Validating internal tool ideas at SaaS companies
Half the internal tools you build shouldn't exist. Validation catches them before they do.
Daniel
Fifteen years running growth for SaaS, ecommerce, and hardware brands. Currently shipping SaaSValidatr out of Australia.
Internal tools are where SaaS companies burn engineering time quietly. An ops lead says 'we need a dashboard for X.' A fortnight later an engineer has built it. Six months later nobody uses it. The post-mortem, if there is one, always reveals the same thing: nobody validated the idea before the engineer started.
The cost of an unvalidated internal tool
- Two engineer-weeks per tool, on average, including integration and maintenance.
- A new surface to support that nobody owns long-term.
- A shift in team culture toward building over buying, even when buying is cheaper.
The same five-dimension scoring that works for new product ideas works for internal tools. Market viability becomes internal user demand. Revenue potential becomes time saved. Feasibility stays feasibility. Uniqueness becomes build-vs-buy reasoning. Simplicity is what you bet against — internal tools bloat faster than anything.
Running every proposed internal tool through a 10-minute scoring exercise kills at least a third of them. The surviving tools are worth building; the team stops resenting the backlog; engineering capacity goes back to customer-facing work.
Free forever · no card required