Hi! Is it market for alternative SaaS focused on privacy?

Introductions
#1

Hello! I just arrived to Bootstrapped.fm because of this post (/t/when-i-raised-my-b2b-saass-prices/7017) and I found an awesome community.

I just want to ask what’s your opinion on creating SaaS that are alternatives to saas that already exists but they are owned by big corporations where you pay with your data. I am a book lover and book collector, and I used GoodReads a lot, but I didnt like how they used my data to feed Amazon, etc.

So I was thinking if it would be a good idea to develop an alternative focused on privacy to log the books you read, etc, for a cheap price (something like $2 per month or $10 per year). Would be something like Pinboard but for books :slight_smile:

#2

How many customers would you need to sign up per month for this to be viable at those price points if your customers never cancel?

How many page views per month do you need if you assume that only about 1% of site visitors convert to paying customers?

What about if you take into account that you’ll lose 30% to 50% of your customers in any given year?

The answer might tell you why no-one has managed to replace GoodReads yet, despite the obvious problems with GoodReads.

But if you can do it, I wish you the best of luck, because we need a better alternative to GoodReads.

1 Like
#3

I think there is a growing trend of that. Some people call it alttech (but really? I think “alt” is a bad label for it

  • there is a growing sense of distrust in the big tech and alternative solutions are thriving (see Protonmail, for example. It’s unthinkable that a B2C paid email service would be around a couple of years ago; or DuckDuckGo that is growing faster than ever)
  • B2B might be a good target for some verticals (analytics, for example. there is a huge cohort of companies that would opt out of GA if they were offered a good option, like Matomo, which is about 70% there) but it is certainly a Niche for now. Usually companies like Uribi and even Matomo win contracts by providing things that GA doesn’t, not by simply not being GA
  • Consumer tech is really lacking on that. The idea of compartmentalisation for Security and privacy is still very early on in the mind of consumers. take a look at Photo Sharing apps… There’s Google Photos, Apple’s iCloud and Amazon Photos. They are all very privacy invasive or just plain stupid( apple with their Mac only scheme and no web version for it makes it impossible for a family with Android and iOS to collaborate on that).

Well, my point is: the timing might not be the best but I do think it is a trend worth following. Do a deeper research on your vertical and figure out if the users are indeed ahead of the average on those aspects. Book reviews maybe not as sensitive about sharing data with big tech, but communications, for example, certainly do have a growing group of people looking for alternatives to the big tech offerings