What I Learned Building a SaaS for 5+ Years

Founding your first SaaS? Here are five first-time founder learnings that I wish I had known at the start.

I did a talk on growth hacking last week for some cool startups over at Sting in Stockholm.

And this question got me thinking..

I founded Univid - a webinar platform to create engaging webinars in 60 seconds - over 5 years ago.

It was my first SaaS company ever, and as a first-time founder, there have been a ton of learnings building Univid - going from how to figure out growth (I even wrote a book about how), raise money, build a team, and get a $1M dollar acquisition offer.

Let's summarize some of my learnings below - to hopefully help you build your SaaS faster.

A few things I would have told myself 5 years ago, as a first-time SaaS founder:

Experiment relentlessly, shipping fast will help you iterate, get feedback, and keep customers happy. It gets people talking in the early days - helping you get momentum through word of mouth.

Don't get slow just because you grow. But keep technical debt under control.

There is much noise and distractions. If you try doing it all, you will end up with nothing.

This applies, whether it's growth channels, skills, or ICP - find what works and just keep digging there. Don’t look over the bridge for new holes to dig.

To keep focus on the right things - use a North Star Metric.

Remember: Execution is everything. It's often better to make a decision than not to. But sleep on important ones, and don't make them when you are emotional, or hungry..

Especially when young, it’s OK to go all in - the learnings will be invaluable, and starting again is cheap.

When older, having F-you money in the bank helps this mentality.

And build in public if you can. It will speed up your learning - getting you free exposure to new leads, keep existing customers in the loop, and attract investors and partners who want to join your journey

It’s OK not going for hyper growth, build your startup in your own way, with your own goals. Don't do things because you should, or could.

• Don’t raise money because you could

• Don't hire a bunch of people because someone told you so

• Don't try to build a unicorn because everyone else are chasing it

Take advice with a grain of salt

Yes, including these ones. You have to make your own mistakes, but reading and getting input from the community can speed up the process.

Also, think about who you take advice from. Always ask yourself (1) have they walked the walk themselves? And (2) what are their incentives?

• Fancy suit and corporate job all their life - probably not the best to advise on the early days of building a startup. They will say things like "where is your business plan?", "just hire someone to do it", and use the number of employees as a KPI of how well you are doing.

• VC investor - they don't care about you building a small profitable business that could change your life - they care about the 0.01% homeruns that return their fund. Thus, they will give you advice towards having a chance of that goal happening, and be OK with your SaaS going to zero in the process. It's part of the hyper growth game.

And remember - no goals are too small or big.

A SaaS company that is profitable + runs without you is a huge asset and can set you up for life, despite not getting any headlines in the newspapers - or VC investments.

Some great books on startup exits and building for you as the founder first are Getting Acquired, Magic Box Paradigm, and Lost and Founder.

Mistakes are OK, but repeating them is not - try to just improve a bit day by day, and always build out systems. It could be technical solutions, learnings new skills, outsourcing, or simply stacking habits on top of each other, like the Atomic Habits book talks about.

Example of a technical system to automate internal work - scaling our SaaS Univid without adding FTEs

So Atomic Habits talks about the power of compounding and the concept of getting 1% better each day, and building lasting change through habits. That's a great framework to adapt for SaaS founders as well - and I would recommend reading it.

Stress and burnout come from feeling stuck and not having ideas to get you to the next level. Systems help you scale and get to the next level. Systems also help avoid being stuck (A) doing the same thing over and over again and (B) getting lost in unorganized data.

These are 5 learnings from +5 years of building SaaS to help you execute faster and build the business of your dreams. Get ready - it's a marathon. Take one step at a time, look up now and then - and never stop pushing forward.

I'll leave you with one final quote, by Alex Hormozi, that stuck with me👇

Do so much volume until that it would be unreasonable to be successful

- Alex Hormozi

Let's make growth!