Things SaaS Builders Keep Getting Wrong

Things SaaS Builders Keep Getting Wrong

The presentation by Jon Topper, founder of The Scale Factory, discusses frequent mistakes SaaS builders make and offers strategies to avoid them. Here are the key points:

• Tenancy: Not incorporating tenancy concepts into application software from the start can lead to inefficient models. Consider tenancy in data handling using foreign keys or schemas to manage customer data appropriately.
• Automating Tenant Provisioning: Failure to automate life cycle actions like tenant provisioning can bottleneck operations, especially as customer numbers grow.
• Control Plane Development: A well-defined control plane is critical for orchestrating tenant management, billing, and automation tasks.
• Building for Multicloud: Attempting to create multicloud solutions can complicate architecture unnecessarily. Focus on specific cloud services to leverage high-level services, avoiding duplicated effort.
• Demanding Customizations: Avoid letting customers dictate unique features which can increase operational complexity.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery: SaaS builders often overlook implementing strong backup and disaster recovery plans.
• Data Classification: It's important to classify data assets to ensure proper backup, security, and compliance protocols are in place.
• Security and Compliance: Addressing customer security concerns while maintaining SaaS integrity is crucial.

Topper emphasizes understanding customer needs and maintaining a focus on building a viable product that customers are willing to pay for. Continuous delivery methods and embracing a strong product philosophy, including the "strategic no," are key recommendations for SaaS success.

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Building, deploying, and operating software is hard, and that goes double when you're building SaaS. We'll look at the ways in which teams building this type of software often unintentionally make life difficult for themselves, and suggest how that can be avoided, through good architecture, DevOps practices, and operations.