April 18, 2023

EP26: The SaaS Black Hole

30 minutes

Are you building a SaaS product but have not yet got your first paying customers? You might be in or about to go into the SaaS Black Hole.

In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the SaaS black hole and covers how to think about pivoting, building your team, and bringing in outside help when you’re in this phase of building your company.

TL;DR:

3:40 - The SaaS black hole is the time when you are going from having trial users to charging for your product and working on getting your first 10 paying customers.

8:30 - The black hole phase looks different for every company. Sometimes, in rare cases, you nail the product and people want to sign up and pay right away. More often a few people convert, but there is real hesitation about paying and the value of the product. Depending on what happens in the black hole, you might need to go all the way back to customer discovery and really make sure you understand your audience and problem.

14:20 - The black hole can lead you to decide you need to totally pivot your product, to change focus to a new audience, or to realize that there is a problem or audience you didn't plan for, but that loves your product.

17:30 - It is very difficult to build a team while you're in the black hole because you don't know the answers to a lot of fundamental questions about your business.

20:45 - Most bootstrap founders don't plan big launches and instead choose to just go live. You don't need to feel like something big needs to happen when you start asking for your users to pay for the product.

24:30 - It makes sense to have a small team in this phase because you want to be able to make decisions quickly and take fast action when you need to pivot. When you have someone in marketing at this stage, they are going to have whiplash and struggle with the change of direction.

26:30 - From a growth consulting perspective, it makes sense to work with a company in the planning and preparation phase, pre-black hole or once a company is out of the black hole and has their first 10 paying customers.

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By Asia Orangio & Kim Talarczyk

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