Most of the people who reach out already have a name, a domain, and a Figma file. What they do not have is a sentence a stranger would pay for.
I run a small engineering shop, AI Dev Planner, out of Islamabad. We build SaaS and AI products for founders. The pattern is the same almost every time. Someone shows me a dashboard with six features, then says they will "add marketing later." Later is when the money is already gone.
Last month a founder wanted an AI wrapper around their notes app. I asked who had already paid them for the manual version. Nobody. They had spent three weeks on auth and Stripe. Auth was not the risk. The risk was that the notes were free in five other tools, and theirs only differed by a logo.
What I do now, before any estimate, is one page:
who has the problem this week, not "SMBs"
what they do today, including the spreadsheet
the one job the first version does
what we are explicitly not building
a price, even if it is ugly
If that page is empty, the build is a hobby. I would rather tell someone that than invoice them for a login screen.
We turned the same checklist into a small planner on aidevplanner.com, mostly so I would stop rewriting it in Notion. The shop still does the actual build when the page is real.
If you are about to hire anyone, including us, send them that page first. If they quote without it, they are quoting a fantasy.
Do not add "DM me," a WhatsApp number, "check out," or the case-study stats on the site. Those read as a pitch, and the sub will pull the post. If the composer offers flair, use Help or Case Study. Post it from an account that has already commented in the sub.
Source: r/micro_saas · by /u/GuidanceFluffy