SaaS

Recurring-revenue economics, the real 2026 build landscape, and an honest survival check

Building and selling a software-as-a-service business, starting from the mechanism most 'start a SaaS' content skips: why recurring revenue is worth more per dollar than one-off revenue, and the actual math connecting churn, LTV, CAC, and payback period. Covers the real 2026 build tradeoff (no-code vs. custom, and a genuinely skeptical two-study look at what AI-assisted coding does and doesn't speed up — one study found a 56% speedup on greenfield work, another found a 19% slowdown on realistic work in an existing codebase), pricing model choice by value metric, and the distribution problem stated plainly rather than oversold. The retention module reads four genuinely-disclosed benchmark sources side by side with their commercial interests named rather than picking whichever number flatters. Fundraising vs. bootstrapping gets a real sourced comparison, and the closing kill-switch framework is backed by an honest audit of SaaS survival-rate claims — every popular 'X% of SaaS startups fail' figure traced and found unsourced, replaced with real establishment-survival data instead. Seven modules, thirteen lessons. Standard-tier barebones build.

53 min of reading