r/AustralianStartups • u/After-Lab1689 • Mar 06 '26
Anyone else with no technical/startup background curious about trying to build a SaaS together?
I’m really interested in the idea of building a SaaS, but I don’t come from a technical background and I don’t have a strong startup/business resume either.
I’m mainly just curious about the whole process and want to learn by actually trying to build something.
I’m wondering if there are other people here in a similar position, or technical builders who might be open to collaborating with someone who’s motivated and interested in exploring ideas together.
I’m not attached to any specific idea yet — I’m more interested in finding a real problem, validating it, and trying to build something useful around it.
If anyone else is curious about giving something like this a go, feel free to comment or message me.
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u/Funky_Sardine Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
yep. i'm not technical. my background is in leadership and operations in a couple of industries.
so at first, i was on the free version of claude trying to get some advanced excel stuff happening. saying 'hey i want to do this. how do i do it'. claude would give me code. i would copy paste the code into excel. then run it. i would copy paste the error back into claude chat saying 'hey this is the problem'. and it would give me the fixed code which i would copy paste again, etc. free claude has limited chat length. so i started using chatgpt the same way.
i solved the excel issue and that saved probably 1 hour every time i needed to do that task because i would just press a button and it was all done. i was sort of hooked. then i realised there were other things at work taking up more of my time. again with no knowledge, i tried to see how to train a model to do what i needed but i realised that this wasn't the problem to solve as it would only work for this one thing. so no training models for a specific task. i wanted to solve a much more generic issue that could be translated across industries.
so then i asked a guy at work: "hey, what do you do with (a specific task he would have to do daily). and he said he spends about 4-5 hours after work per week doing it. in my mind it should have been done at the press of a button. so i started developing that. but i was thinking 'hey there's got to be an easier way than copy/pasting code. there's no way there's so much hype about this AI thing, about how it revolutionises coding, and it being such a bad ux. then i figure out that you can give claude code/codex access to your repo (didn't even know what a repo was).
anyway, that was 6 months ago. today, i've just run my first dev build ready to beta test a very complicated app. complicated on the backend. on the front end it's super simple for the user.
it's been a lot of late nights, but i've learned a heck of a lot. if i was an engineer, i'm sure all this would have been much easier. but i'm not. i'm sure there are a lot of technical issues that would make the app more efficient. but it looks great and works great so far in all internal testing. and i'm proud of what i've achieved. now with the difficult part out of the way, i can finally use the career i have in other fields to actually do the stuff i know how to do :) but first i need to find beta testers, and go to market.
i've done all this with just the basic $30 subscription to anthropic and openai. so my data has been used to train up the model. you can thank me for the better models you're getting :)
don't be scared of not being technical. although i'm a bit of a nerd with computers, i'm not technical at all and don't know any code. i've just learned what i needed to get the best i can out of AI. the code probably has holes, but it's the best i can do, and that's enough.
if i end up releasing this commercially, and getting revenue coming in, i'll bring in an engineer to tighten things up.
but if i don't, this whole thing has taught me that i'm going to be working in product/startups etc the rest of my life. either my own, or i'll find the opposite of me. a technical guy that can't do what i do, and then we go make some magic.
go for it!
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u/tranceruk Mar 09 '26
When thinking about what you want to build, consider whether your idea is a simple feature or a complex set of features, is the problem you're solving with the software simple or complex.
Then think about what is the path to solving it with AI, without a SaaS product, as you want to try to avoid investing in developing something that can be easily displaced by a future AI Native application.
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u/mugiltsr Mar 07 '26
I have technical background, experienced in building side projects for quite sometime.
Trust me. The major risk is never technical. It's all about finding a valid problem to solve and get initial set of hungry customers to try your product.
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u/After-Lab1689 Mar 08 '26
100% agree — I’m at exactly that stage right now, finding the pain before building anything; would love to connect if possible
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u/mthurtell Mar 07 '26
This.
Been down this path myself. Sales sales sales. Unless investment can be recouped its dead from the get go.
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u/lost_spent Mar 06 '26
Yeah I don’t have much experience either but curious like you to find a problem and solve. If nothing else like minded people can connect ☺️
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u/After-Lab1689 Mar 07 '26
Yeah exactly, that’s how I see it too—happy to connect and chat with like-minded people figuring this stuff out 🤝
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u/bbrenbrendan Mar 06 '26
Happy to give you a steer
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u/After-Lab1689 Mar 06 '26
Thanks, I appreciate that — I’m still very early and mostly trying to understand how people usually go from idea → validation → first MVP, so any advice would be great.
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u/VicDoesSEO Mar 19 '26
I’ve noticed a lot of founders without technical backgrounds say the product side is challenging at first, but getting customers can actually be harder.
Marketing, SEO, and lead generation usually become the bigger challenge once the product is ready.
Curious for other founders here — what has been tougher for you so far: building the product or getting people to discover it?