TL;DR
Building SaaS without talking to users first is costly. Whether you built first or second, the smartest move is to pause, validate, and listen. Early conversations reveal real pain points, reduce wasted features, and set your product on a path to growth. Small iterations based on user feedback beat assumptions every time.
Building a SaaS product without talking to users first is like designing a three-story building without ever visiting the site. Only later do you realize the ground can’t support it. This is the real cost of skipping SaaS validation.
Many SaaS founders jump straight to code and features, assuming their perception of the problem is enough.
As one startup analysis notes, founders ‘identify problems in the market, think up potential solutions and jump right into building a product’. They often skip customer validation because ‘building a product is heads-down, tangible work‘ they can control, while talking to users is not.
But months later, beta tests return negative reviews, or launch results in flat metrics. That’s when they discover their product doesn’t actually meet real user needs. The same mistake behind 42% of startup failures.
You don’t need a study to see it, just scroll through any founder community. Every week, there’s someone rebuilding their product after realizing they never talked to users in the first place.
Here’s what real founders say on public forums when they reflect on coding‑first mistakes:
“I built my first SaaS for 2 months. Zero customers. … It was only for the third project that I realised I had to try something different this time. So I … tried talking to people before building.” (Reddit r/EntrepreneurRideAlong, December 2024)
“We built a SaaS without talking to users — here’s what we learned: heads buried in code, thinking users would show up. Spoiler: they didn’t.” (Reddit r/micro_saas, May 2025)
Coding-First Puts SaaS Founders at Risk
Building a product that no one wants not only drains your resources, it further impacts your product’s future. Here’s a look at how:
Delaying Validation and Breaking Feedback Loops
The longer you wait to talk to users, the longer it takes to discover you’re off track. Early user conversations help you clarify the real pain point, identify how users describe it, and find out what they’re already using.
According to a recent ThinkUp article, startups that embrace regular feedback loops cut product failure rates by nearly 50%. Companies like Buffer report up to a 51% increase in actionable insights by using continuous feedback tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Founders often delay validation, assuming they’ll fix things after launch. But, one study found that it takes 2–3 times longer to find product-market fit than most founders expect (Failory, 2024; Startup Genome Project). That delay eventually drains cashflow, quietly killing the startup before the product ever fits the market.
Confusing Innovation With Invention
Innovation solves problems people feel; invention just creates something new. Likewise coding first makes you an inventor while having conversations first makes you a problem-solver. In SaaS, people don’t pay for novelty, they pay for relief.
The Startup Genome Project found that founders overestimate the value of their intellectual property before product-market fit by 255%. This shows how coding first can mislead teams into prioritizing perceived innovation over real user needs.
Losing the Emotional Insight Behind User Behavior
Talking to users uncovers emotional triggers such as frustration, confusion, and unmet expectations. Code can’t reveal that. Yet, those emotions are what great UX, onboarding, and retention strategies are built on.
In fact, behavioural‑trigger research shows that SaaS companies using emotional insights can reduce churn by up to 40%. When personalization or emotional alignment misses the mark, 76% of users end up feeling frustrated. This is a big reason for early churn.
Understanding the Ultimate Cost of Building Without Users
At this critical stage, energy and resources that could have gone into research and validation are wasted. Founders stare at stagnant metrics. Teams wonder if all the late nights and hard decisions were for nothing. Features that once felt smart now feel useless.
All too often, the reason the operation’s beams finally snap is financial: around 29% of startups fail after running out of funds. That unreinforced ground suddenly threatens to bring the entire building down.
Many SaaS companies don’t recover and end up shutting down. Even pivots rarely work out, as many risk becoming another ‘what happened to…’ story. In micro-SaaS, 92% fail within three years, more in just 18–24 months.
Every week spent without talking to users is another risk, another beam bending under weight. It doesn’t just mean building the wrong features, it could mean sinking the whole product.
All these consequences show why building without talking to users can seriously hurt your product.
The good news? These risks and lost opportunities are avoidable. By starting with conversation, validation, and early feedback, you turn guesswork into insight and give your product a far stronger shot at success.
Leading Product-Building With Conversation
The best SaaS founders start with conversation, not code. They observe behavior, run small tests, and iterate with empathy. Slack, Notion, Canva, and many others didn’t just launch features, they listened first, spotted friction, and built solutions that felt inevitable to users.
I learned that lesson firsthand while testing a beta sign-up form for a custom-GPT.
Even though many people clicked on the call-to-action, few completed it. Like with many SaaS startups, users abandoning sign-up halfway is never a good sign and signals a deeper issue. That was the friction in my process.
To fix it, I asked a friend for unfiltered feedback on the signup form. Our candid conversation eventually led to me simplifying the sign-up to 4 fields, making the fifth optional. According to Formstack, removing just one form field can boost conversions by ~50%.
Within 2 days, my signups nearly doubled, and users trusted my product more because the experience was smooth and aligned with their motivations.
That experience taught me what countless SaaS founders eventually realize: users reveal the truth in what they do, not what they say.
Early friction costs SaaS companies users. Pendo shows that software products retain just ~39% of users after one month and ~30% after three months, emphasizing the importance of observing and iterating. Small, deliberate observations often reveal behavior patterns that assumptions or brainstorming alone would miss.
The best SaaS products aren’t born from lines of code, they’re shaped by the quiet discipline of listening, observing, and iterating.
Turning Coding-First Mistakes into Learning Wins
Even if you dove straight into building, it’s not too late to course-correct and reinforce your building site. The goal now is simple: stop assuming, start listening.
Pause and Take Stock
You’ve spent months building, now it’s time to be honest and identify which parts of your product truly solve real problems.
A founder on Indie Hackers shared that after six months of building features nobody needed, they decided to list every feature by utility, and scrapped the ones that weren’t solving real problems. That honesty became the foundation for a successful pivot.
Talk to Real Users Immediately
Even if you’ve spent months coding, it’s not too late to start listening.
Another founder shared on Indie Hackers that after talking to just 10 potential users, they discovered their messaging was off and a key feature wasn’t needed. Those conversations reshaped their roadmap completely and doubled engagement.
Observe How People Actually Behave
Hearing users isn’t enough, you have to see what they do.
A startup documented by Sprintwell noticed users getting stuck on the third step of onboarding. By fixing that one friction point, retention jumped to 32%, proving small observations can have a massive impact.
Iterate Quickly
Small, fast changes matter more than massive features.
On Reddit, one founder shared that after switching to rapid iterations based on user behavior, their signup completion improved from 34% to 52%. Time to first value also dropped from 8 to 3 minutes.
Validate Continuously
You can still test your assumptions before going further.
One founder on Indie Hackers built a landing page before building the full product and secured over 100 waitlist sign‑ups in 30 days. This gave genuine feedback before he committed to months of work.
Keep Track of What You Learn
Documenting insights turns scattered observations into a roadmap for success.
One founder shared on Reddit that by tracking every conversation, observation, and tweak, they spotted recurring frustrations. Following these patterns doubled retention and prevented chasing useless features.
This kind of turnaround takes time, but it’s worth every bit of effort. Because, now your building plan is back on track to creating a solid, three-story masterpiece.
Learning from Conversation-First SaaS
Here’s a quick look at leading brands that champion conversation before they build:
Intercom
Before building their messaging platform, Intercom’s founders actually talked to small business owners to understand their pain points. They ran experiments, watched how teams handled support, and iterated features based on what they saw.
The result? A product that clicked immediately with SMBs and became a go-to for customer communication.
Slack
Slack was supposed to be a video game. Along the way, the team noticed internal communication was a nightmare, so they talked to potential users before pivoting. They tested workflows, notifications, and integrations based on real feedback.
The outcome: A tool teams love, with millions of users and a $27.7B acquisition.
Canva
Canva’s founders spoke to non-designers to figure out why design tools felt impossible to use. They launched a beta, watched people struggle, asked what worked and what didn’t, and iterated fast.
The result? An intuitive platform used by over 100 million people.
Duolingo
Before coding lessons, Duolingo’s team tested with students to see why learning apps frustrated them. They prototyped exercises, ran A/B tests, and refined based on real user responses.
The outcome: a global language-learning leader with over 500 million downloads.
Notion
Notion’s founders noticed knowledge workers juggling too many tools. They interviewed users, launched a simple MVP, observed behavior, and iterated on databases and customization.
The result? Millions of happy users and a top collaboration tool.
These five brands embody the listen–observe–iterate mindset, and serve as clear blueprints for founders who want to build products that truly improve users’ lives.
Rethinking Your Approach Before You Build Again
Innovation alone isn’t enough without proper context. Don’t be the builder who spends months drawing plans and selecting materials, only to realize the foundation can’t hold the weight. Every beam and wall could risk collapse. That’s what building a product without talking to users feels like.
The solution is simple, but it takes discipline: start with conversation. Validate your assumptions early, observe real user behavior, iterate based on insight, and document everything you learn.
Even if you’ve coded first, it’s never too late to pause, listen, and course-correct. When you build the product that fits the ground you’re standing on, everything else falls into place.
So, talk to three users today and use what they tell you to validate your SaaS product.
If you’re a builder, whether you jumped straight into code or started with conversations, your next move is clear. Check out my No-Marketing Skills Guide to Getting Testers and User Sign-ups. It shows you exactly how to get real users trying your product, gather feedback, and validate your idea without feeling like a marketer. This gives you the roadmap to go from “I built it” to “people actually want it”.
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