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For those who’ve built successful SaaS products in industries you had no prior experience in — how did you get up to speed?
r/SaaS
6/29/2025
SAAS TOOLS
| SaaS | URL | Category | Features/Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sparktoro | Market Research | Learn where engaged audience hangs out and how they consume content | |
| SuperTokens | https://supertokens.com | Authentication | Not explicitly stated, but implied as a SaaS product built by commenter |
USER NEEDS
Pain Points:
- Difficulty learning an unfamiliar industry quickly
- Validating ideas and understanding pain points in an unknown niche
- Marketing to an audience outside the founder's expertise
- Identifying the ideal customer profile (ICP) in a new domain
- Bridging the maker-market gap when lacking domain knowledge
Problems to Solve:
- How to rapidly understand industry-specific terminology and workflows
- How to identify genuine customer pain points without domain expertise
- How to effectively reach and communicate with target customers
- How to validate product-market fit in an unfamiliar market
- How to avoid building solutions for problems that don't exist
Potential Solutions:
- Conduct user interviews to understand daily challenges ("Don't pitch, just listen")
- Build scrappy prototypes for early validation ("see if anyone says 'can I use this?'")
- Narrow focus to specific niche: industrycountryplatformuse-casebuyer
- Leverage platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter for outreach
- Partner with domain experts for product development and sales
- Use market research tools (e.g., Sparktoro) to find audience hangouts
- Hang out in industry forums, Reddit, YouTube comments to learn lingo
- Start with simpler projects and incrementally build expertise
GROWTH FACTORS
Effective Strategies:
- Starting with a narrow niche before expanding (e.g., specific platform/revenue size)
- Incremental learning through user conversations and development challenges
- Focusing on solving one specific use-case deeply
- Developing "it would be weird if it don't work" strategy for focused execution
Marketing & Acquisition:
- Identifying where target audience hangs out (forums, social media, events)
- Buying targeted LinkedIn followers from competitor/event groups
- Cold outreach (email/LinkedIn/calls) focused on specific problems solved
- Beta testing and user interviews for validation
Monetization & Product:
- Importance of ideal customer profile (ICP) definition for product-market fit
- Building minimal viable products for quick validation
- Solving problems better than existing solutions regardless of industry knowledge
- Avoiding generic solutions by focusing on specific use-cases
User Engagement:
- Engaging in communities where target users congregate
- Listening to user feedback during development/production
- Creating frameworks for continuous customer discovery