There is a strange stage in building a business where having a subscription to everything starts feeling like progress.<\/p>\n
Business tools for founders are useful only when they support a clear business plan. Otherwise, a growing software stack can become an expensive way to avoid deciding what you are actually building.<\/p>\n
A CRM.<\/p>\n
A content tool.<\/p>\n
An automation platform.<\/p>\n
An email system.<\/p>\n
A project management tool.<\/p>\n
A website builder.<\/p>\n
Another website builder.<\/p>\n
And before you know it, your bank account is building a SaaS ecosystem faster than your business is building a customer base.<\/p>\n
I have seen this happen.<\/p>\n
I once worked with a founder who had started an e-commerce business.<\/p>\n
She already had subscriptions to design and video tools, a good CRM and several other SaaS products. Between them, she was spending roughly \u20b930,000 a month.<\/p>\n
The interesting part?<\/p>\n
The website was still being built.<\/p>\n
It had already been in development for more than six months.<\/p>\n
Money was being spent, work was happening, designs were being exchanged\u2014and yet there was still no version of the website that everyone could agree on.<\/p>\n
We eventually brought the situation back to basics.<\/p>\n
Once we answered those questions, we were able to cut the recurring SaaS expenditure by more than half, to roughly \u20b913,000\u2013\u20b914,000 a month.<\/p>\n
More importantly, the website team could finally move forward.<\/p>\n
There is a very understandable reason founders buy these tools.<\/p>\n
They want to save money.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf I buy this \u20b93,000 tool, I can make my own content instead of paying someone \u20b910,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Sounds sensible.<\/p>\n
Until you discover that the \u20b93,000 tool doesn’t come with three years of design experience.<\/p>\n
You saved on the designer.<\/p>\n
You didn’t necessarily save on:<\/p>\n
\n
- Your time<\/li>\n
- Your attention<\/li>\n
- The quality of the output<\/li>\n
- The learning curve<\/li>\n
- The opportunity cost of doing the work yourself<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And while you’re learning to operate the software, you’re not doing the thing you’re actually supposed to be doing: building the business.<\/p>\n
Your job isn’t to do everything<\/h2>\n
Decide what belongs with the founder<\/h3>\n
When I work with a founder, I first try to understand what the business is actually trying to do.<\/p>\n
\n
- What are you selling?<\/li>\n
- How are you planning to make money?<\/li>\n
- Who are you selling to?<\/li>\n
- What resources do you already have?<\/li>\n
- How much time do you actually have?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Then we figure out what belongs where.<\/p>\n
Some things can be automated.<\/p>\n
Some can be outsourced.<\/p>\n
Some need to remain with the founder.<\/p>\n
And some things simply don’t need to exist yet.<\/p>\n
Being capable of doing something yourself doesn’t automatically make it worth doing yourself.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the problem isn’t the tool<\/h2>\n
In the same project, the bigger problem wasn’t even the SaaS subscriptions.<\/p>\n
It was the website.<\/p>\n
The founder knew what she wanted the website to feel like. The development team knew how to build websites.<\/p>\n
But somewhere between those two ends, the vision was getting lost.<\/p>\n
She would provide references. The team would implement them. Then something wouldn’t work from a functional perspective. They would make adjustments, and those adjustments would no longer match her vision.<\/p>\n
Nobody was necessarily doing a bad job.<\/p>\n
They were simply speaking from different sides of the same problem.<\/p>\n
I worked with the founder to separate what was essential from what was negotiable, and then worked with the development team to translate that into something practical.<\/p>\n
The result wasn’t a perfect reproduction of the original vision.<\/p>\n
It was something better:<\/p>\n
\nA version of the vision that could actually work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Start with the business, then buy the tools<\/h2>\n
Build the 90-day plan before the stack<\/h3>\n
Before buying a SaaS subscription, I would rather see a founder spend time building a simple 90-day plan.<\/p>\n
\n
- What are we actually implementing?<\/li>\n
- In what order?<\/li>\n
- What needs to exist now?<\/li>\n
- What can wait?<\/li>\n
- How are we going to generate money?<\/li>\n
- What needs to be built to support that?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Only then should we start deciding what technology belongs underneath it.<\/p>\n
Sometimes that might mean Shopify.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it might mean WordPress or another platform.<\/p>\n
Sometimes a simple website is enough.<\/p>\n
The answer depends on the business, the market, the ambition, the budget and the people available to run it.<\/p>\n
Build the ecosystem one piece at a time<\/h2>\n
A digital ecosystem isn’t a collection of subscriptions.<\/p>\n
It’s a collection of things that work together to support the business.<\/p>\n
And that’s why I prefer building it phase by phase.<\/p>\n
First understand the business. Then design the flow. Then choose the tools. Then build what is actually needed.<\/p>\n
You don’t need the biggest stack.<\/p>\n
You need the right one.<\/p>\n
And preferably, one that doesn’t quietly eat \u20b930,000 of your money every month while you’re still trying to figure out what your homepage should say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Business tools for founders should support a clear plan, not replace one. Learn how to choose, outsource, and sequence technology around the business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[32,30,33,23,31],"class_list":["post-2846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-strategy","tag-business-planning","tag-business-tools","tag-digital-strategy","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-saas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitanshu.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}