I see sometimes a SaaS that is just one function. That’s not even software as a service, that’s one function as a service. And currently I am looking at companies with microservice architecture. If we look closely at them, we can get a lot of one-function-as-a-service ideas. Applications like Adobe Acrobat or Photoshop need features like PDF Merge or Background Remover. But now we see them as a single function as a service webapps. Microservice architecture might show separate services for:
Shipping
Fraud
Pricing
Tags
Recommendation algo
And many more. If a single microservice architecture needs it, then thousands of others like it need it too. Same way, departments of a business can be outsourced to an agency once you have defined them well. These functions can be outsourced to APIs or just apps. Another good opportunity is looking at a company that might have automated what others do manually. If they have done that using microservice architecture, you can make deductions about how they might have done it and come up with many one function as a service ideas.
There might be giant applications, and the only reason why people are using them is for that one single feature. If somehow you end up on their Google feed when they are searching about it as a one-function as a service app, why won’t they use you? Maybe established products are also a really huge gold mine. Where you compete them on a single function instead of the whole software. Sometimes I use the ChatGPT application on mobile because the speech-to-text is really good there, and every other app is really annoying. I essentially use it to record my thoughts. So if I find something better, I will definitely switch to that.
The marketing might be that Photoshop is the ultimate photo manipulation suite, but all sometimes a person needs from it on a recurring basis is just background removal. They might not be after the throne, but just a single gem embedded on it. That means out there is a perfectly educated audience on features and really know their needs also because they are buying these applications. You can swoop in with your one-function as a service application and say, “Hey, why not do it with us?”
The move just might be to look at applications with a lot of traffic and revenue. Understand why people are using it, what might be the one feature that is doing all the work, and then launch of one function as a service app. Like you noticed that most of the time people are using Photoshop to remove backgrounds. You can just create that app and your positioning can be, “Don’t use complicated Photoshop, just use my app, and we do it in 10 seconds. No install is needed.” Running out of space because of Photoshop? Just use your app. 10 seconds needed only.
Plus the amount of intel you would have is insane. You can just go to Google Search Console and see how many people are searching how to remove background using Photoshop, how to remove background using Canva. If the traffic is enough, you can try to subvert it to your own page. Plus, these tools are expensive, so the switching costs are actually lower for them. Like, if they are spending $5000 per year on Photoshop, and most of the time, all they are doing is removing background. Switching to your $20 SaaS is the move. Microsoft Word kept showing you that “hey,” your spelling is wrong; they gave you just a red underline. Those guys have a dedicated piece of code to tell you something is wrong. Grammarly just came in and said, “Hey, your spelling is wrong. Do you want to replace it?” Microsoft kept educating us for decades, and Grammarly just monetised it they just extended the previous piece of code Microsoft had. It stopped at highlighting what’s wrong; these guys started fixing it. I didn’t even realize this before, but there might be a lot of software that are educating the people about the problem they have but are not solving it. Another can be Excel just showing you an error instead of telling you that “hey, this might be going wrong” before it does, or after the fact.
Just like celebrity or influencer launch brands have a huge advantage because they don’t have to spend that much money on advertising. I think software which is riding this one function as a service wave can save on education cost. Always say that you can create something, but adoption of it can be hard. Education about the product, the problem they have, and instilling the need in them to fix it can be hard. It is a costly process. You have to create at least two-digit touchpoints with them before they are convinced. How are you going to target them so many times? Are you going to create so much organic content? Are you going to launch so many expensive retargeting ads? What are you going to do? And all that just to educate them? While here we are finding an opportunity where the masses are already educated about their own pain.
You can also deduce the Pareto features of the application, like what is the feature that has 80% of all total utilization? You can talk with the users. Like if Microsoft Word is used just to type thoughts and save it as a text file, then a simple web app can also do that. That’s why there are hundreds of text editor tools online which are printing a lot of money. You can interview the users of those applications, talk with them – what do they do, why do they do it, understand them very deeply – and come up with your one feature as a service SaaS.
Like, I used to think you need to solve a problem that exists inside a workflow or a system to get money. I might be wrong. You can just solve a problem that is already being solved by others, but is bloated and bogged down by the technical and user’s mental baggage. Then, once again, we boiled down to the concept of “it’s better to compete than to create a category,” and that “it’s all human in the end.” If you understand people, if you understand why they use this application, why are a lot of people using this application on such a mass scale, you can create a one-feature-as-a-service app and win.
You can even look into why people are even using that. If most people are opening Excel to calculate compound interest, then the same need can be serviced with a web app way more easily. And that’s how you can see even interest calculators making alot of money
Maybe Rohkun failed because nobody is searching on Google how to track architectural drift when using cursor or your codebase.
Maybe we can look into more red line opportunities, where Microsoft spent years underlining your grammatical errors, educating you about your own shortcomings, and how it can be bad for you. Even your teacher could see those, and then Grammarly swooped in and said, “Hey, no more red lines.”
In this article, we got to know about the two patterns:
- To just copy the feature that is getting a lot of usage (Pareto features)
- To create a new feature about which a ton of education has already been done (Red line Opportunities)
SaaS Opportunity Patterns
| Pareto Feature Extraction | Red Line Opportunities |
|---|---|
| Extract the most-used feature from a suite product and make it 10x better as a standalone tool. The feature already exists and is heavily used—you just remove the bloat and optimize relentlessly for that single job. | Incumbent identifies a problem (educates users for years) but doesn’t solve it—just shows a warning or error. You build the solution that actually fixes what they’ve been highlighting. The market is pre-educated; they just need someone to stop the pain. |
| Remove.bg: Photoshop users spend $55/mo but most e-commerce sellers, real estate agents, and marketers only need background removal. Remove.bg does this one thing in 5 seconds vs 5 minutes, charges $9/mo, and captured millions of users who were overpaying for features they never touched. | Grammarly: Microsoft Word showed red/green underlines for 40+ years, training billions of users that spelling/grammar matters. But users had to right-click, scan options, and manually fix each error. Grammarly swooped in with one-click fixes, explanations of why it’s wrong, and tone suggestions. Result: $13B valuation by solving what Word only identified. |
| Calendly: Outlook and Gmail have scheduling features, but the back-and-forth email dance (“Are you free Tuesday? How about Wednesday?”) wastes hours weekly. Calendly extracted just the availability-sharing part, made it a simple link, and built a $3B company from one feature buried in email clients. | Excel Error Solver: Excel shows cryptic errors (#REF!, #DIV/0!, circular reference) but makes users Google and manually debug. “Excel REF error” gets 50K searches/month—people need help. An extension that explains errors in plain English, highlights the exact problem cell, and offers one-click fixes would capture frustrated users immediately. Market is massive: 750M Excel users. |
| Loom: Zoom has screen recording, but it’s buried in menus and designed for meetings, not async messages. Loom made recording/sharing a screen video effortless—one click, instant link. Result: $1.5B valuation by extracting a feature most Zoom users didn’t even know existed. | Email Safety Net: Gmail warns “no subject line” but doesn’t prevent catastrophic mistakes like sending to wrong recipient or hostile tone. “Sent email to wrong person” gets 15K searches/month despite being rare—because the pain is extreme. A tool that says “You’re sending to john@competitor.com not john@company.com—confirm?” would be worth $50/mo to professionals. |
| YNAB: Excel can track budgets, but requires formula knowledge, setup time, and discipline. YNAB extracted just budget tracking, added envelope method logic, and created a focused experience. Users pay $99/year happily vs fighting with Excel formulas for free. | Zoom Reliability Layer: Zoom shows “unstable connection” icon but doesn’t auto-fix anything. Users see the warning, panic, and manually troubleshoot while their meeting falls apart. “Zoom connection unstable” gets 20K searches/month. A tool that pre-tests connections, auto-switches to phone audio when WiFi fails, and keeps local backup recordings solves what Zoom only identifies. |
| Hemingway Editor: Word has spelling/grammar check, but writers need clarity and readability analysis. Hemingway extracted just the “make your writing clearer” job, added grade-level scoring and passive voice detection, and became the go-to tool for online writers who found Word’s features overwhelming. | Slack Channel Intelligence: Slack warns “@channel will notify 500 people” but doesn’t prevent sending to wrong channel—a daily mistake for power users. An extension that says “This looks like a question for #support not #random—switch?” or “This was answered 3 days ago in #engineering—see thread?” would save hours of duplicate work and embarrassment. |
The Pattern Recognition Exercise
For any established suite product, ask:
- What’s in the “File > New” menu? Each template type is a potential standalone product
- What are the top 5 YouTube tutorials? High view counts reveal the actual jobs
- What integrations exist? Each integration point is a feature people need to extract
- What are people complaining about? “Why is [simple task] so complicated in [suite]?”
The Economics of Inherited Demand
Traditional startup challenge:
- Identify problem ❌ (hard)
- Educate market that problem exists ❌ (expensive)
- Convince them to pay ❌ (risky)
- Build solution ❌ (time-consuming)
Building something like remove.bg after looking at photoshop:
Identify problem✅ (Adobe already did this)Educate market✅ (they’re already educated)Convince them to pay✅ (they’re already paying)- Build better solution for that specific job ✅ (focused effort)
Your Personal Advantage
You likely already use 5-10 high-revenue SaaS products. You have intimate knowledge of:
- Which features you actually use
- What frustrates you
- What you’d pay for separately
- What you wish worked differently
That’s proprietary research others don’t have.
The Research Automation
You could literally build a script:
python
# Pseudocode
for product in high_revenue_products:
search_queries = get_google_trends(f"how to * in {product}")
sort_by_volume(search_queries)
for query in top_100_queries:
if volume > 10000/month:
extract_feature(query)
calculate_opportunity_score()Then rank by:
- Search volume (demand)
- Current price (switching motivation)
- Complexity of current solution (frustration)
- Your ability to build 10x better (feasibility)
The Cognitive Cost of Suite Products
Using Photoshop for background removal:
Actual task: Remove background (5 seconds of value)
Mental overhead:
- Opening the app (remembering where it is)
- Waiting for load (2GB startup time)
- Finding the right tool (was it magic wand? Quick select? Pen tool?)
- Configuring settings (tolerance? feather? refine edge?)
- Worrying you’re doing it wrong (comparing to tutorial)
- Saving correctly (which format? resolution? color profile?)
Total cognitive cost: 10x the actual task