One problem I didn’t expect while trying to build a SaaS at 17

Over the past few months I’ve been building my first product while still in school. Something surprised me during the process.

The biggest problem wasn’t learning how to build the product.

It was staying focused on the right thing each day.

When you’re building a SaaS or startup there are so many things you could work on:

•	improving the product

•	marketing

•	user interviews

•	distribution

•	analytics

•	onboarding

Everything feels important, which makes it easy to jump between tasks or spend time on things that don’t actually move the product forward.

I noticed that the days where I made the most progress were the days where I picked one very small action that directly moved the product forward.

Examples:

• messaging a few potential users

• fixing one onboarding friction point

• improving one feature that users mentioned

• writing one distribution post

• asking one founder for feedback

None of these are huge tasks, but doing them consistently compounds over time.

It made me realise that early-stage founders often don’t fail because of bad ideas — they fail because of lack of consistent progress.

Curious how others here deal with this.

When you’re building SaaS, how do you decide what the single most important thing to work on each day is?