SaaS Validation - Go Where Your Audience Already Hangs Out
SaaS Validation Done Right
Most founders validate their SaaS idea wrong. They build a landing page, send a survey to friends, and interpret polite encouragement as market demand. Then they spend months building something nobody actually wants to pay for.
The One Step That Changes Everything
The approach that actually works is going where your audience already hangs out. Not asking them what they want - watching what they complain about, what workarounds they share, what tools they duct-tape together to solve real problems.
For developer tools, that means reading through GitHub issues, Reddit threads, Hacker News comments, and Discord servers. For business tools, it means lurking in industry Slack groups and LinkedIn discussions. The signal is in the frustration people express when they are not being asked for feedback.
Validation Is Not a Survey
Sending a survey to 10 friends is not validation. Friends will tell you your idea is great because they like you. Real validation comes from strangers who have the problem you are solving and are already spending money or significant time on workarounds.
The best signal is when someone says "I would pay for this right now." Not "that sounds cool" or "I could see myself using that." Those are polite ways of saying no.
Building in Public
Once you find where your audience lives, build there. Share your progress, get feedback on half-finished features, and let early users shape the product. The first 10 paying customers are worth more than 10,000 email signups because they tell you exactly what the product needs to be.
Starting with a clear audience and a real problem makes every subsequent decision easier - pricing, features, positioning, and marketing all follow naturally from understanding who you are building for and what pain you are solving.
Fazm is an open source macOS AI agent. Open source on GitHub.