You can start looking for a SaaS idea before you know what the product will be. Look at work you understand and the parts people struggle to finish. We'll follow monthly agency reports through these guides, beginning with the task before deciding whether to build a reporting tool.
By the end of this guide
A specific person, a recurring problem, and a way to learn more.
01 / Start close to the work
Look for a job someone already does.
Think about your work, a business you know, or a community you take part in. Where does someone repeatedly copy information between tools, chase a reply, or prepare the same document?
For example, you might notice someone at a marketing agency copying figures from an analytics export into a client report. Ask them to show you the last report and explain which parts they had to do by hand. That gives you a specific task to investigate.
- Too broad
- Software for agencies.
- A question you can investigate
- How do small paid-search agencies prepare monthly client reports, and which part still takes manual work?
02 / Find other instances
Check whether it happens beyond your own desk.
Now look beyond that first person. Search reviews, support threads, professional communities and job descriptions for the same workflow. For the reporting idea, look for how other agencies prepare reports and which parts still take manual work. Keep the sources and the words people use.
A complaint is a lead. It could describe an occasional annoyance, a problem a free tool already solves, or something the writer cannot buy software for. Ask about their current workaround before treating it as a business.
- Describe the person and the task.
- Find another instance of the problem.
- Record the workaround and what it costs in time or money.
03 / Choose what to investigate
Can you reach the people who have it?
Name one place you could have a useful conversation with a prospective buyer. Knowing an industry, speaking its language or working alongside its customers can help you get an honest account of the problem.
If you know an agency owner, ask for an introduction to the person who prepares the reports. If you cannot reach anyone doing the task, spend time finding that conversation before committing to a product. Keep the idea open while you learn.
Tools for the task
Where to do this work
Use search tools to find other people describing the task. Hunting Apps can investigate existing solutions; trend tools help you see whether interest in the wider topic is changing.
Your next action
Write down one problem to investigate.
For the reporting idea, that means naming the person who prepares the report, what slows them down, and where you could find someone else doing the same work.
0 of 3 ready
Sources and limits
These are practical recommendations drawn from the sources below. Founder accounts are retrospective, and vendor guides describe their authors' approaches. They do not establish a guaranteed result for your project.
Advice on choosing a problem, caring about the users and knowing where the first users will come from.
A first-person account of a development problem that became a hosted service.