I lost over $200,000

5 years ago, I lost just over $200,000 when my last SaaS failed due to which I went into a heavy depression. Today, I am sharing the learning lessons so that you do not make the mistakes I made. 1. Do not trust people blindly, especially your team: This was the number mistake my cofounder Oscar Hernandez and I made. We trusted our team blindly. 2. Don't launch an unstable product: My product was in the alpha stage, and I fell for someone's trap who asked me to launch my product early, leading to many angry and upset customers. 3. Do not build an ALL-IN-ONE product: Time and time, even at PitchGround (I'm the founder & CEO of PitchGround), we see founders having a large vision and wanting to BUILD an all-in-one tool. It's a recipe for disaster because managing the repo is very difficult if the scope is too large. Instead, split the large vision into multiple smaller projects if you want. It's easier to manage, maintain, grow and kill if things are not working out. 4. Follow a systematic launch cycle: - Idea: Validate your idea with at least 80 out of 100 people who have paid you $1 for your idea. - Build JUST one MOST REQUESTED FEATURE by your buyers in your idea stage. - Test, TEst, TESt, TEST...and KEEP testing. Many companies need to understand the importance of QA during early-stage. You don't want frustrated users. 5. Focus on building stability and not UI/UX: Your MVP should focus on stability and not UI and UX because your initial set of customers won't care how fancy your product looks, but what they care about is whether their problem is getting solved or not. 6. Sell to at least 1k paying users before building more: We made a huge mistake by building more, leading to more stability issues and unsatisfied users. 7. Build an audience before building a product. I wish someone had told me this 5-6 years ago. Please only build a product if you have an audience. Spend at least six months building enough audience so your initial distribution becomes very easy. I have learned more valuable lessons, which I will share in the future, but I hope these lessons help you build better & smarter. Let me know your thoughts in the comment below.