Buy a small SaaS and grow it with AI
Building software from zero means months before the first paying customer; buying a small one means customers, revenue and a working product on day one. One script rebuilds a listing's real MRR, churn and retention from its raw invoice export and flags what the seller left out. Then make an offer that protects you, and run the growth plays once the keys are yours.
- An offer that protects you: letter of intent outline, deferred payment, funding maths and payback
- A 90-day plan: stop churn first, then grow with AI support, onboarding emails and search pages
- Python 3.9 or newer. The scripts use only the standard library. New to the terminal? Terminal survival kit
- Capital you can afford to tie up for years: savings, a Start Up Loan or a partner. Never money you'd need back next year
- Enough technical skill to keep a web app running, or a developer you trust. Reverse-engineer any repo helps you read someone else's code
- A business set up to own it: Make it legal
Why buying beats building, and what it takes
Know the trade you're making: you swap the risk of building for the risk of buying someone else's problems.
A built product skips the hardest partMost new SaaS never find a paying customer. A small SaaS with £2,000 to £10,000 of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) has already proved people will pay. You're buying that proof, the customers, the search rankings and the code, usually for a few times one year's profit.
Why owners sell cheapMany micro SaaS were side projects. The founder got a job, started something bigger, or burned out on support. Their product still works and still earns, it just has nobody pushing it. That's the gap: a motivated owner with AI tools can do in weeks what a tired founder never got round to (support, onboarding, content, pricing).
What makes a good target:
- Profitable and boring: a tool a specific trade uses every week (rotas, bookings, invoicing for a niche, a Shopify app that does one job). Boring means less competition.
- Customers pay monthly or yearly by card, through a billing system you can verify.
- Under 5 hours a week to run, so you have time to grow it.
- Not dependent on one platform that could change its rules, or at least priced for that risk.
- A product you understand, or customers you can talk to.
Careful- What it takes. Capital: small SaaS typically sell for 2 to 5 times annual profit, so a business making £30,000 a year might cost £60,000 to £150,000, plus £2,000 to £5,000 for a solicitor. Smaller ones sell for a few thousand.
- Time: 5 to 10 hours a week to run it after handover, more in the first three months. Searching and due diligence take 20 to 40 hours per serious deal.
- Skills: keeping a web app running, or paying someone who can; reading metrics; customer support.
- Paperwork: an asset purchase agreement reviewed by a solicitor, escrow for the payment, a company to own it.
- Time to first deal: commonly two to six months of looking, because most listings fail due diligence.
- Who this suits: developers, product people and marketers who'd rather improve something real than build from nothing, and who can stay patient through ten bad listings to find one good one.
Everything you'll use is in one kitDownload the kit (13KB): the sample invoice generator, the due-diligence script, the checklist, the letter of intent outline and messages, the deal calculator, the 90-day growth plan and a scoreboard.