This is an opinionated, early-stage sales + build checklist. It’s intentionally simple.
The pipeline
- Prospecting. Identify, locate, and contact people who might care.
- Qualifying & investigating. Confirm they have a real need and urgency.
- Demonstrating. Explain the solution you have in mind.
- Closing. Ask for commitment to try it when it’s ready.
Reality check
Try to build up to at least 100 people/day visiting your landing page.
That’s a big number at the start, but you need volume. For every 100 people you get to your landing page, you might get 1–10 signups to your launch list. Everyone’s results vary.
If someone claims 30–40% signup rates, that’s usually an outlier.
Building a SaaS startup is mostly a marketing optimization problem—not something you can code your way out of.
Rules (opinionated)
- Don’t hide behind freemium.
- Charge early.
- Take no more than one month to build and release v1.
- If you can’t directly tie a feature to the delivery of your one benefit, you’re coding for coding’s sake.
- Focus on v0.1beta.
You’re building a startup. It’s supposed to be messy at first. This is not the enterprise.
What you need
- Sign up and log in.
- Reasonable security (salt + hash passwords at minimum).
- Ability to charge a card monthly.
- A way for customers to reach you.
What you don’t need (yet)
- SSO/SAML/OAuth/JWT/social sign-on.
- Password reset.
- Self-service profile management.
- Self-serve cancellation.
- Self-serve plan/tier changes.
- Multiple users per account (unless absolutely necessary).
- Automated billing accounting.
- Automated emails during signup/billing/events.
Focus development on what gets people to:
- sign up,
- use the product,
- pay.
Everything else is premature optimization.
Operating mindset
Protect your time. Protect your energy.
Even if you do everything “right”, people will still complain.
Wait until there’s enough evidence that something matters.
Then fix it.
Now run the funnel:
- Do they sign up? Why not?
- Do they use it? Why not?
- Do they convert? Why not?
Turn the knobs until it works.
Most people don’t want to spend money. You have to earn their attention, respect, and trust first.