Sam Parr interviews a former developer about launching SaaS as a non-technical founder. About 20-25% of bootstrapped SaaS companies have no technical co-founder. Start with a no-code MVP, a productized service for cash, or hire a developer for $10k-$30k, then use the stair-step approach: build low-complexity add-ons first to gain revenue before scaling.
All right.
My last question. How many of these folks building software companies that you see, yourself included, are non-technical?
Well, that's a great question.
And if they are non-technical, what do they do?
Yep. So I'm a developer or was. I haven't written code in years, but we actually— so we do a State of Independent SaaS survey and we put out a report and it's like an industry report. And we asked the question Do you have at least one technical founder? Right? Or, you know, and yes or no, right? And the number of SaaS companies, kind of bootstrapped-ish SaaS companies with zero, with no technical founders is like, I believe it's 20%, 25%. Wow.
It's very possible.
It is. And usually what the expertise they have. They're either the subject matter expert, like we're going to build software for accountants, I was an accountant for 20 years, right? We're going to build software for UX designers, I was a designer for 10 years. They're either that or they're sales or marketing. That's what they should have. Now we've seen where there's a developer and then there's like the business person, the business guy or gal, and it's like anything. This is— yeah, usually winds up meaning you're not actually that helpful and you probably shouldn't be a co-founder. You know, if you can't sell sell or market or like have input on the product, you know, or, or develop it. Like those are really the 4 roles. Um, you probably shouldn't be.
So if I'm, if I like, I'm not tech, I'm not technical, but I, um, I can like tie stuff together and use Zapier and I'm super creative. How do I start a, start a software company without hiring, or I would, if maybe hiring's it, but without having a co-founder?
Right. So for you, since you have money, you would either acquire something, cuz there's always stuff for sale that you may wanna acquire and then just grow if you have a content marketing expertise, or you would hire, you know, a developer or an agency or something to build it. If you don't have the money, uh, a lot of people, non-technical, will work a day job and actually funnel money to the side to basically pay for a developer to do it. Um, the other two approaches I've seen are exactly what you said, which is I'm gonna build my minimum viable product. Using Zapier and Notion and chewing gum. All right. And I'm just going to cobble it together to the point where, hey, if I get a few grand a month in revenue, this proves it. And now I'm going to use that to get it built. It's a harder way to go, but it's possible. The last one I've seen, which is genius, and this is what the founder of Castos did because he's not— he's a single founder, not a developer. He worked a day job. He started a productized service, podcast editing. And he got it up to, I forget what the number was, $30,000 or $40,000 a month in productized podcast. He was one of the earlier ones. It was called Podcast Motor. He was working a day job the whole time. So then while he was in that—
Was he actually doing the editing or he would— No, hired editors. He did it first and then got someone overseas.
Exactly.
Yep.
Yep. Or even has folks in US and Canada doing it. And there was enough profit margin that he then started reinvesting, you know, and said, well, now I want to build. Now that I'm doing podcast hosting, he actually was in the podcast space. Someone says, I have this WordPress podcast plugin for podcast hosting on WordPress, and I want someone to kind of adopt it type thing. Since he was doing something in public, they approached him, he bought it for not very much money, and then he built the entire, you know, what again is a 7-figure business. He's raised, you know, 3, aside from us, he's raised $750,000 and it's growing fast. So that's the other way to do it is like, I even, I was a developer and I had to do it nights and weekends too, you know, and I was pulling money away from the day job.
For the agency and hiring a developer, What, what's the best way to do that? Do a lot of these folks, like a lot, like when I was starting, everyone said like, oh, just go on oDesk and hire someone in India to do it. And I'm like, I don't know, man, that doesn't sound like I can like, like, yeah. So like, what do you, what, what, what, are there any agencies that you like or for hiring devs? Are you hiring someone by the hour in America? What, what's, what do you typically see?
Yeah, I typically see, I see a lot of people going either through referrals, like you get into a community. MicroConf Connect or IndieHackers or whatever, Dynamite Circle. And you ask and you say, who has used someone whom you trust, right? So you try to get that referral. It's not just a flat look because going to Upwork, which used to be oDesk, is kind of a shit show these days. The other thing is there are now these referral services aggregators. There's one called Trustshoring, which is run by a guy who attends MicroConf, but he basically knows a bunch of Eastern European dev agencies. And if you come to him and say, I want to build an iOS app, he'll say, cool, I have these 3 agencies that I, that I refer to. He's almost like a broker in a way, but like he's a good dude and he knows them, you know? And so he, and he's vetted them. And then there's one called clouddevs.com and they do the similar thing for Latin America. And so the next one—
Do you like, do you like Toptal or anything like that?
Toptal's good. It's expensive. Um, right. Cause I think it's $150 an hour. So it depends on budget and all that. If you're, if you're scraping by, I haven't used Toptal, but I've had friends use it and I heard quality was really good in the early days. And of course, like anything, it gets less and less, but, um, that's certainly something you could try too.
How much would you budget to create an MVP?
It depends on what it is. You're talking like a SaaS app. Here's the other thing, man. If you're, if you are non-technical and you've never started a startup before, I would say don't build a SaaS app. It's too hard. I have this thing called the stair-step approach to bootstrapping, which is like start small with like a WordPress plugin, a HubSpot add-on, a Salesforce add-on, a Heroku add-on, and go build that, cut your teeth at it. It's way less expensive, way easier to maintain. You get the experience, you get some revenue, then grow it to enough that you can buy out, just buy out your day job, $8,000 a month, maybe $10,000 a month. Then, and now you have experience, you can double down and and do it.
It is awesome.
To your, to your question of building an MVP of a SaaS app, $10,000 to $30,000, if I were to throw it out.
But, and you think a non-technical person could actually maintain that and understand what's going on?
Well, no, then you'd need to have that agency stick around. That's where I'm saying, if you're non-technical, um, you either need some money. I mean, this is why folks, you build it and you're, you pre-sell it. You get to the point where there's enough revenue that you can then justify, you know, raising funding, right? If you're, if you're non-technical or you have a side job that's, uh, putting money in it.
