After spending over 15 years in the industry, running a business and multiple successes and failures with SaaS products, here's my conclusion:

Marketing >>>> Engineering + Sales + <add any business function of your choice>

Before anyone of you gets offended, let me tell you, I'm an engineer turned marketer. I love building products. Give me my code editor (and some coffee) and you'll see a happy man building awesome products.

A few years ago, I came up with really amazing ideas and built products with neat UI, scalable backend and beautiful database structure. Something I'd feel proud to show to my engineer friends.

But the world out there is brutal. It doesn't care how beautiful your codebase is, how every method is well-documented and how it can handle 10000 simultaneous users with $20 droplet.

I could not believe my first two failures. I mean, I couldn't find one solid reason people didn't want to use my product. I even tried giving it away for free. It didn't work.

I decided to change my approach.

I began observing people who were successfully selling SaaS. I was shocked.

- No one had an 'innovative' product.

- Everyone operated in markets that had competition

- Everyone was busy marketing; even their half-ready product and still making money.

My world-view was different than what I saw in the markets. I needed to adapt.

Now, I have a SaaS that's making money, users are interested and I'm learning the art of sales. My focus now is marketing and solving people's problems. That's the only way to win.

I hope this helps my fellow SaaSpreneurs. No matter how much you hate it: Marketing is bigger than your code, engineering and sales.