Never launch, AI as an anti-signal, slow news, zero shame in pulling the plug.
Hey,
this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.
Let's dive in!
ð¡ Opportunities
âBilling for software is broken. Stripe is REALLY good at helping you get your first dollar. But what about everything else? Experimenting/evolving your pricing, grandfathering legacy customers, effective churn/retention flows, dunning emails that actually work - etc.
Every team faces the same monetisation challenges. Right now they: - dedicate engineering resources - buy bolt-on solutions - leave things as is, hope for the best ... or a dangerous combination of all 3. Most never reach their monetisation potential as a result.â - Che SampatâDoes anyone know of any "slow" news? I would really love to read a newsletter/newspaper that comes once per month, and only has really deep dives on issues, or short highlights on important stuff, and puts it all into historical context. Does anyone know of something like this?â - Charlie Becker
It's incredibly frustrating when a SaaS product starts failing at the most basic things. And I totally get it. It's so much more fun to work on shiny new stuff. But I really wish more founders would just keep focusing on nailing the boring fundamentals.
At the same time, this means there will always be tons of opportunities: Build X but simpler + faster.
A flexible project management tool like ClickUp laser-focused on nailing core features (tasks, automations, forms, docs) would print money.
Same for Zapier. Powerful yes, but so painful to use.
Basically just check what SaaS recently added AI features. Always means the team is not focusing on the fundamentals and is distracted by shiny new stuff.
ð Â Things Worth Checking Out
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ð§ªLesson Learned
ðšâð Never Launch
âNever launch. Seed with a small group, see if itâs working, and then grow.â - Nikita Bier
Nikita used the exact same playbook to launch multiple apps that went viral on a global scale and got acquired for a ton of money.
Instead of doing a big launch event, he tested versions of his apps in different seed groups. The team set up stands near schools and offered rewards for anyone who downloaded and tried the app.
Dozens of these seed group experiments failed. The app didnât take off. But they kept iterating until they found a version that went viral inside the seed group, i.e. the school. Then they expanded the experiment to a larger seed group = more schools.
The exact same strategy works regardless of if youâre building a B2B SaaS, an agency, or an app for teens. Instead of going to schools, you might have to go to conferences or simply send out cold emails.
With a big launch the stakes are extremely high. You're putting everything on one card. If your launch doesn't get the traction you were hoping for, you're screwed. There is no room for iteration. If the users you get from the launch don't stick around, you're screwed.
With a seed group experiment, you can iterate until you find something that works. You can fail dozens of times and it doesn't matter. No one even needs to know about these experiments. You can keep quietly iterating until you find something that works.
End Note
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Have a great week,
Jakob
Whilst the seed group idea with iteration is good, unless you use up all your runway, you can still iterate post launch.