The Biggest Mistake SaaS Founders Make Before Launching

0:00A few months ago we successfully built and then exited a Shopify app called BundleSuite which had over 100k ARR. It was 100% bootstrapped. We built it, we funded it and we grew it ourselves and all of this while still running a brand development agency on the side. And why I'm telling you all of this

0:17is because nothing in this video is theory. This is exactly what we did from a rough idea to an actual MVP and how we built a successful SaaS that enabled us to have a multi-crore exit. And today I'm talking to all the people who are looking to build a SaaS in 2026. So we are going to zoom into just one crucial part of that process which is actually building an MVP and that's exactly what

0:39I'm going to talk about in this video. And if you want to see the actual journey what went behind the scenes then we have already created a four-part documentary series. It's live and it's linked here. So let's get on to So to get things going what actually is an MVP? An MVP aka Minimum Viable Product is the smallest version of a product that solves one

1:02real problem completely. Minimum refers to scope that is how much you're building and viable refers to your quality. The whole point of an MVP is to validate if your idea is even worth investing time and money into. For us that one problem was bundling. We have been working with Shopify stores for the past eight years and every business owner is always looking to solve for one problem

1:23which is increasing the average order value. So the biggest solution in the market for that problem is bundling. And with bundling too, the specific problem that we're trying to solve is that there wasn't an app in the market that successfully does different kinds of bundling all in one app. So if a Shopify store owner is looking for one type of bundling let's say building your own box then the app does not

1:46do volume discounts well. And similarly there are five six different categories of bundling solutions out there in the market and for that people have to install different different apps. That's the problem that we're trying to capture. So we weren't guessing if the market existed or not. We already knew that the market does exist.

2:02Now moving on to the next important question. Why do you really need an MVP? [Background Music] So there are three real reasons for that. Number one it lowers your risk. Instead of spending a year on building something that no one wants, you can validate this quickly in a few weeks if this product is even worth investing into.

2:23Number two reason is that it forces clarity. When you don't have unlimited time or money you can't possibly build everything that you're imagining. So you're forced to think the one thing that actually matters and that discipline makes the product better. Number three it gets you real feedback from real users. Not opinions in a survey but actual behavior from actual people who are trying to solve

2:43a real problem. And that's exactly why we gave ourselves a tight runway on purpose. Now at this stage if you were to build a bundling app that provides five six seven different types of bundling solutions all in one go then to build this would be building a new super app in itself. This would have required like seven eight months

3:01of active development work. So we gave ourselves a tight timeline of just one month and we picked up two most asked features that every store owner had asked us in the past. And that's what we started with. Moving on to the next part. How do you actually build an MVP? [Background Music] Step one. Pick one problem and not a complete feature

3:21list. What is the single most painful and most repeated problem that every future customer will have? For us of course it was bundling. So we focus on only two features. The first one being a standard fixed bundle. Every store wants that. And something called as infinite bundles. The second bundle actually mattered because at that point of time almost no other bundling app

3:42on Shopify app store was offering that feature. Step two. Cut everything that isn't that. No setting pages. No dashboards. Only your key features build properly and nothing else. At this stage it is very tempting to add just one more thing but you have to resist that urge. Step three. Put a real constraint on yourself.

4:01Time budget and whatever forces urgency. It's actually something that helps you build an MVP without spending endless time. Step four is getting it in front of real people and getting that done very fast. I'll be honest the first few weeks after MVP launch are going to be very slow and painful because no one is out there

4:20waiting for your app. So what we did was we didn't sit around waiting to be discovered. We went to our own clients first and then we actually recommended to install BundleSuite personally on their stores ourselves because we were actively managing these clients. So it was an easy sell for us. But if you're starting out and you don't have existing customers the best case scenario for

4:39you is to directly reach store owners. Talk to them. Have a one on one conversation with them and tell them to try this app free of cost. You're there for validation and majority of the times it will work because you're giving a free service to someone. And step five that is turning every install

4:57into a feedback loop. So get as much feedback as possible because that's going to help you build a refined version of the app. So every store that has installed BundleSuite initially we had taken down we had spent time with the founders directly and we had taken down every last piece of feedback. We took that to the drawing board and

5:15started iterating the app. This is what helped us to refine our version one of the MVP. Step six real validation isn't a big number. It's people coming back. So that loop of install listen fix repeat is actually how we got to our first hundred customers. There was no big launch no ads. It was purely based upon direct one on one relationship with every person that was installing taking feedback implementing that feedback and making the

5:43app better and better and better. So by the end of this hundred customer activity that we had done we already had an app that was fully functional for anyone who installs. And the last part is how do you actually scale an MVP. [Background Music] Once you see that pattern that people start actually sticking around asking for more that's a green light to go from an MVP to

6:05something bigger. But keep this in mind scaling does not actually mean saying yes to every feature that comes your way. A lot of these requests will be very niche and very specific to their business. So you need to evaluate with all the feedback that you're getting. What is the feedback that is universally true

6:19for all the stores. And that is exactly what helps you to make your MVP better. Then eventually structure has to catch up with growth. You can personally handle support and feedback when you've got 20 customers but when you have 100 you need to start creating a system. So we didn't stop at that MVP. We took that early version and we started

6:39building on top of it. More bundle types more flexibility more of what our users were actually asking for and until it became one of the most competent bundling apps on the App Store. Now this version of the app was actually very different than what we had initially imagined this app to be. So if we had just gone by that drawing board initially that we were ideating then

6:59the app would have been much different. But when we took real user feedback when we actually came to know the gaps in the market and what people actually want then the version of the app that we got at the end of it was a lot more refined and a lot more useful for the end consumers. By the end of month 5 we already had a build for Shopify badge and that is when we knew that whatever we were

7:19doing was completely validated. We were getting new installs on a regular basis and once you cross that 500 user benchmark then you start getting new installs every day on a regular basis. And at that point if you haven't built your systems that scale along with the user base then everything crumbles. There have been times when we had to do support all day long even on weekends

7:39even during night hours even during day hours. So when we realized that we actually had started segregating teams and putting people in different time zones so that we can support this app for years to come and we still kept on listening to the consumers as we did on day one and we grew BundleSuite steadily to that six-figure ARR still fully bootstrapped and no outside money at any

8:00point. So there were multiple steps how we achieved this actual exit once we started scaling the app how we introduced a paid plan how we launched the paid plan how we told our customers how we actually started scaling the app and how we actually sold the app. There were a lot of different steps this video has primarily been about MVP and how you can successfully build an MVP today because that's the most important key when you're starting

8:23out. But if you are curious and you want to know the entire thing then we have a complete documentary like I said before you can check that out and if you want me to cover a specific part like for example how to build a paid SaaS then I would be happy to cover that as

8:36well. Just put your thoughts in the comments below and we'd love to do that as well. That's it for today until next time May the force be with you.