Every SaaS starts by solving a problem for one person — usually yourself. The hard part is deciding when to generalize. I break down how I think about that transition without losing what made the product special.
Every SaaS product starts the same way: someone has a problem, can't find a good solution, and builds one themselves. That's the origin story. You are user #1. You know exactly what you need, and you build exactly that. The result is usually something highly specific, deeply personal, and shockingly effective — for you.
Then comes the question that kills more products than any technical failure: what about everyone else?
Generalizing a product is one of the hardest things to get right in SaaS. Go too early and you dilute what made it work. Add too many features for too many use cases and suddenly your sharp, focused tool becomes a bloated mess that does everything kinda okay and nothing really well.
I've been through this with multiple ventures, and here's the framework I use:
First, don't generalize until you have signal. Real signal. Not "my friend said they'd use this." Actual users signing up, paying, and telling you what they need. If you're building for a market that doesn't exist yet, you're guessing — and guessing is expensive.
Second, look for patterns, not one-offs. When three different users ask for the same thing in different words, that's a pattern. When one user asks for something nobody else mentioned, that's a one-off. Build for patterns. Listen to one-offs but don't architect around them.
Third, protect the core. Every product has a thing it does better than anything else — the reason people chose you over the alternative. When you generalize, that core has to stay intact. If your scaling efforts start to compromise what made the product special in the first place, you're scaling wrong.
The transition from "built for me" to "built for many" isn't a single decision. It's a hundred small ones. And the products that navigate it well are the ones that stay relentlessly focused on the problem, not the market size.