(Sonu Goswami) SaaS Founders: Stop Building, Start Listening
Learn why successful SaaS founders prioritize customer problems over features. Weekly insights on building profitable software that people actually pay for.
What's up, founders?
I've watched hundreds of SaaS launches this year. Most will be forgotten by New Year's Eve. The ones that survive? They cracked the code on something most builders completely miss.
They build what customers actually need, not what sounds cool on Product Hunt.
The Listening Revolution
Here's the thing nobody talks about: coding your app is the simple part. Getting humans to open their wallets? That's where dreams go to die.
Smart founders plant themselves where their future customers hang out. Not to pitch—to absorb. They're lurking in industry Slack channels, scrolling through Reddit rants, diving deep into forum complaints.
One founder I know camped out in marketing agency communities for half a year. Never sold anything. Just helped people troubleshoot problems. When his agency tool launched, he had a waitlist of 200 people with credit cards ready.
Answer Questions Before They Ask
Remember when everyone discovered "They Ask, You Answer"? Most SaaS folks read it and promptly ignored the main point.
Your prospects are burning the midnight oil googling things like "project management software for distributed teams" and "CRM integration costs." They're dissecting your competitors' pricing tables and hunting for honest reviews.
Instead of hiding behind demo request forms, become their trusted source. Write the comparison they're desperately seeking. Admit where your tool falls short and where it shines.
What Actually Moves the Needle
Forget the marketing guru playbook for a second. Here's what works in reality:
Own your mistakes publicly. That founder who scaled to $50K MRR? He documented every failed feature launch, every marketing disaster, every near-death pivot. Raw honesty beats polished case studies every time.
Share your playbook, not just your victories. If you dropped churn from 8% to 3%, don't just share the percentage. Walk people through your exact email sequences, onboarding tweaks, and support ticket insights that made it happen.
Customer wins are marketing gold. Skip the corporate testimonials. Share the real stuff—screenshots of excited messages, voice memos of relieved customers, authentic stories about how your tool saved their sanity.
The Companies Getting This Right
Email platforms that teach list building and engagement strategies while solving technical problems. Their founders are constantly helping creators in DMs, building relationships before revenue.
Social media tools that publish brutally honest competitor comparisons, including where they lose features. Customers respect the transparency and trust grows faster.
The pattern? Successful companies make customers win first, then worry about their own bottom line. Counterintuitive but proven.
Your Action Plan
Customer education isn't marketing theater—it's survival strategy. Start helping before you start selling.
Your next customer is probably googling their pain point right now. Make sure they find your solution, not someone else's.
This Week's Challenge
Stop planning, start helping. Take five real questions from recent sales calls and turn them into helpful content:
- "How do I prevent first-month churn?" Document your actual onboarding tests with real metrics
- "Which analytics won't drain my startup budget?" Create honest free vs paid breakdowns with hidden costs
- "How do I validate features without building them?" Share your mockup-to-feedback workflow
- "What does switching from Excel really cost?" Follow a customer's migration story, including pain points
- "How do founders find their first 100 customers?" Interview founders about specific tactics, not generic advice
The Hard Truth About Content vs. Customers
Most founders I meet are caught in this weird trap. They're posting every day, getting decent engagement, celebrating follower milestones—but their revenue dashboard looks depressing.
I spent months doing this exact thing. Felt busy, felt productive, but my bank account told a different story.
Here's what I learned: vanity metrics feel good, but they don't pay for ramen. Ten customers who actually use and pay for your product will teach you more than ten thousand people who just hit "like" on your posts.
Not saying content is useless—you're reading this, right? But if your content isn't directly connected to solving real problems for real people with real budgets, you're just shouting into the void.