In Search of SaaS Startup Ideas?
You’re tired of office life and looking to move beyond employment – perhaps your first business.
Or you just punched your manager in the face and need to find another line of work.
If so, we think you’d do well to find a business process that can be turned into a profitable SaaS startup.
Oh, hang on – we’ve already got five amazing Micro SaaS ideas for you.
What is “Micro SaaS”?
A Micro SaaS is a form of Software as a Service (SaaS) that serves a specific, often singular niche.
It does one thing and wants to be the very best that no one ever was.
As you can guess, founding a small product like a Micro SaaS comes with advantages:
- easily managed by a single founder
- low – no initial capital investment
- can often be built with low code / no code app builders
- can get away with simpler interfaces
Big value can come in small packages, though – this two-man team created a Micro SaaS for Shopify merchants that grew to $25,000 monthly revenue and 20,000 users in 14 months.
As we said in another post on profitable Micro Saas ideas, they’re the perfect choice for founders who lack experience and just want to try making cool sh*t!
In this post, we’re going to be a lot more thematic with our suggestions.
Every Micro Saas idea is linked to a specific business function and has the same target: local SMEs.
Let’s start!
5 Best Micro SaaS Business Ideas for 2023
In another post on how to find software ideas with market demand, we ranked industry knowledge as among the top advantages a founder can leverage.
Remember, even the most profitable SaaS ideas can fail in the wrong hands.
As a nine-to-fiver, you’ve used digital tools at work.
That is industry knowledge and how you’ll intuitively identify pain points both frequent and urgent.
Now let’s look at our first Micro SaaS idea.
Business Function #1: HR
The MVP: A 100% anonymous whistleblowing app
Can it be done with no code? Yes.
One of HR’s biggest roles is ensuring every employee obeys SOPs to shield the company from legal action.
Unfortunately, people are usually quite happy to break rules and you don’t expect them to confess.
It’s also unrealistic to expect co-workers to snitch, especially if the wrongdoer is in a higher position.
A whistleblowing micro SaaS takes away all fear.
Complaints are fully encrypted and anonymous so by default, even management won’t know the source (maybe unless law enforcement gets involved).
With no fear of being labelled a snitch, people are much more likely to report unethical practices that otherwise go unnoticed until the entire world sees it on the evening news.
Business Function #2: Business Development
The MVP: Competitor analysis and display
Can it be done with no code? Yes for a prototype, but probably not for a full-scale product.
This Micro SaaS allows a company to
- Select competitors it would like to keep tabs on
- Select key details it would like to know, including pricing, SKUs, and other data points
- Pull up a simple comparison table showing them and their competitors side by side
The app will update information by scraping data from company websites and social media accounts every 24 hours or so (users can opt for more frequent updates with a higher tier plan).
A business can then tell how to differentiate themselves or if they have nothing unique to offer.
If you want to be the definition of a lean bootstrap, you could even manually update those tables at the start.
As you get more users and revenue, you invest in automation.
By the time you’re spending money, you’ve more than validated the Micro SaaS idea.
Business Function #3: Design
The MVP: PDF Analyzer + Simple but Beautiful Social Media Post Generator
Can it be done with no code? Probably not – we think low code at a minimum.
Businesses want to be seen as well-informed more than they want to be well informed.
One popular strategy is to display a statistic from an industry report and use it to justify borderline criminal prices.
Google handles finding reports quite well, but a lot of time would be saved via an app that could:
- Scan a PDF that has hundreds of pages
- List out all statistics from biggest to smallest value or based on keywords
- Insert it into one of a selection of customizable designs
- Upload it to social media
We guarantee you marketing departments would love it, even solopreneurs for the right price.
Business Function #4: Finance / Leadership
The MVP: A comprehensive and up-to-date local SME grant matchmaker
Can it be done with no code? Yes
All your Micro Saas has to do is take the tangled mess of official government business grant portals and make it easy to understand and navigate.
In terms of app infrastructure, it doesn’t get any simpler.
Your platform allows businesses to create profiles and fill in details that match them to grants.
They then decide if they want to engage you to facilitate the grant application process for them.
Your typical business owner won’t have time to write letters and read the fine print – if they qualify for a $100 thousand dollar grant, and you can make it happen for five thousand bucks, they’ll take it.
Your main responsibility: stay updated.
With every new grant, you need it on your app and qualified users must be notified as soon as possible.
Business Function #5: Email Comms (For Everyone)
The MVP: A Gmail extension that prompts you to double-check your email before sending it
Can it be done with no code? You can’t no code your way to a Gmail extension
This is so simple it’ll sound dumb, then you realize people are dumb and it’s a genius app.
Everyone takes emails for granted.
That’s why everyone has sent an email or two they regret.
A simple reminder would do wonders to prevent such a simple oversight.
This extension triggers a checklist of action items when you start composing a new email, including:
- Check the CC list
- Check the attachments
- Spell the recipient’s name right
- Feed the dog
All things we take for granted.
A company can further customize the checklist based on their SOPs.
From now on, they will never have to worry about the consequences of faulty emails.
Something like this has potential application way beyond B2B.
Key considerations when starting a micro SaaS business
The micro SaaS industry is very competitive, and the smallest market gap could spawn a competitor.
Expect competition – in fact, be very worried if there are no competitors!
Against other options, you must differentiate your SaaS.
Part of being a Micro SaaS founder is learning to be a competitive market player.
As someone who’s been in the trenches for some time before transitioning to running a software-based solution, you have four unique advantages.
Existing industry networks
Your former colleagues, employers, and clients are people you’re already on speaking terms with. Many of the solutions you create will address their pain points. You have an invaluable base of potential interviewees, beta testers, and early adopters.
They can provide the initial social proof you need to open doors to cold leads.
The hometown / small guy card
Assuming your product is at least as good as an overseas alternative, you should absolutely lean on the homegrown angle. People are happy to support those they share common ground with, but it mustn’t come at a cost.
If your product is inferior and you try to sell it purely on patriotism, it’s going to be seen as a guilt trip, and nobody likes that.
Lower prices for a leaner product
This is the benefit of being a Micro SaaS that just does one thing super well.
You can undercut pricier and fancier alternatives without sacrificing the quality of your product.
Sometimes businesses are forced to pay more than they want for SaaS subscriptions because unnecessary features are bundled with essential features.
Personal branding
This is closely related to your network, but if you have been in the game for some time, and especially if you’re a known public persona, find a way to work it into the story of your app.
Big apps are faceless, corporate entities.
You are not. You are a person, with a story, a dream, and a solution.
Disclaimer: these strengths only really work if you have a decent reputation and product. If you have zero friends on Facebook (and real life) consider partnering with a public figure in your chosen space.
Conclusion: You find a profitable Micro SaaS idea – then what?
We hope you noticed that for every Micro Saas idea, we listed an MVP description.
If we let our imaginations run wild, we could think of many features to add to all of them.
But they’re not necessary – yet.
If you’re gonna be running around Micro SaaSing, you need to understand how to narrow down your idea to just essential features – what we traditionally call an MVP.
The essentials are what you race towards – the minimum work to have a legitimate solution.
Find an idea, then test it with a landing page and lots of organic marketing.
Wait till you have a validated Micro SaaS before punching your manager in the face.
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