Hi and thanks for coming by! Short update this week.

In my last post, I finished with a list of ways to find micro-Saas ideas, that I planned to use.

One of the ways was trying find inspiration in SaaS idea newsletters. So, for the past week-and-a-bit, I’ve been doing that, which produced some moderate results. Here’s a dump of ideas:

Idea dump
* Taxfix for solopreneurs
* Bubble plugin that takes webform data to google sheets
* Linktree-style website builder for doctors and other independent practitioners, 
including appointment booking, payments, loyalty. If Doctolib is Amazon, this is Shopify
* Invoice generator from Notion/Coda
* Some CMS ideas:
** Knowledgebase that uses Airtable/Coda to manage it's content
** Use Airtable/Notion/Coda to manage content in Wordpress/Wix/Webflow or other website builders
** Airtable/Notion/Coda to manage a simple productroadmap page, including feature upvote
* Subscription flow/billing plugin for Wordpress/Wix/Webflow
* Competitor comparison page generator based on G2/Capterra data
* Manage (write, schedule, analytics) linkedin posts from notion/coda/airtable
* [Shopify plugin] Scan QR code to take cart to mobile device and continue shopping

Another way to find ideas that I’ve read about and thought attractive, is to find popular apps on one platform (e.g. Shopify) and try to build it on a competitor’s platform (e.g. Woocommerce). So i found a list of platforms that have app marketplaces. To better understand if these platforms are a good fit, I looked at 3 things: size, growth and whether they have documentation for building with Python (the programming language I’m least of a noob in). I also filtered out any platform that I know nothing about.

The top 10 biggest platforms from this list are:

  1. Zoom
  2. G Suite/Google Workspace
  3. Shopify
  4. Wix
  5. Slack
  6. Salesforce
  7. Figma
  8. Wordpress
  9. Stripe
  10. Coda

The top 10 fastest growing platforms are:

  1. Hubspot
  2. JotForm
  3. Figma
  4. Airtable
  5. Magento
  6. Webflow
  7. Monday
  8. Typeform
  9. Salesforce
  10. Zendesk

So I went through the documentation of each of these platforms, and it looks like only Slack enables building using Python. Some other platforms (e.g. Stripe) enable building things with Python, but not for apps on their marketplaces. This forces a choice on me between investing into learning a new programming language (I know some Python) or focusing on Slack. With Slack being one of the bigger platforms, typically used by companies that seem to often spend money on apps in the store, I don’t think it’s the worst forced choice.

How’s it going, Stefan

With a few more and diverse ideas, I feel more positive than last week. I’ve also been going to Improv classes and a few meetups (a solopreneur meetup and a product management meetup). It feels good to be able to talk to people going through similar moments in their lives.

➡️Next steps

Keep brainstorming. Next, I’ll try to find apps that work well on one platform but aren’t on a competitive platform yet.