Week 1: Finding a Niche

Good morning!

It’s been almost a week since I launched boostrapped.ceo. If you’re one of the 6 lucky people getting this delivered to your inbox this morning, thank you for being the first to support this venture! I truly appreciate you.

From here on out, I’ll share a few quick stats every week to give you a glimpse at my progress.

Now, let’s dive in.

If you read the last post, you’ll know that I decided to build an AI-driven email sequence builder.

Since then, I’ve spent some time refining my idea. I still like the overall market it’s in, but I am now more focused on a smaller niche, and the MVP's scope has shrunk. Here’s why:

Reason 1: The Importance of Finding a Niche

Competing directly with large companies is incredibly hard, but it’s even harder when you are a solo-founder on a budget. Established companies have huge product development teams, and tons of cash to throw into marketing efforts. I’ve got neither of those, so it’s necessary to focus my efforts.

A better strategy for building a large company is to establish a monopoly in a very small market and slowly, over time, expand that market into new verticals.

Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, sums it up nicely in this video. Give it a watch if you’ve got 3 minutes.

With this advice taken into account, I’ve decided it’s necessary to find a smaller and underserved subset of the overall market in which I can more readily compete.

Reason 2: Building on an Existing Platform

Building a SaaS as an add-on to an existing platform has a few benefits.

1. You can get free distribution through the platform’s marketplace.

2. The scope of your solution can be much smaller.

3. There is usually less competition from bigger companies.

It also has a few downsides.

1. Small market - you’ll need to expand to other verticals in order to grow.

2. Platform risk - Tying your business to one platform leaves you vulnerable to the results of any decisions they make. You'll no longer be needed if they build a similar solution to yours natively into their platform.

As a first-time founder, I’ve decided that the pros of building on a platform outweigh the cons.

Building on an existing platform should allow me to build a valuable solution more easily, find my target market faster, give me a free distribution channel, and even provide an avenue for a potential exit. If the tool I build is valuable enough, the platform I build on could be interested in buying it.

Niching Down

Armed with the above knowledge, I’ve niched down my idea.

Instead of building a large, general-purpose, AI-driven email sequence builder, I am focusing on a smaller problem that my large competitors, so far, have not looked into: Outbound Email Sequences for Pipedrive.

The Problem

Pipedrive is a CRM that’s grown in popularity in recent years but is still dwarfed in the marketplace compared to giants like HubSpot and Salesforce. I use Pipedrive to manage the sales cycle for my Software Development Agency.

The main email sequence builders in the marketplace today do not have first-class integrations with Pipedrive. They are mainly focused on serving the giants. You can connect sequence builders to Pipedrive through Zapier or Make, but it’s clunky and prone to issues. I experienced these issues first-hand, and they caused me some headaches.

The Competition

Pipedrive offers an integrations marketplace, where I will be able to list my app and attract people who need a solution like mine. Free distribution.

The competition is small to nonexistent. Two half-baked solutions are listed on Pipedrive’s integration marketplace, and I’m confident I can quickly build a better product than either of them.

The lack of competition could be seen as a negative: maybe there is no market here. I am choosing to see it as a positive: this is a hole in the market that has been overlooked. Time will tell which one of these assumptions is true.

The Solution

Rather than building an AI-driven sequence builder, this pivot allows me to focus on the core functionality of email sequences. I can build my MVP much quicker by exchanging the AI features I was initially going to build for a Pipedrive integration.

The Future

Starting with this idea still allows me to expand later. If I find success with Pipedrive, I can build other integrations for other underserved CRMs later. I can also slowly add additional features to boost my ability to compete with the big guys.

Progress

Although the idea was still in flux, I had already begun building the core functionality. Last week, I built an awesome little drag-and-drop UI that allows you to structure your email sequences. Check it out!

This Week’s Goals

Come Friday, I would like to have a working Pipedrive integration baked into my app. This will allow users to import their lead lists into my app, and begin structuring the outbound sequences for those leads.If I can make even more progress, great!

Thanks for reading this week’s issue!

If you’re looking to build your own SaaS and need help on the technical side, I’m your man! I love helping founders out. You can find me on X or LinkedIn.