The SaaS Bible
The central wiki for everything SaaS-related. Everything you need to know about building a $100M+ SaaS business is here. You may not have to read all of it, but all the information needed is in here.

At the same time, this is a Reddit SaaS wiki and a CH Group production.
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Building In Public?
What stage are you at?
The Idea
Don't build the business plan from scratch - use an existing model. 12 SaaS financial models compared.
The business of SaaS: Understand why SaaS businesses work and how to grow them.
Good to know beforehand: "if you love writing code, you’re going to hate running a SaaS business. Instead of coding, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent marketing, selling, optimizing funnels, and providing support. Those are the things that get (and keep) customers. Those are the things that you do when you run a business. Not writing code." (from: Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup From Scratch)
Know what you're getting into, so you can have proper expectations: How to negotiate the Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death - by Gail Goodman
The Startup Playbook, by Y Combinator's Sam Altman
The Startup Class from Y Combinator
Here's how I grew my app from $0 to $4500+/month in one year.
Building a repeatable, scalable growth process — part of David Skok's "Zero to 100" course on how to go from $0 to $100M
Do you need a co-founder? Answered by Arvid Kahl, who bootstrapped his business with his partner to $55,000/mo MRR before selling the business
The stairstep approach to bootstrapping — by Drip.com and TinySeed's Rob Walling
Market comes first, marketing second, aesthetic third, and functionality a distant fourth — by Drip.com and TinySeed's Rob Walling
Pricing
Optional: raising money
A guide to pre-selling SaaS: how I pre-sold $1,000+ for my SaaS (0 lines of code)
Finding the developers/engineers
Mental health
Validating your product
Building the website for your SaaS product
Building the SaaS tool
How (and why you want) to "slow launch" your product, especially if you've built a list of people interested. You can't launch an app to 1,000+ people without things breaking (unless you have a staff. Which you don't if you're bootstrapping)
Here's how I grew my app from $0 to $4500+/month in one year.
Building a repeatable, scalable growth process — part of David Skok's "Zero to 100" course on how to go from $0 to $100M
I've launched. Now what?
Optimizing
Validating
Marketing
Don't look at $1B+ companies for advice. That's likely wrong.
How Canny.io bootstrapped their SaaS to ramen profitability
After selling for $580M, here’s what I learned about SaaS during my time at Buildium
How to get from 1.0 launch to traction in SaaS by Jason Lemkin
The boring truth of successful products that survive
The journey from $0 to $20k+ MRR by Jordan O'Connor
Pricing
Metrics
People
Mental Health
Don't look at $1B+ companies for advice. That's likely wrong.
Thriving in the long, slow, SaaS grind — from Tyler Tringas' Micro-SaaS eBook
15 lessons from our first $15 million, by Convertkit's Nathan Barry
How-to: founder-led selling— part of David Skok's "Zero to 100" course on how to go from $0 to $100M
The journey from $0 to $20k+ MRR by Jordan O'Connor
What features should you add/remove? Think of these 3 buckets for sorting features: gamechangers, showstoppers and distractions
Metrics
Website
Security
Pricing
Tech
Financials
People
Mental Health
Retention & customer support as a solo founder, from Tyler Tringas' Micro-SaaS eBook
Make it sell itself: on referral systems by The Bootstrap Founder's Arvid Kahl
A high growth SaaS playbook, by Matrix Partners' David Skok
Growing our SaaS company to $1M+ ARR: 7 people, 3 years, no VC Money. Key lessons learned (+ discussion)
On "middleware": How to unlock growth when your product is invisible
The SEO strategy Zapier used to reach $35M ARR: piggybacking most products out there
What features should you add/remove? Think of these 3 buckets for sorting features: gamechangers, showstoppers and distractions
Selling the business
SaaS financial plan by the SaaS CFO
SaaS startup financial model by the SaaS CFO
5 year financial projection template by the SaaS CFO
Cash runway forecast model by the SaaS CFO
How-to: building a sales team — part of David Skok's "Zero to 100" course on how to go from $0 to $100M
What is the structure of the typical SaaS company as it scales?
After $2M in ARR, start specializing your sales team
Profit-sharing as employee compensation for SaaS bootstrappers
Inspiration: a list of employee benefits that are offered at Basecamp
Scaling your SaaS without scaling your anxiety
The emotional journey of a bootstrapped founder: fear of slippery slope
Pricing low-touch SaaS: How to approach pricing and packaging a new SaaS app, by example.
Make the choice: "the moment one customer pays you a lot more than any other customer, you’re no longer a product company, you’re a services/consulting company again". Both ways are fine, but make a conscious decision about it.
Make it sell itself: on referral systems by The Bootstrap Founder's Arvid Kahl
How to figure out your competitors' revenue in ~70 sec
How freemium nearly caused our business to implode
How we de-risked our SaaS pricing strategy
The business of SaaS: low-touch and high-touch SaaS sales
SaaS Security Checklist
A way to organize your work: work in 6-week-cycles. This way you avoid the situation in which deadlines keep getting dragged, the project seems to never end, morale dropping, etc.
How Hotjar built a growth engine that took them from $0 to $10M in 2 years
The SaaS business model & metrics: Understand the key drivers for success by David Skok from Matrix Partners
SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters
A high growth SaaS playbook, by Matrix Partners' David Skok
Creating integrations for your SaaS tool by Enterprise Ready
Building in Public
Podcasts
Strictly SaaS or bootstrapping related podcasts
Entrepeneurship and founder-related podcasts
Communities and places to hang
Books
Other relevant places for SaaS companies at any stage
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