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Hey @eliquid,
Thanks for this initiative!

I've rummaged through the Q&A and haven't found anything about CAC.
Could you please specify a magnitude of CACs for B2B SaaS co's you know?

It would be super-awesome if you can break down into cost of trial users and cost of paid subscribers.

This really is a question with an impossible generic answer.

Why?

Because you really need to know YOUR numbers and YOUR customers to even assume a CAC.

I could spit out numbers for CAC's I've seen for all of my SaaS ventures, and even for SaaS's not mine that I worked marketing on like TeamViewer, Viper, etc.

But none of that is going to help you.

What Teamviewer pays for organic social media posting ( employees, 3rd parties, photos and videos, software to post, etc ) and what they get per signup ( trial, paid consumer, paid enterprise, signup from North America, signup from South America, phone sales, etc ) is going to be wildly different than a SaaS a 3 person team from FLF will do.

Same for each of my SaaS ventures.

Same for a SaaS that is self-funded versus one with VC from Y-Combinator.

For true CAC, you are going to have to throw in human capital which involves time and salary/fees. You will also need to know potentially your LTV for a trial product versus a paid consumer/paid enterprise/phone sale/Spanish-speaking market, etc.

You may be thinking... but I'm just focused on a 1-person SaaS whose only marketing is Google Ads in a small business-focused market where the trial is 7 days and a monthly cost of $99.

And I would say, what's the LTV of that marketing channel and trial funnel? How many of those trials convert and end up as paying customers? etc...

You could always hit up things like these: Average CAC for SaaS Businesses, by Industry & Customer Type - First Page Sage

But I find them very distracting and inaccurate.

The goal is to know your numbers and improve those. Not meet someone else's numbers.

You can't judge your start, by someone else's middle.
 

eliquid

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Hey @eliquid, what do you advice if one has found a problem but there are already solutions to it?
This is a great thing.

Find out what these solutions lack, and also find out what people are complaining about.

Then, do better than them.
 

Cojo

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This is a great thing.

Find out what these solutions lack, and also find out what people are complaining about.

Then, do better than them.
What about marketing it? I pitched it in a community I have been fairly active in and got only 1 response (the person already has it and is content with it).
 

eliquid

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What about marketing it? I pitched it in a community I have been fairly active in and got only 1 response (the person already has it and is content with it).

1. Does your solution fix what the other solutions lack?

2. Does your solution fix what customers are complaining about with the other solutions?

-- If not, then you aren't going to win any customers. Why would they choose you and get nothing better?

If it does fix those things, you haven't found your angle for pitching it to customers correctly yet. You haven't provided them value yet in a way they understand or care about.
 
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fvcorp

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Wanted to bump...

Anyone recently finish a SaaS they have questions on?
I do have a question. First, thanks for keeping up this amazing thread.

I have been on the SaaS journey for a few years and an mid-late 30s. I have two successes and one exit. After the exit, I am more tired and in doubt than usual. I have had some high ticket job offers and I’ve turned them down — but deep inside I wonder if I can succeed on my own again or if a $250k+ job is worth it. I hate working for others, but maybe for my family $250K/year is better than I can produce?

How do you keep yourself going? How do you avoid selling out? Has SaaS been incredibly lucrative for you long term or has it been more about freedom all along?
 

eliquid

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I do have a question. First, thanks for keeping up this amazing thread.

I have been on the SaaS journey for a few years and an mid-late 30s. I have two successes and one exit. After the exit, I am more tired and in doubt than usual. I have had some high ticket job offers and I’ve turned them down — but deep inside I wonder if I can succeed on my own again or if a $250k+ job is worth it. I hate working for others, but maybe for my family $250K/year is better than I can produce?

How do you keep yourself going? How do you avoid selling out? Has SaaS been incredibly lucrative for you long term or has it been more about freedom all along?

I had a few different answers to this, but the longer I thought about it.. the only real answer is the one you come up with yourself, based on who you are.

And that's where my "GOLD! - MINDSET - Not Fulfilled? Depressed? Maybe You Need An Alignment" post comes in. Warning, it's a long post with some work involved.

But that's how I came to answers to questions like yours, and what I still use to this day on certain questions that come up in my life.

Once I was "aligned", I never had to keep myself going.

I didn't feel like I sold out.

I no longer was tired or had much doubt, past what a normal healthy human should have in their life.

I make a lot of my personal and business decisions off this framework in that URL, but you gotta put in the work and time to find out the real answers.
 
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Andy Black

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I do have a question. First, thanks for keeping up this amazing thread.

I have been on the SaaS journey for a few years and an mid-late 30s. I have two successes and one exit. After the exit, I am more tired and in doubt than usual. I have had some high ticket job offers and I’ve turned them down — but deep inside I wonder if I can succeed on my own again or if a $250k+ job is worth it. I hate working for others, but maybe for my family $250K/year is better than I can produce?

How do you keep yourself going? How do you avoid selling out? Has SaaS been incredibly lucrative for you long term or has it been more about freedom all along?
If money was no object, what work would you be doing?
 

miguelst

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@eliquid There's a lot of pages of great information, thank you!

Do you use any specific method to quickly validate your next Saas idea? I'm onto something I think, I have the coding knowledge, I just need to know if people actually need this. From reading around I know that straight up asking people "would you use this?" is silly. So I'm curious how you go about this. thanks!
 

fvcorp

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I had a few different answers to this, but the longer I thought about it.. the only real answer is the one you come up with yourself, based on who you are.

And that's where my "GOLD! - MINDSET - Not Fulfilled? Depressed? Maybe You Need An Alignment" post comes in. Warning, it's a long post with some work involved.

But that's how I came to answers to questions like yours, and what I still use to this day on certain questions that come up in my life.

Once I was "aligned", I never had to keep myself going.

I didn't feel like I sold out.

I no longer was tired or had much doubt, past what a normal healthy human should have in their life.

I make a lot of my personal and business decisions off this framework in that URL, but you gotta put in the work and time to find out the real answers.

That is yet another great thread. I think instinctively we do some of that, but it’s good to be intentional about it.

Over the past day I went through the other thread and started to do the work. It’ll take some time though because greed clouds true desires a bit.

However, with that said, it’s pretty definitive that once I run my decisions through a framework/questions, I am meant to continue on my path and not pursue more money in the form of a job.

Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts greatly.
 
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Andy Black

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I’d be trying riskier business ideas, with higher risk/reward. Mostly SaaS businesses.
What if doesn't have to be riskier to get higher rewards?
 

eliquid

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@eliquid There's a lot of pages of great information, thank you!

Do you use any specific method to quickly validate your next Saas idea? I'm onto something I think, I have the coding knowledge, I just need to know if people actually need this. From reading around I know that straight up asking people "would you use this?" is silly. So I'm curious how you go about this. thanks!
Yes I do, but you would need to read the whole thread to find it.
 
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Hey @eliquid , great thread!

Have spent a couple of days reading though it and it contains a ton of valuable knowledge. Thanks for sharing your wisdom in this area!

Two questions:

1. Should I proceed with a SaaS, if it will depend on an API by an external data provider which I have no idea how to replace? On one side – the commandment of control is applied, on the other – there is an unfulfilled need in a domain I'm an expert in. What should be my way of thinking in such a situation?

2. When should I create a business entity for my SaaS – when starting talking with potential clients or providers; when creating the landing page; or when starting the actual service? In my country having a business requires recurring monthly costs to maintain it, so I'm trying to establish it as late as possible.
 

eliquid

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Hey @eliquid , great thread!

Have spent a couple of days reading though it and it contains a ton of valuable knowledge. Thanks for sharing your wisdom in this area!

Two questions:

1. Should I proceed with a SaaS, if it will depend on an API by an external data provider which I have no idea how to replace? On one side – the commandment of control is applied, on the other – there is an unfulfilled need in a domain I'm an expert in. What should be my way of thinking in such a situation?

2. When should I create a business entity for my SaaS – when starting talking with potential clients or providers; when creating the landing page; or when starting the actual service? In my country having a business requires recurring monthly costs to maintain it, so I'm trying to establish it as late as possible.

1. Go ahead and go forward with the API until you can figure out how to deliver it without the API. Just get moving forward.

2. Normally I would tell you to start the entity now as you are building, but you could wait until you have your first customer. When you are about to get your first customer... then get the entity
 

eliquid

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mojorisin

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Wanted to bump for 2023
@eliquid incredible thread. And applaud you for being willing to help others.

I have identified a business problem, I'm a domain expert, and SaaS is the right solution. Excellent fit. However I'm not technical, so I've outsourced the development of the solution to developers (PhP + MySQL). I've used freelancer and upwork to find development help, however nothing noteworthy to this point which is slowing my progress. I'm 6 months in, and the current developers are not the right fit for my needs.

Question to you - what process do you find successful in screening & selection of technical and development help? How do you think about "outsourcing gap skills" that you do not personally have but need to be successful?

Thanks in advance.
 

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Chrisrod2597

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Hello everyone.

A lot of you know me for my digital marketing Gold Thread here on the FLF ( see sig ), as well as other posts in the forum.

What you might not know is that I've successfully built 6 profitable SaaS programs either solely by myself, or with a single partner ( and with no other employees other than VA's ), and that I am working on building my 7th SaaS

I've learned a few things in SaaS over the last 7 years that span:
  • Handling competitors
  • Reducing churn
  • Fraud reduction
  • Technology for SaaS needs
  • Big Data ( billions of new data points daily over years )
  • Increasing LTV
  • APIs
  • Pricing
  • Onboarding
  • Project management
  • Marketing
  • Customer service
  • Partnerships
  • Customer demos/profiles, MVPs, UVP's, ahHa moments, etc
  • many many more things

I've focused all my SaaS programs in the digital marketing space, but I have some ideas for new SaaS programs expanding outside of that for the future.

I can't answer questions related to:
  • Legal - please seek an attorney
  • Specific finance questions about my current or past SaaS programs - I'm not going to divulge other than generalities to the public. I can verify for a mod though if needed.
  • Info on verticals outside of digital marketing - meaning if you have a SaaS for doctors and you ask me a specific medical question, I won't know it if it pertains to doctors or medical
  • LLC vs Scorp Vs etc - This is legal
  • How long is a piece of string type questions

And before anyone asks.. NO, not all 6 SaaS are currently running right now. I closed down the first 5 over the years at different times due to either partner problems or interest died off for me and I rolled into the next SaaS combining ideas to make something new.

For clarification, I am running 1 active SaaS right now and building another ( the 7th ) that is not public atm since it is not finished.

Ask away!


P.S. - Listen, I'm a different type of person. I have very unique views that don't always fit the norm you might have heard elsewhere. What I tell you is what has worked for me and the way I see things from my own personal experience. There are many ways to skin a cat. If you don't agree, that's cool but always think things over for yourself and what will work for you.

.
Thank you for sharing; I have some questions below

  1. What are some other lessons you learned running SaaS companies that you think would be valuable for someone just starting out?
  2. How did you approach building and utilizing APIs in your past SaaS companies?
  3. How did you approach building partnerships for your past SaaS companies?
 
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Wisith

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My friend and I built our first web app. We are working out the kinks before moving onto beta testing. It's on Heroku at the moment. There is a video component to it and we are just using YouTube at the moment.

Are there any affordable platforms for hosting? Heroku will get expensive quickly so this is just the interim fix. Thanks!
 

Chrisrod2597

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Hello everyone.

A lot of you know me for my digital marketing Gold Thread here on the FLF ( see sig ), as well as other posts in the forum.

What you might not know is that I've successfully built 6 profitable SaaS programs either solely by myself, or with a single partner ( and with no other employees other than VA's ), and that I am working on building my 7th SaaS

I've learned a few things in SaaS over the last 7 years that span:
  • Handling competitors
  • Reducing churn
  • Fraud reduction
  • Technology for SaaS needs
  • Big Data ( billions of new data points daily over years )
  • Increasing LTV
  • APIs
  • Pricing
  • Onboarding
  • Project management
  • Marketing
  • Customer service
  • Partnerships
  • Customer demos/profiles, MVPs, UVP's, ahHa moments, etc
  • many many more things

I've focused all my SaaS programs in the digital marketing space, but I have some ideas for new SaaS programs expanding outside of that for the future.

I can't answer questions related to:
  • Legal - please seek an attorney
  • Specific finance questions about my current or past SaaS programs - I'm not going to divulge other than generalities to the public. I can verify for a mod though if needed.
  • Info on verticals outside of digital marketing - meaning if you have a SaaS for doctors and you ask me a specific medical question, I won't know it if it pertains to doctors or medical
  • LLC vs Scorp Vs etc - This is legal
  • How long is a piece of string type questions

And before anyone asks.. NO, not all 6 SaaS are currently running right now. I closed down the first 5 over the years at different times due to either partner problems or interest died off for me and I rolled into the next SaaS combining ideas to make something new.

For clarification, I am running 1 active SaaS right now and building another ( the 7th ) that is not public atm since it is not finished.

Ask away!


P.S. - Listen, I'm a different type of person. I have very unique views that don't always fit the norm you might have heard elsewhere. What I tell you is what has worked for me and the way I see things from my own personal experience. There are many ways to skin a cat. If you don't agree, that's cool but always think things over for yourself and what will work for you.

.
Hi there I only have two questions to ask you
What advice would you personally give to someone starting their own SAAS business for the first time?

What was your biggest challenge in starting a SAAS company?
 

ElTameroElPatron

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Hello everyone.

A lot of you know me for my digital marketing Gold Thread here on the FLF ( see sig ), as well as other posts in the forum.

What you might not know is that I've successfully built 6 profitable SaaS programs either solely by myself, or with a single partner ( and with no other employees other than VA's ), and that I am working on building my 7th SaaS

I've learned a few things in SaaS over the last 7 years that span:
  • Handling competitors
  • Reducing churn
  • Fraud reduction
  • Technology for SaaS needs
  • Big Data ( billions of new data points daily over years )
  • Increasing LTV
  • APIs
  • Pricing
  • Onboarding
  • Project management
  • Marketing
  • Customer service
  • Partnerships
  • Customer demos/profiles, MVPs, UVP's, ahHa moments, etc
  • many many more things

I've focused all my SaaS programs in the digital marketing space, but I have some ideas for new SaaS programs expanding outside of that for the future.

I can't answer questions related to:
  • Legal - please seek an attorney
  • Specific finance questions about my current or past SaaS programs - I'm not going to divulge other than generalities to the public. I can verify for a mod though if needed.
  • Info on verticals outside of digital marketing - meaning if you have a SaaS for doctors and you ask me a specific medical question, I won't know it if it pertains to doctors or medical
  • LLC vs Scorp Vs etc - This is legal
  • How long is a piece of string type questions

And before anyone asks.. NO, not all 6 SaaS are currently running right now. I closed down the first 5 over the years at different times due to either partner problems or interest died off for me and I rolled into the next SaaS combining ideas to make something new.

For clarification, I am running 1 active SaaS right now and building another ( the 7th ) that is not public atm since it is not finished.

Ask away!


P.S. - Listen, I'm a different type of person. I have very unique views that don't always fit the norm you might have heard elsewhere. What I tell you is what has worked for me and the way I see things from my own personal experience. There are many ways to skin a cat. If you don't agree, that's cool but always think things over for yourself and what will work for you.

.
Thanks for the thread @eliquid . I'm thinking about creating online website and SaaS service which is already available in the market.
Based on your experience:

  1. How can we create competitive ideas and estimate the impact if they are advantages over competitors?
  2. Do you recommend starting as MVP light weight then add services ?
  3. As I'm working as a software developer, do you recommend to work only within things I know and outsource irrelevant work ? Or should I learn mostly everything to do myself?
Cheers...
 
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Last edited:

eliquid

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@eliquid incredible thread. And applaud you for being willing to help others.

I have identified a business problem, I'm a domain expert, and SaaS is the right solution. Excellent fit. However I'm not technical, so I've outsourced the development of the solution to developers (PhP + MySQL). I've used freelancer and upwork to find development help, however nothing noteworthy to this point which is slowing my progress. I'm 6 months in, and the current developers are not the right fit for my needs.

Question to you - what process do you find successful in screening & selection of technical and development help? How do you think about "outsourcing gap skills" that you do not personally have but need to be successful?

Thanks in advance.
It might help to know why you think they are not the right fit. If you are not technical, how do you measure they are not the right fit? Maybe they are....

But past that, I find people that have worked on previous projects successfully, with lots of great feedback, who can communicate with me effectively on the project clearly.

If you go with that, you can not go wrong. If you have problems while also having someone I described.. it might not be the dev's fault.
 

eliquid

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Thank you for sharing; I have some questions below

  1. What are some other lessons you learned running SaaS companies that you think would be valuable for someone just starting out?
  2. How did you approach building and utilizing APIs in your past SaaS companies?
  3. How did you approach building partnerships for your past SaaS companies?

1. Really hard to point to more lessons than what is already in this thread. I mean, I touched on a lot of SaaS stuff here. But if anything helped, I guess it would be knowing business financials.

2. Use a 3rd party API to get started and an MVP built, but quickly find out how to not rely on it and do away with it once you can. Many times these API providers can hold you hostage and go out of business.

3. I don't really utilize partnerships in the SaaS companies. Too many times people promise the moon and then never deliver or go on to the next shiny object. Out of 100 people that tell me that wanna work with our SaaS, maybe 5 end up doing it.. and those 5 do ok until they move on to something else. No one will do the work like you do it, so I try to not lean on partnerships at all as I have found they aren't worth the trouble 95% of the time. Finding the 5% that do, takes time and that time could instead go into something else and provide the same return.
 

eliquid

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My friend and I built our first web app. We are working out the kinks before moving onto beta testing. It's on Heroku at the moment. There is a video component to it and we are just using YouTube at the moment.

Are there any affordable platforms for hosting? Heroku will get expensive quickly so this is just the interim fix. Thanks!
We have always used Linode and Digital Ocean. $5 and $10 a month is hard to beat for "cheaper"
 
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eliquid

( Jason Brown )
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Hi there I only have two questions to ask you
What advice would you personally give to someone starting their own SAAS business for the first time?

What was your biggest challenge in starting a SAAS company?

1. Don't wait on building it.

2. Trying to please everyone
 

eliquid

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Thanks for the thread @eliquid . I'm thinking about creating online website and SaaS service which is already available in the market.
Based on your experience:

  1. How can we create competitive ideas and estimate the impact if they are advantages over competitors?
  2. Do you recommend starting as MVP light weight then add services ?
  3. As I'm working as a software developer, do you recommend to work only within things I know and outsource irrelevant work ? Or should I learn mostly everything to do myself?
Cheers...

1. This is where having experience and being an expert in a domain matters. If you have to create competitive ideas ( meaning you don't have them already ), I would not suggest building that SaaS.

2. Yes

3. I think honestly, you should learn everything yourself. As a software dev, I do not think that means if you know only PHP, that you need to go learn Java if you need Java. You know how "code works" potentially just from PHP alone hopefully so outsourcing Java would be fine. But what I do mean is... as a software dev you should learn other unrelated skills like business financials, marketing, sales, fulfillment, etc. That doesn't mean you have to do it 100%, but don't outsource it 100%. You will need to have these skills in you as the owner once you scale.
 

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