Having Trouble Finding A Need For SaaS

[ueki94]

I'm in college for software engeneering, I started reading about entrepreneurship a few months ago and I couldn't stop taking actiong since then, been creating websites, reading books and planing non stop.

Being one of the best in my college, I was able to talk to a few other top students in software engeneering, who are also motivated in creating a business or starting real projects.
I have a team of 5 people who are as motivated as me to succeed in building quality SaaS applications, but the problem is I feel like I am failing at being a leader, as I can't seem to find good niches atm.

I have found a need in a market, and have been testing the idea with the target audience, and so far so good, but if all 5 of us work on this it will be too much, I need to find other niches for the rest of the team to work on.

How do I do this?
The need I have found was nearly given to me, I was talking to a member of the target audience and he literally said he could use a software for that, but I doubt any other need will be given to me like that.

 

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[rkmalo1]

I'd start by reading this thread:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/sh...e-Maxwell-AMA-SaaS-Membership-Sites-Education

He has some golden information in there about SAAS and finding needs. Also this podcast:

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/research-validation-profit/

Good luck!

 

[exige]

Find some niches and get involved and scope it out. Find their message boards and become educated enough to see the problems people are struggling with, where their business workflow breaks down etc. Do some BPM/business processing mapping of their business on a whiteboard and look for gaps. Network and talk to people in the business on LinkedIn, etc. As a software engineering student - put on your Business Analyst hat (not sure if you've done any coursework on BA and requirements analysis yet). Find one very specific thing to be excellent at, don't try to build an SAP. To put it into terms that might resonate with you, being a software engineering student, here's some great SaaS apps that solve specific needs for software engineering:

- Balsamiq - Wireframing user interfaces
- Unfuddle - QA/Defect management, particularly useful for saving botched offshore projects
- WebSequenceDiagrams.com - sequence diagrams/UML

On the SEO niche you've got apps like ahrefs.com, SEMRush, etc.

You can look at directories like getapp.com to poke through other niche SaaS solutions out there to get ideas too.

And remember that SaaS doesn't only mean a web based interface, you could have a mobile app endpoint as well, so look for B2B mobile apps that store their data in the cloud with a subscription fee to get ideas too.

Some other ninja tactics are things like signing up for freelance sites and looking for business-specific apps people are bidding out :icon_super: