My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

Back to Playbooks

Build exceptional SaaS product through customer obsession

Early-stage SaaS founders trying to achieve product-market fit

6-12 months to see results

What Success Looks Like

Customers become advocates, feature requests get implemented quickly, and users can't imagine using anything else.

Steps to Execute

Respond to every customer complaint within hours

Ask 'why' questions to understand root needs, not just surface requests

Create manual workarounds for missing features while building real solutions

Ship promised features in the timeline you commit to

Proactively follow up when features are released

Make customers feel heard and important

Turn limitations into opportunities to over-deliver

Checklist

Customer response time is under 4 hours

You understand the why behind every feature request

Manual workarounds are in place for top requests

Feature delivery matches promised timelines

Customers are notified when requests are completed

You're learning something new about customer needs weekly

Inputs Needed

Direct customer communication channels
Product development bandwidth
Customer feedback tracking system
Ability to create temporary solutions

Outputs

Higher customer retention
Strong word-of-mouth growth
Better product-market fit
Premium pricing power
Investor confidence

Example

“A newsletter platform founder gets complaints about missing analytics. Instead of just adding basic analytics, they ask why customers need this data, discover they want to optimize referral programs, and build both analytics and referral optimization tools, exceeding expectations.”