The tiny SaaS dream

A monthly subscription.

Fifty customers.

Then a hundred.

And suddenly, in a developer's head, a tiny spreadsheet is beginning to look suspiciously like a business. 😄

I understand the temptation. When you can build software, it's easy to believe you only need an idea, a polished app and a little patience before subscriptions start rolling in.

The problem is that last part.

Nobody subscribes just because your code is clean.

There's a reason the dream is appealing

A micro-SaaS is a relatively focused software product that customers usually pay for through a subscription. The idea is not to build an app that does everything, but to solve a specific problem well enough.

For a small team—or a solo developer—that's appealing. You can improve one product instead of starting from scratch for every client.

Through my projects at KAMIT, I'm exploring this reusable-product approach myself. That doesn't mean I've discovered a passive-income machine.

Software still requires maintenance, support, security, billing and, above all, customers.

One real customer beats fifty imaginary ones

Imagine building a small order-tracking tool for a local business.

Before writing code, some less exciting questions deserve answers:

• How does the owner track orders today?
• What actually costs them time or money?
• Do they need new software or a simpler process?
• Would they pay monthly? How much, and for what outcome?

One good conversation can disprove three weeks of assumptions. Bad for the ego, excellent for the budget.

Build the minimum—really the minimum

The familiar trap is to start with one feature and add ten more because you know how.

Soon you have a dashboard, six roles, a public API and three colour themes.

But still no regular users.

I'd rather imagine a first version that solves one problem from start to finish. If it helps somebody, the next feature requests will be grounded in reality.

It's not about thinking small. It's about shortening the distance between a hypothesis and proof.

Pricing and distribution are product work too

There is no magic price. A small subscription can feel expensive if the value is unclear. A tool that saves real time can justify more.

You still have to tell people about it.

Outreach, demos, onboarding, content and word of mouth may be less fun than coding, but they're part of the business.

What I'm learning

A micro-SaaS is not an automatic shortcut to financial freedom.

It's a very practical experiment: find a problem, validate that it matters, build enough, sell, listen, improve.

Repeat.

I'm not at a stage where I can lecture anyone about scaling a SaaS. I can share the questions I'm facing while building my own products.

The most useful one might be: if I took the code away, would the customer's problem still exist?

If not, I may have found a project idea. Not a business yet.