3 builders who never spoke to each other
Ship without what only a long-term user needs
Leave out the account management, the second seat, the self-serve cancel and anything a customer would tolerate waiting a day for, and handle those by hand until someone asks. Doing the work manually behind an automated-looking front is how you find out which parts are worth writing.
The method
- 01
Build only what a brand new user touches and leave out the account-management features that matter after months of use, handling those few requests by hand.
- 02
Triage every feature request in three steps: refuse to build it, then hunt for an existing service that covers it adequately, and only write code as a last resort.
- 03
Skip multi-seat accounts at launch and tell everyone on the customer's team to share one set of credentials.
- 04
Ship without a self-service cancel button and put an email link in its place, which forces every departure through a conversation where you can ask why.
- 05
Present the product as automated while you do the work yourself behind the curtain, and anything a customer would tolerate on a next-day turnaround should be done by hand.
What it returned
Named as skippable: changing payment method, switching plan, editing account details or password, and viewing old invoices until a customer asks at tax time
Storemapper's buggy CSV upload simply told customers to email the file for the team to load; the manual version satisfied most customers while automating it took months of small fixes
He had wanted a browser extension to summarise videos for a long time, built the conversion and summarisation tool as a CLI first, and then finished the extension in a single day
Sources
- How to create a micro-SaaSChris Frantz · chrisfrantz.com · 2020-05-22
- @levelsio's blogPieter Levels · levels.io · Don't make the goddamn app build a functional mobile site instead · 2022-09-26
- When should a decision be fast, or slow?Jason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · When should a decision be fast, or slow? · 2018-09-05
- ClawdbotPeter Steinberger · steipete.me · My Workflow · 2026-01-02
- Micro-SaaS Ebook: from Idea to Shipping a Minimum Viable ProductTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Only build for new users · 2016-11-29
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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