19yo, deciding between saas vs service

Theodore Hamill

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I’m 19, still in school. I’ve got enough free time. My brother (1 year older) is a very good developer,

I’ve been learning about SaaS for the past 2–3 months. I know the basic idea (find a problem, validate, build), and I’ve spent time trying to do that, looking through Reddit, forums, etc.

One idea I looked into was a crosslisting tool. I used to flip thinkpads, so I know that space. My thought was to build something for the German/Austrian market since most existing tools are US-focused. The idea originally came from my own need, I would’ve used it myself. There isnt any crosslisting tool for the german region currently.

But when I tried to validate it, I couldn’t find people in germany/austria actively asking for this. And existing US tools already seem pretty solid. Also someone with an existing audience (~10k users from another ecom tool) is already building something similar for this market. So I dropped it for now.

I keep seeing advice that “boring B2B problems” are where real SaaS opportunities are. That makes sense, but I have zero experience in those kinds of industries, and it would be hard for me compared to people who’ve worked in those fields for years. I did search for "boring" problems on reddit for a while, I saw people complaining that the spreadsheets they get from their suppliers often come with missing data, and filling it in manually takes way too long. There are some standalone data enrichment tools out there, but not that many. I found a recent, not so well known product called ProductLasso, it doesn’t have much users at all, trust mrr shows 0 users, but their founders received $400k funding, and productlasso seems to be their main project, so i think it suggests there’s at least some interest in this space. The idea itself seems pretty straightforward: you upload a spreadsheet, and a tool fills in the missing data automatically. It feels like something that could be built without too much complexity, especially since my brother has a lot of experience working with AI models. He doesn’t have B2B domain experience either, but he’s strong on the technical side.

So I’m a bit stuck between two paths:

  1. Go straight into SaaS and keep trying to find/validate a real problem. Of course in domains that I at least understand a bit or can relate to.
  2. Start with a service first, get real customers/experience, and then transition into SaaS later. Also what services would you recommend me?
For context:

  • basic selling experience online (flipping stuff mainly) since I was a kid.
  • I'm tech savvy
  • not an experienced coder, but my brother is (he would help me, he also has enough free time)
What would you do in my position?
 
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