Most SaaS products don't fail because of bad code. They fail because they solve a problem nobody is willing to pay for. This guide walks through the process we use with clients at ThinkBoxDev.

Validate before you write code

Talk to at least 20 potential customers before opening your editor. You are looking for a painful, frequent problem with an existing budget.

  • Interview people who already pay for a workaround

  • Pre-sell with a landing page and a waitlist

  • Measure intent, not compliments

Choose a boring, productive stack

Pick tools your team already knows. For most B2B products we recommend a TypeScript monolith:

// app/api/health/route.ts
export function GET() {
  return Response.json({ ok: true, time: new Date().toISOString() });
}

Multi-tenancy from day one

Scope every table by tenant and enforce it in one place. Retro-fitting tenancy later is one of the most expensive refactors there is.

Launch, measure, iterate

Ship the smallest version that delivers the core outcome — then let usage data decide what comes next.

Instrument activation and retention from the first release. Those two numbers tell you whether you have a product or a project.