What the first version of a SaaS product should include

An MVP is not a small version of everything

The most common mistake is to plan the full product and then shrink every feature a little. The result is a product that does many things poorly and proves nothing.

A good MVP does one thing well: the workflow that made you want to build the product in the first place. If customers will pay for that, the rest can follow. If they will not, no amount of extra features will change it.

Start from the core workflow

Write down, in plain language, the job your customer is trying to get done and the steps they take today. Then decide which of those steps your product will own. That is your core workflow, and it is the part of the MVP that deserves the most design and engineering attention.

Model the records and rules behind it carefully, even if the first screens are simple. A sound model is what lets the product grow without being rebuilt.

The foundations every SaaS needs from day one

Some things are cheap to build early and expensive to add later:

• Accounts and tenants: each customer's data separated from every other customer's.
• Users, roles and invitations inside each customer account.
• A way to get paid, even if the first plans are simple.
• An admin view for your team to support customers.
• Basic audit history of important changes.

What to leave out of the first version

These are often requested and rarely needed to prove value:

• Advanced reporting and custom dashboards.
• Integrations nobody has asked for yet.
• Many pricing plans and complex billing rules.
• Native mobile apps, when a responsive web app does the job.
• Settings for every possible preference.

Building for Arabic-first markets

If your customers are in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Gulf, Arabic is not a later feature. Right-to-left screens, Arabic typography and bilingual data are much cheaper to design in from the start than to retrofit.

The same applies to local expectations: billing in local currencies, invoices that can meet local requirements, and, for some customers, keeping data in the region. Decide early which of these your first customers need.

How we scope a SaaS MVP

The sequence we follow with founders:

• Map the customer's current workflow and where it breaks.
• Choose the core workflow the product will own.
• Write the domain model: records, rules, roles and states.
• Design the screens for that workflow, in Arabic and English where needed.
• Agree the first release and a written list of what comes later.
• Launch to real customers and let their use decide the next step.