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5 Micro SaaS Ideas You Can Build as a Solo Founder in 2023

Author: Simon HøibergTime: 2024-02-02 02:10:00

Table of Contents

Extend ChatGPT Functionality with a Better Interface

ChatGPT AI is ubiquitous right now. It's the hottest topic in 2023 and presents obvious opportunities to build small tools that extend ChatGPT's capabilities. For example, Gatsby has created a version of ChatGPT with a nicer UI, folder organization, a library of AI avatars, a Chrome extension, and more. Another similar tool is Typing Mind, which also provides many interface extensions to regular ChatGPT.

An interesting aspect is that both tools require users to supply their own OpenAI API key. So the tools don't pay for AI usage - they simply provide a better interface. You may wonder why people pay for this when they already pay OpenAI. But it turns out that people are happy to pay both services. Gatsby and Typing Mind have made tens of thousands of dollars in just months.

Gatsby and Typing Mind Examples

When you pay OpenAI per token through their API, it's quite affordable. Unless you use AI extensively, you likely won't spend over $20 per month - the price of ChatGPT Plus. So for most users, there are savings to be had with a more feature-rich interface. In summary, there is still plenty of room in this market with money to be made. You can bring your own ChatGPT-like interface to market with a unique twist. This idea is no code friendly - you can build an interface in tools like Webflow, Framer or Bubble, and consume the ChatGPT API directly.

Pricing Model and Market Potential

The pricing model is based on a subscription fee or lifetime access purchase. As Tony from Typing Mind has shown, tens of thousands of dollars can be made in just months by solo founders. So despite the platform risk of building on top of OpenAI, the market potential makes it an attractive SAS business idea.

Build Tools on Top of Notion's Features

Notion has become immensely popular for note taking, information sharing, project management and more. As a result, people have started building third-party tools on top of Notion that provide tremendous additional value:

Notion Forms - Create forms in Notion

Q - Schedule tweets from Notion

Feather - Publish blog posts from Notion

Symbol - Build entire websites in Notion

All of these tools are profitable SAS products built by solo founders or tiny teams. There are many undiscovered opportunities here.

Create an Automation Hub for Notion

One major gap in Notion is automation support. My team and I use Notion extensively but rely on messy cloud functions and APIs to achieve automation. Many other teams have the same struggle.

The opportunity is to create an automation hub specifically for Notion, designed like Zapier or Make, with ready-made integration plugins for workflow automation. I've been looking for this myself and would happily pay for it.

Offer an SSL Certificate Manager Service

When building Link Drip, a no code link engagement tool, managing custom domains and SSL certificates was extremely painful, even for an experienced software engineer. Oliver Jumper, an expert developer, helped solve this for me and I begged him to turn it into a SaaS.

So here's the idea - offer a niche service that handles custom domains and SSL certificates, allowing other SaaS tools to offer white label and multi-tenant features without the technical complexities. It's quite technical so the competitive advantage comes from your engineering expertise. But I would definitely pay for a solo-founder service like this.

Develop Interactive Learning Platforms

There are many course platforms already, some with quizzes and downloadable assignments. However, studies prove we learn most effectively by performing actions, not passive learning. The idea here is to provide highly interactive, gamified learning for specific fields using technology.

A great example is I Code This by Florin Pop. You get daily coding challenges to solve directly inside the tool, see how others solved them, showcase your work publicly, and access learning paths and mentors by upgrading. There is potential to build this model for other digital skills like marketing, copywriting, data science etc. If reputable enough, you could issue skill certificates.

Build a Low Code Integration Platform

As developers, whenever we need to integrate third-party services, we have to build custom integrations from scratch. So you have to rebuild integrations for Facebook, Slack, Stripe etc even though many other developers face this same issue.

The idea is to build a low code solution with a JavaScript SDK that lets developers easily integrate diverse internet APIs in a simple, standardized way. We have no code tools like Zapier, but they aren't always ideal for building our own products. A developer-focused, low code integration platform would be game changing.

Solving a Common Developer Problem

This platform would solve the common problem developers face when building custom integrations repeatedly. By abstracting away the complexities into a simple SDK, it makes integrating third-party services far easier.

Managing Platform Risk

While this still relies on building on top of other tools, the risk is diversified across supporting connections to a wide variety of platforms. So it avoids being overly reliant on any single external API. From a platform risk perspective, it is more resilient than building atop a specific tool.

FAQ

Q: Why would people pay for a ChatGPT interface if they still need an API key?
A: Users get a more feature-rich interface and there are cost savings compared to high ChatGPT usage fees. Many users are willing to pay.

Q: What's the risk of building on top of existing platforms?
A: The platform could release similar functionality, rendering your product obsolete. However, solo founders can pivot quickly to new ideas.

Q: Can I really build a SaaS myself with no team?
A: Yes, by leveraging existing tools/platforms and having expertise in a niche, solo founders absolutely can build micro SaaS companies.

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