Being a technology consultant and SaaS Founder, I get to speak with lot of people. I impart most valuable knowledge from them. I share those learnings here.
“More features = better product.” That assumption quietly kills most SaaS ideas.
Worked with a non-tech founder who had a long roadmap from day one : dashboards, reports, integrations.
But no users yet. He was asking me to build for scale… without knowing if the core problem even mattered.
I pushed back. I said “Let’s solve one problem. Properly.” Not 10 features. Just one that people actually use.
You’re not losing leads because of marketing. You’re losing them because you forgot when to reach out.
I spoke to a corporate gifting business. They had a potential to get leads automatically from their existing clients on same month every year
But they wait for clients to come back.Most don’t.Because no one follows up at the right time.
I suggested them an idea to build a CRM. It remembers events of the customer and auto generate leads 3 weeks before the event.
Both of them AI frameworks built in PHP. Both have everything — agents, RAG, chat, MCP. You can compare them to LangChain and LangGraph.
But one difference stood out fast.
Neuron AI → easy to follow
Symfony AI → harder to understand
Two weeks back, I was speaking with a client who wanted to build an Uber-like platform for logistics and transport.
He was deeply focused on the app flow.
How the booking screen should work. How tracking and UI experience should feel like.
But I told him something uncomfortable: What worked for Uber back then may not work for you today.
Adding a chatbot will make Product smarter. That’s what a prospect told me while discussing a checklist product.
His idea: Every item in the checklist should have a chatbot under it… so users can ask for clarification.
Sounds advanced. Sounds impressive. But there was a problem. This wasn’t an internal tool. It was meant for end customers.
These people want to complete a checklist faster and move on. So I said “don’t start with a chatbot.”
But , It usually isn’t a smart move.
Spoke to a team — 3 developers, 6 microservices.
Everything was “scalable”… except their speed.
So I told them: Microservices don’t solve scale of traffic.
A friend recently told me he wants to build an AI chatbot for school websites.
I asked him one question: “Will schools actually pay for it?”
Because here’s the ground reality. In India, most schools:
Beyond that, spending on software is isn’t an accepted norms for them yet.
I was reviewing an app with a friend.The UI felt old.The flow felt like a long form with no real guidance.
I told him something simple: “Design it like Zomato or Swiggy.”
Because that’s what users are used to now. They order food, book rides, browse apps…All with smooth, guided, intuitive experiences.
Then they come to your internal tool…And face : Long form with no proper flow and no clarity on what to do next
A lot of people say: “Don’t build. Just buy existing software.”
They’re not wrong. Buying is faster. Cheaper upfront. Less effort to get started. But here’s the catch.
It only works if your business has no real differentiation. Because the moment you use the same tools as everyone else, you start operating like everyone else.
And then the only way left to compete is: Price.
I recently reviewed a product’s “report” section.But they didn’t call it reports.They called it Sales Insights.
And instead of dumping charts, they did something different.They asked questions:
And right below each question… was the answer with simple graph.That changed everything.
Because their users weren’t tech-savvy.They weren’t looking for in depth MIS report…They were looking for answers.
