Launching your SaaS startup

Most people underestimate the amount of work involved in setting up a new business. For SaaS startups there is a bare minimum of work involved that can be quite overwhelming. I've put together a list below that whilst not exhaustive covers most of the tasks you'll need to complete prior to launching your business. This article will be updated occassionally, so please feel free to let me know about anything that I've missed.

I've not mentioned specific apps and services as I've covered these in a separate article you can see here.

Every point on this list is worthy of an article of its own, so, for the sake of brevity I've only added the bare minimum of commentary under each point. Over time, we will be writing separate articles for a lot of these points.

Choosing a Co-Founder

Tech Co-Founder / Domain expert
If you're lucky enough to have found a partner whom you know and trust to start your company with then you're already ahead of the game. With SaaS it's important to have both a domain expert and tech expert in the founding team. Going it alone as a sole Founder is doable if you have both tech and domain expertise, but comes with some pitfalls. Whilst you will own a much larger portion of the equity, you'll have no one to bounce ideas off and share the inevitable stress with. You'll also have no one to share the wins with. Another concern is that a lot of VCs don't look favourably upon sole Founders.

Full-stack Co-Founder
If you need a tech Co-Founder then try and find someone who is still an active coder and ideally a full stack developer. This will save you a lot of time and money in the initial stages of setting up your company. It will allow you to get a working prototype without paying for development. It will also allow you to quickly refine your first version based upon feedback from your early adopters.

Vesting equity with waterfall
If you don't know your Co-Founder well then be sure to tie their equity to a vesting schedule. A pretty standard example would be 4 years of vesting with an initial 1 year waterfall. In other words, they get nothing for the first year and then they receive a percentage for each year they stay, and by the end of the fourth year they have their full share allowance. This allows you to remove a Co-Founder who isn't a good fit within the first 12 months without giving away any equity.

Shareholders agreement
Always draft a shareholders agreement and sign it as soon as the company is set up. This will ensure you have agreed on the fundamentals of how the company will be run and protect you and the company from potential problems down the line. There are many well written, free templates available online to get you started.

Employee contract
If you're starting a business that will require permanent hires early on then you should draft an employee contract as soon as possible and have a lawyer read through it. This is a very important document as it will set the general tone for how the company works and the culture you are aiming to achieve. Try and ensure that it encourages an open and supportive work environment.

Splitting equity

How to split?
There is a great deal of debate about this, but Y-Combinator which is probably the most successful startup incubator ever advises that you should split the shares fairly equally amongst the Co-Founders. It's easy to argue that you may have done all the work so far and come up with the idea so you deserve a larger share, but the counter argument is that the equity is about future work over the lifetime of the company, not just during the initial set up phase. Another reason would be motivation. If you want your Co-Founder(s) to give everything to build a successful business then they need to feel as motivated to do so as you do.

Company set up

Choosing a name
Choosing the name for your SaaS product is a very important decision and can really affect how people perceive your brand. Choose something that relates to your product or is simple and catchy. Remember that you'll need to find a domain name that incorporates the name. Your emails will also use the domain so keeping it short makes sense.

Trademark
If you want exclusive rights to your business name, you'll need to protect it with a trade mark. This will prevent copycat companies using it and stealing your customers and potentially harming your brand.

Registering the company and shareholdings
When you register the business you can choose a more suitable name for the company if need be. You'll mostly just be using the name you chose previously for the web and your app.

Register for GST?
You'll need to decide whether or not to register for GST. Kynan has written a blog post on this topic, so follow this link to read his perspective on this.

Open bank accounts
When choosing a bank account be sure to consider how well they align with your business. Are they startup friendly? Will they provide you with a line of credit? You also need to determine if you will need foreign currencies. There are some great companies, other than banks that allow you to hold accounts for multiple currencies and move between them with low fees.

Virtual cards
Virtual cards are a great way to quickly set up accounts and start signing up for the subscriptions that you'll need to run your buisness. They can also provide you with tools to manage your spending.

Accountant
Find an accountant that has experience working with startups. We can help you with this.

Lawyer
You'll need a lawyer to review any legal documents you decide to use. You can find a lot of free documents online which will save you on lawyer's fees, but be sure to check they are written according to Australian law and have your lawyer review them and make any changes you require.

Branding

Logo design
Decide on whether you want solely text or to add a logomark to your brand. Review current font trends used by successful SaaS companies. This is a very important stage and if you can afford it then it definitely makes sense to use a branding agency as they will have the expertise and provide you with all the collateral you need for the different formats - web, print, media etc.

Brand Identity
If you have the resources then you might want to invest in a complete brand identity. This will encompass every aspect of how your brand is presented, including but not limited to name, logo, typeface, website, domain name, colours, fonts, stationery, email signatures, invoices. You'll need to hire a branding agency for this and it will likely be fairly expensive.

Domain name
Assuming you're going it alone with branding then part of choosing a name will include finding a matching domain name. This is where a lot of people come unstuck by trying to find a .com domain name related to their chosen name. Mostly, this is impossible unless you are willing to spend a fair amount of money buying the name. At this stage in your business this is a waste of money that could be better used elsewhere. There are now a myriad of domain extensions and it's pretty easy to find one that relates to your industry.

Business cards
The question here is whether these are even relevant or userful anymore. I, personally would save the money and just share your LinkedIn profile with any potential customers or connections.

Mission statement
Compose a short statement outlining your company's core purpose and objectives. This provides a reference point to return to and determine if you're still headed in the right direction.

Company values
Along with the mission statement these core values help align everyone within the company to work towards a common goal. A well know example of this is Google's 'Do no evil' statement.

Minimum software requirements

Email, domain name management, document storage
Keep a copy of all company docs online from day one. Although I'm not recommending specific software applications within this article, choosing one of the large providers here will enable you to have access to all the services you need in one place. Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace are the most well known. Whatever platform you choose should allow simple control over document sharing and security.

Help Desk
Great customer service is the cornerstone of running a successful SaaS business. You'll need to be responsive and helpful and really try and turn your customers into advocates. The more feedback you can get from your early adopters, the better you can tweak and improve your platform. Choose one of the many plug & play help desk services as they are extremely easy to use and you can get up an running very quickly.

CRM
If you're offering a B2B service then a basic CRM is a must have. This will allow you to keep track of leads and follow up with potential customers and get a good idea of your conversion rates and cost of acquisition among other metrics. A number of the more well know CRM providers offer free versions of their software to get you started.

Website

Website builders
There are a few well know platforms that can help you quickly build a sales and marketing website by using their templates and components. They vary according to the skills required to use them and also usually offer a plethora of plugins to add more functionality. Don't overthink this as it's important to get at least a one page site up as soon as possible. You can rebuild and improve as you have the time and resources. If you're creating an Ecommerce site then use one of the providers that supports this as you won't need to create a separate site for marketing.

Terms & Conditions
Your website will need a set of terms and conditions of use that are easily available from a footer link on each page. Again, you can find templates for this and adjust accordingly, then get your lawyer to review before publishing.

Privacy
The same goes for your privacy statement and is especially important if you will be storing sensitive personal and financial data on your platform. Be sure to check any relevant laws that you must abide by regarding data storage, hosting location and customers access to their data.

Hosting

Cloud providers
AWS, Azure, Google and others offer cloud hosting that allows you to easily scale your platform, but beware of the costs that can spiral out of control if not managed well. A number of the bigger SaaS brands have now decided to move back to self hosting their platforms on their own servers, which can result in huge cost savings. It's a nice problem to have as it won't affect you until you have a lot of customers and usually only if you are storing a large amount of data for each customer.

Shared hosting
There are also many cheap shared hosting solutions where you will be placed on a server with numerous other websites and applications. I would personally avoid these as you have no control over who else is on your server and how much of the available bandwidth they are using, which could lead to your site becoming unusable during certain peak times. However, most of the aforementioned website builders will provide hosting as part of the package and this is usually fine for a simple marketing website.

SSL
An SSL certficate stored on your server allows data to be encrypted when sent from the server to the user's browser and vice versa. All websites should have SSL and it is pretty much a standard feature these days. Of course, if you are taking payments or even sending personal information to and from your server then it is absolutely critical. A lot of hosting providers will offer a shared certficate, but it's best to purchase one for your domain. If you are using subdomains e.g. myapp.mydomain.com then you'll need to purchase a wildcard SSL certificate to cover these as well. Installing these certificates requires a certain level of knowledge and if they expire before you've renewed them it can be a headache to get a new one issued which can result in downtime for your site. Some of the larger providers will allow you to buy the certificate and install it using their control panel, as well as set up automated renewal.

Ecommerce
If you're going to be building an Ecommerce site then I would recommend you choose a well known Ecommerce platform, rather than using an Ecommerce plugin from a website builder platform. Even if you aim to have a fully customised Ecommerce application down the line you can save a lot of time and money by simply using one of these SaaS platforms to test your products on consumers and see if there is demand.

Payments
You'll need to integrate a payment provider with your platform to receive money into your bank account. If you're using an Ecommerce provider then they'll likely have a few different ones to choose from and set up should be pretty simple. If you're integrating yourself then all the decent platforms will have a simple API and detailed documentation to help you.

2FA
These days most people are comfortable and feel reassured by two factor authentication (2FA) for logging into apps and websites. If implemented correctly it is a seamless process and reassures the user that their data is being well looked after. Again, there are many providers that you can integrate with through their APIs, rather than take on the task of developing this yourself.

Social Media

Which platforms?
I'm going to break my rule of not making recommendations here as I think it's important to start building some kind of presence on some of the bigger platforms as early as possible. The ones I'd start with are Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok. Twitter and LinkedIn should take priority if you're offering a B2B product or service. For B2C Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok are likely more relevant. Target age demographics will also help you determine which platforms are worth investing more time in.

Content creation
So, once you've decided which platforms to use you'll need to create content to publish. As a Founder of a new startup it's unlikely you'll have the time or energy to focus on this yourself, so I'd recommend looking at one of the many freelancer sites where you can set your budget and look at reviews to help you choose a suitable candidate. Of course, you now also have access to some impressive ai tools, like ChatGPT which, if prompted correctly can generate some great content very quickly. Just be aware that they can also be prone to producing misinformation and any copy will need to be proofread before publishing.

How to post?
There are some really helpful social media management platforms that allow you to prepare a stack of content in one sitting and post it to multiple platforms automatically. They take care of the format for specific platforms and allow you to schedule the posts so you can set and forget.

Office

To rent or not to rent?
My advice here is only rent office space initially if absolutely necessary. If you have potential clients coming to vist often or you have another specific reason then it may make sense. Otherwise it will usually end up being your biggest overhead and can eat away at your runway very quickly. I've seen this cost kill startups before they've barely gotten started. With the tools available currently you can easily run your entire team remotely, only meeting up when absolutely necessary. Although, having the team together occassionally, especially at the early stages can help with productivity and idea generation amongst other things. Coworking can be a useful solution for this and generally offers cheap space on flexible terms.

Grants

The best money is free money!
There are a number of grants available to startups. Some are Federal and available nationwide and others vary by State. A couple of well known ones are the R&D tax incentive and the Export Development grant (EDGM). Grant research and application can be time consuming and I would recommend that you use an advisory service that can quickly tell you which grants you're likely to qualify for and manage the application process on your behalf for a fee. They have a lot of experience in filling out these applications and so your chances of success when applying through them are greatly improved.

Funding

How and when to raise?
This is such an extensive topic that I won't dwell too much on it here as I won't be able to do it justice. All I'll say is that if you're in a position to either bootstrap your startup or raise a small initial amount of funding from FFF (Friends, Fools & Family), then you'll generally be in the best position as regards to ownership, which will empower your position in future funding negotiations. We will examine this in much more detail soon in a separate article, but a simple search on the web will find you an enormous amount of information on fundraising. There are also a lot of very useful books written from both a Founder's and VC's perspective.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

What is required of an MVP?
You'll no doubt have heard a lot about MVPs if you're building a startup. There are numerous forums dedicated to debating the pros and cons of different types and levels of MVP. Some people are of the belief that a few sketches can be enough to get the idea across to potential investors and customers. Others are more of the belief that you need at least a basic working version of your product for people to really understand its potential and get excited about it. I don't think there's a correct answer here as it depends on too many factors, such as budget, time, technical capability, target market, complexity etc. Again, we will be exploring this in more detail in a separate article, but however you achieve it, it's been my experience that the majority of people are visual and need to see and experience something to understand it.

If you need help with this please reach out to us as we can help you get started and we have an offshore development partner, should you need software developers.

Marketing

How much to spend and when?
This is another point that definitely requires a separate article, but it's not a bad idea to spend some money on marketing your idea even before it's been built. You can do this to get early adopters interested and determine if there is actual demand for your product. You can also offer special deals to users who are in your BETA group and provide you with early feedback. Posting content on social media, forums and places like Reddit can build awareness of your brand early on and help you determine product market fit. Building your SEO from day one also makes sense as it takes a fair amount of time to start to take effect. Trying out some Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on social media is another good way to gauge early interest. You'll need to embed the relevant code into your site in order to see the analytics and check the results of your spend.

Conclusion

Whilst I'm sure I've omitted a bunch of items, you can clearly see from this list how much you will have on your plate when starting your SaaS business. Don't feel overwhelmed though as there are great tools to help you with nearly every aspect of this and nobody gets it all right the first time.

If you're wanting help with any part, or indeed all of this then toos provides a consulting service for startups. Click here for more details.