✋ STOP: High fidelity prototyping

Building a SaaS is like cooking without a recipe. You know the best cooking principles, ratios, and techniques.

But you don’t know the ingredients and how to prepare them.

It’s usually even worse.

Perhaps you don’t even know who’s eating or whether you’re making a dessert or cooking the main dish.

You may even try all three and decide to pivot to a burger joint.

Here’s how I approach this.

You need to answer the questions:

Somewhere in there, you’ll need to build some software to test that hypothesis.

I think of it in terms of price/performance.

Production-grade software is a high investment, so you’ll want to answer most questions before you commit by using cheaper methods.

User interviews, wireframes, and prototypes are your friends.

Those sets you up for a good swing at it.

The actual physical product in the hands of the users is the real test.

I’m not saying to do it in a waterfall style.

The goal is to learn fast and adapt fast.

But in the early stages, you learn fastest by avoiding building full products until you’ve exhausted other options.

That doesn’t mean not to code.

It means to code strategically.

You have limited resources. Use them for maximal impact.

Best regards,

Taj