Vertical micro-SaaS playbook on Reddit: interview first, charge for manual work before coding
Responsible-Box-4905 · reddit · 2026-09-25
A Reddit post lays out a four-step vertical micro-SaaS plan and asks practitioners where it breaks:
- Go hyper-niche: skip trades dominated by ServiceTitan/Jobber; target towing, septic, equipment rental, or a narrow sub-workflow. Generic features get bundled by big platforms; industry-specific forms and rules are too small for them to copy.
- Interview 10–20 owners before building, looking for one task done the same way across the industry—the line between a product and 20 custom jobs.
- Get 2–3 clients to pay for a manual service first, then watch which steps repeat before writing real software.
- Productize the repeating part, turning pilots into first subscribers.
Positioning tip: pitch "your office spends 10 hours a week on this," never "I build AI automations." Open questions: is the paid-manual pilot worth it, and how to tell "niche enough to be defensible" from "too small to be a business" upfront?
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