To Build or Not to Build: That is the Question

1. Blue Ocean

“Find the empty ocean, not the bloody battlefield.”

Create an entirely new category or drastically change the value proposition so that you have little or no competition.

When to Build SaaS

• You see a painful gap where no software or bad solutions exist.
• You can define a new way to solve a problem users don’t even know they could solve.

Real-world Examples

• Canva: Made design easy for non-designers, opening a massive new market.
• Airbnb: Turned every home into a hotel, creating a totally new lodging market.

I’d argue a lot of Blue Ocean ideas tie closely with Second Mover Advantage. But for the sake of demonstration here, Airbnb saw everyone’s home as a “hotel.”

No one had done that effectively before.

Questions to Ask Yourself

• What is an industry with a huge problem no one is solving?
• What is an industry that I can transform with an opportunity no one is capitalizing on?

2. Wave Theory

“Catch the right wave — don’t try to swim against it.”

Build when a major behavior or tech shift starts — but before it’s obvious to everyone.

When to Build SaaS

• A trend is emerging (remote work, AI, privacy regulations, creator economy).
• Early adopters are experimenting, but no dominant solution exists yet.

Real-world Examples

• Zoom: Remote work surge during COVID.
• Notion: Async remote documentation boom.
• AI-Driven Solutions 

You can leverage this when things are proven modern trends (unlike Platform Shift which is more predictive and a gamble).

Obviously, AI is the absolute king and everyone from CPAs to lawyers are looking to capitalize.

Just be careful, there might already be too many people clogging the pipeline, so you’d better have a different angle.

Questions to Ask Yourself 

• What trends are here, successful, and available to innovate something with?
• What industries are being limited or innovated by policies, or technologies?

3. Second Mover Advantage

“Be smarter, not first.”

Take an existing SaaS idea and improve it dramatically.

When to Build SaaS

• A category exists, but the leader has major flaws.
• Users are frustrated but have no good alternative.

Real-world Examples

• ClickUp: Customized project management after Asana/Trello.
• Monday.com: Simpler, visual work management for non-dev teams.

For the SaaS play, Basecamp and Trello were the original royal family of online project management. People obviously wanted more, which led to the insane rise of dozens of others that are all now multi-million dollar companies.

How did they do it?

• More integrations
• Better UI
• And more aggressive pricing

And you could argue that (non-SaaS) companies like Airbnb and Uber were technically also leveraging this tactic.

Back in the day, Taxis were the only option. And they had quite a mixed reputation.

Hotels? Overpriced and underwhelming in most cases.

Key Moves

• Listen to user complaints about competitors.
• Out-execute with better UX, speed, pricing, or niche focus.

Use the “Skyscrapering” Technique

It’s not just a metaphor — it actually happened.

Back in the early 1900s, cities like New York and Chicago were blowing up. Everyone had money, everyone wanted attention, and the only thing that mattered was who could build taller. It kicked off this ridiculous arms race where one dude would throw up a building, and almost immediately someone else would come along and say, “Cool… but what if mine was twenty feet taller?”

This technique is super popular in SEO:

1. Find someone ranking well for a keyword phrase
2. Analyze their content
3. Make yours longer, more helpful, and with more images

How does this apply to SaaS?

1. Find someone in the space
2. Analyze their weakpoints
3. Build your platform better than theirs. More features, better branding, better UI, better marketing.

Warning

If you’re going to do this, damn it, you better actually do it better.

4. Platform Shift

“When the ground moves, build for the new ground.”

Major technology shifts create brand new SaaS opportunities.

When to Build SaaS

• A major technology leap happens (e.g., cloud, AI, mobile).
• Old SaaS tools don’t adapt fast enough.

Real-world Examples

• Figma: Built cloud-native collaborative design before Adobe could catch up.
• Jasper: Early mover in AI content generation using GPT models.

Frankly, this one is hard and risky. Maybe what you thought was going to be the next big trend was the equivalent of a Zeplin.

Looking back now, AI is a very obvious winner.

Key Moves

• Build natively for the new platform.
• Solve platform-specific pain points quickly.

Questions to Ask Yourself 

• What’s the next wave that’s coming and how can I be in the water at the right moment?

5. Scarcity Opportunity

“When supply is low, even a basic solution can dominate.”

When clear demand exists but few or no good tools are available.

When to Build SaaS

• Industries are lagging digitally (e.g., construction, healthcare).
• New job roles or creator types emerge without good tooling.

Real-world Examples

• ServiceTitan: SaaS for HVAC, plumbing, and other field service businesses.
• Substack: Direct-to-reader publishing for writers, meeting growing creator needs.

Key Moves

• Target ugly, underserved markets.
• Speed of execution beats over-engineering.

Questions to Ask Yourself 

• Who’s the dominant, yet only, player in a space?

Just Be Careful

You might soon be the victim of second movers. So make sure you continue innovating, always.

Finding Your Why

Yeah, I kind of hate the entire philosophy behind this “why” movement. But it really does bring tangible value to building and marketing a SaaS product.

Why Are You Doing It?

Were you having problems — or seeing gaps – in the industry you’re familiar with?

You might accidentally stumble on the answer here and go back and find a theory that aligns with your thinking.

Or you’ll pick a theory first and go from there.

• We picked Static WordPress because we had 10 years developing on WordPress and weren’t happy with the solutions available for Static.
• In hindsight, we seem to align with the Second Mover category, but I’ll be honest we didn’t throw a dart at the theory board and go from there. We naturally came to our own conclusion.

Why Are You Pricing It That Way?

This is a very key question, and should relate to your ideal customer. Higher price points often bring less, but larger-sized companies.

Maybe you’re not looking to be the gas station coffee of your industry. Or maybe you are. It’s key to know your end goal in terms of customer count and revenue goals associatively.

Or maybe you just invested in greater tech and have higher overhead.

We get asked a lot about lower pricing plans. Maybe one day when we’re bigger we’ll offer it.

But for now, we know we’ve invested in the best tech available to drive the core of the product, and we’re looking for sites and organizations that can afford the benefits we bring. We’re not looking to host every WordPress site in the world, and that’s alright.

There’s another question to ask here: why do you get X for that price?

• We quickly ran into dilemmas with “site count,” which is a huge price point for nearly every host in the market. To us, the only thing that really mattered was live traffic, so we decided to make our pricing simply reflect that without any bandwidth, site count, or storage. It made our sales pitch easier to grapple, and opened people’s minds to the potential.

Why Are You Making It Do X, Y, Z?

This should relate to your core mission, and it will drive the places you buck trends. The functions should relate to this directly.

Take us for example. We decided to make a Static WordPress Generator, but we bucked certain trends:

1. We decided to make it an entire end-to-end platform. Why? Because we heard clients were tired of using a Plugin and being stuck figuring out the live set up.
2. We decided to make dynamic forms, Ajax, and WP JSON work on Static. This is fundamentally not congruent with most Static practice, which seeks to lock those points down. Why? Our mission was to make Static WordPress easier and more turn-key.
3. We decided to create various push methods, auto-push syncs, and more. Why? WordPress provides instant gratification when hitting the “publish” button. And while Static will always be just a bit slower, we wanted it to feel as close to WordPress dynamic as we could.

Why Change?

This is a constant question that should drive UI, revisions, and new features. It’s a question to never stop asking, and one to drive with competitive analysis and customer feedback.

• Are people having issues with a feature?
• Are people having issues figuring X out?
• Do people want X over Y? Or X + Y?
• Is your pricing doing the opposite of what you want?
• Are you being outpaced by the competition?

About the Author
Ben Butler is founder and lead developer of Headless Hostman, and the owner of Top Hat — a design and web agency.

About SaaSwatch
Our diary of building SaaS and the diary of others building their’s.