the SAS industry is booming with revenues projected to hit over $200 billion by 2025 the future it's in businesses with reoccurring revenue and scalable potential AKA SAS companies SAS stands for software as a service it's a cloud-based model where users access software over the internet without needing to download it the best part about creating a SAS company is that you can build the product once and you can sell it forever it's a very attractive model for entrepreneurs plus it can be run remotely you can even run your business from the Bahamas if you want to I know that I have way too many subscriptions to SAS companies because it's so easy to sign up that I almost forgot that I did by the end of this video you will know the steps that you need to take to launch your own SAS company and create a reoccurring and consistent income stream I'm not just going to show you how to build a business but also how to validate it Market it and scale it SAS companies have a unique advantage in the marketplace with reoccurring Revenue scalability Global reach so how do you make sure that there are people out there willing to spend money on your product first you need to do market research the most important part of any business is making sure that there is a market for it which means that people are already spending their money on this thing the first two questions you must answer before any other question what problem is your SAS product solving for people and who are you solving it for go on Google and start researching your competition the market size and gather all the data that you can about your industry such as market growth who spends the most money on your kind of SAS software and what are the emerging Trends in the industry you can also use a really great software called Frederick AI for this rather than wasting thousands of dollars building out a product before you even have a customer base first build a prototype an easy way to do this is by building a wireframe you can draw one with pen and pencil or you can use programs like balsamic or figma to make one it is really important to know what kind of interface design you want when you start working with developers so a wireframe is essential guys this is where your creative genius gets to come out that's it Patrick your Genius is showing where now this tip is going to save you from pouring money down the drain it is the number one thing that most businesses get wrong you need to validate your business idea the moment someone pays you is the moment you officially have a business method one you can start a wait list to get users to sign up before you build the app you can incentivize people to share the weight list by giving them points or discounts to your software so how can you create a weight list you can actually create a weight list with apps such as weight. Le viral loops and Shopify forms or you can even use Google forms if it's easier for you but here's the best way to validate your idea create an early adopter program offer participants a chance to invest in your software by purchasing a license at a discount for the first year if done successfully this will prove that people don't just like your product they're willing to pay for it name the program and provide exclusive benefits such as a verified status on the platform or involvement in feature creation remember even if people say they like the idea if people don't pay they're unlikely to spend their money when it's launched I recently listened to an interview with Daniel Priestley who at the age of 21 launched his first company it reached $10 million in Revenue within 3 years he says the most important part of starting any company is validating the idea before spending a lot of money plus this looks great to investors or future Partners okay what do you do once your idea has been validated you can create something called an MVP what is an MVP an MVP is a minimum viable product you can create an MVP with minimal features to show what your app or software will be like you can create this using programs like figma bubble Shopify or Glide here are a few examples of nvps that big Brands started with buffer the social media toolkit for small businesses first launched with a simple landing page just explaining the concept of scheduling social media posts zappier the tool that integrates all of your web apps began is a manual process where the founder literally manually connected apps behind the scenes crazy I know the founders of Airbnb listed their own apartment on a simple website to test if someone would be willing to pay to stay in someone else's home so if you're looking to make a website for your nvp I've actually linked a free Shopify trial down below now the much asked question how should you price your product here are some potential pricing models to consider for your SAS product before you think of your model I would research what other SAS products in your space are charging this way you can get an idea of the market value you also want to consider if you have any monthly cost to run your business make sure your price reflects what you would need in order to pay off your initial investment within the next few years or months and to cover your monthly costs now let's talk about the different pricing models first is subscription based pricing this is where customers pay a reoccurring monthly or annual fee to get access to the product companies such as Netflix Shopify and Spotify all do this very well the premium model offer a basic version of the product for free and then charge for premium features cap cut and Dropbox both use this model usage based pricing this is where customers pay based on how much they actually use the product stripe uses this model flat rate pricing customers pay one price to get access to all of the features notion and Adobe Express do this per user pricing you can charge customers based on how many users there are in their account slack and zoom use this model there are many more options but these are all great as Patrick Campell the founder of profit well says a great pricing strategy doesn't just maximize Revenue it maximizes your customers success the big question how will your potential customers find you or even know that you exist and how are you going to make money well marketing will will be your best friend in this process here are my biggest recommendations when it comes to marketing and selling your products the nicest thing about SAS products is that there is no shipping involved so anybody in the world can access your products immediately at any time first partner with any key people of influence in your field influencers thought leaders businesses and groups and give them free access to your platform in exchange for them to share it if they like it you can also use affiliate marketing and give influencers a percent of each referral that signs up you want people to associate your brand with people they trust and respect plus you're going to reach a whole new audience this way you can use chat GPT or Google Gemini to help you find these people and you can also use softwares such as LinkedIn sales Navigator or other email finder tools like Apollo that help you get the contact of the exact people you want lastly Shopify collabs is also a great place to find Affiliates next run paid ads chances are a lot of people who need your product are hanging out on social media and you could Target them to sell your product through cgc ugc or just ad creatives in general to learn more I actually have a video in the description about Tik Tok ads and Facebook ads so go watch those if you need a little extra help next offer a free trial for new users so that they can test out your app and once they love it give you their money create educational content on social media focused on your product and build a community around it make sure to give as much value as you can next put good reviews and customer success stories all over your front page people Trust reviews you can also add your app or software to the Shopify app store if your SAS software serves businesses now what will you need to create a SAS product you will need to find a developer to build out the software and a UI or ux designer for your interface you may potentially need a devops engineer product managers and customer service Representatives you can actually find the right people for this on platforms such as topt who actually have the top 3% of talent wellfound which is made for startups or gun.io specifically made to find software talent for sales you can hire a sales team on a percentage basis or you can just do sales on your own you honestly do not need a big team to start you may need to do everything on your own in the beginning the biggest thing you need is to Outsource product development you can also partner with developers to get up and running but be careful who you give your Equity to believe it or not you can actually build SAS softwares with no no code apps such as bubble Glide or adalo so go give those ones a try the downside is that you don't fully own the software because it is run on their platform so if something happens to them you may not have a software anymore here are a few more AI tools to help you you can build an app on Firebase you can use maxio for billing and lastly you can use full story for Behavioral data what is the best way to keep customers happy make sure to provide ongoing customer support always always keep your software up to date and iron out any bugs in the system you want to make sure your product is actually solving your customer's problem you will also want to Monitor and respond to customer feedback the goal is to keep people on the platform for as long as you can we always want to be thinking about the future of our business you want to make sure that your processes are scalable so here are some ways you can scale your business the whole point of scaling is doing more of what is working so use something called the 8020 rule the 8020 rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do and 20% of your results come from 80% of what you do so narrow down what's actually working for you and do more of it for example if you're getting most of your customers from ads put more money into pushing ads if most of your revenue is coming from Paid feature upgrades build more of those for customers to buy you get the gist here are a few standard things you can do to scale once you have customer data refine your Target customer and retarget them with ads you can also upsell your customers solve the problems they face before during and after using your products and then charge them for it you want to expand your market and start selling to new locations or even adapt your product to meet the needs of adjacent Industries you can also build a sales team around your product or even automate your current processes another thing you can do is raise additional funding to pour into your business but most importantly pour your money into the places where money is already pouring out for you now I want to hear from you guys what SAS products are you currently excited about comment them down below look no one is going to become an entrepreneur without facing some challenges these are the common challenges you will likely face in the SAS industry but you've got this guys Rome was not built in a day okay first is churn rates a churn rate is the percentage of customers that stop using your services within a given time frame turn rate percent equals the total number of customers lost during a period of time divided by total number of customers at the start of the period and then you times it by 100 you now have your turn rate percent for example if a company starts with a th000 customers at the beginning of the month and loses 50 their turn rate is 5% just so you know the typical SAS turn rate is 5% so if customers are running away a little too fast and you have a higher turn rate make sure to check in on what might be causing it and improve those areas you can also run a survey to ask people why they left competition there will always be competitors in the ring but that's kind of what makes life fun it's a challenge other competitors May lower their prices steal your features and improve on them or even steal your customers so pay attention to what your customers are asking for and always keep your features up to date this way you can stand out in a saturated Market let's talk about the future of SAS there are a lot of new trends in the SAS space the biggest one we all know of is AI but there's a lot of other cool products like data as a service platform as a service and Market consolidation big companies are actually acquiring smaller companies in their space so it could be a good strategy to build a SAS company and then sell it to a bigger player another trend is micro SAS companies these are operating on a much smaller scale the last one I will mention is white label SAS this is where you can purchase unbranded SAS software and just put your brand on it anybody can become a successful entrepreneur it is not the smartest people in the room who do it but just the ones who believe even themselves enough are willing to learn and take action you now know how to start a SAS company a little Pro tip before you go the biggest thing you can work on as an entrepreneur is your mindset everything you do stems from your belief system so make sure you're feeding your brain with thought food that fuels your entrepreneurial Journey it will not be easy you're probably going to be challenged more than you ever have been but there's a quote that I really resonate with being an entrepreneur means doing the known work for the unknown outcome you don't know what your results will be until you try but the best thing you can do is take action and do the work you know what you need to do the other most important thing is speed make sure you're taking action quickly ideas can ruminate in our heads for years and never make it out of our minds so go get out there and build a killer sass product I cannot wait to see what you guys create I'm Chris mccollins thank you so much for watching this video if you found this helpful please let me know in the comments down below and give this video a like and if you want to get access to a bunch of free resources for all things business just subscribe to our channel for weekly videos bye guys [Music]