Any SaaS pet project you can think of, from this point of view?
Is B2B.
Provides Value to the business and solves a pain point for them.
Something you are interested and knowledgable about.
DHH's startup school talk is great, very inspirational. I used to listen to it once a day on my commute.
Good SaaS ideas are hard to find . . .
Listen to the Startups For The Rest of Us podcast, they have episodes on finding an idea and lots of other good advice on validating your market, finding paying customers, building an email list.
It's not rocket surgery but it's still hard you'll need to wear lots of hats to build a successful SaaS. I'm currently working on my second one, first one isn't getting traction.
Just to throw something out there here are some ideas I've been approached with in the last year. (I'm not saying build these, pick something you have expertise in, and contacts in that industry, get to know the business owners first, get some paying customers lined up then start building.)
Car Wash Management App, tracking soap, chemicals, maintenance, washes, revenue, etc.
Pet Kennel booking/management app.
Mechanic/Repair Garage app, track customers, notes on their vehicle, mileage, history of repairs, oil changes, send out automated SMS reminders/promos when they have an oil change/maint. coming up.
There are still lots of ideas to leverage technology for small businesses and build up to 200+ paying subscribers for a SaaS.
It's not really the idea, it's making sure paying customers want what you have in mind. So validate the idea, talk to business owners, find out if it's a pain point, would they pay for a SaaS to solve it. Then it's about execution.
Pick something you can get an initial version up fast and get paying customers signed up and using it. Maybe a goal of 30 days to launch initial version get signups.
You don't want to spend 6 to 12 months building X only to find out customers wanted Y or Z instead. So launch fast.
Then you can track how paying customers are using it, how often they log in, create/view X,Y,Z in the app. And you'll have an idea if it's providing value.
SaaS is a slow slog to gain customers so it will probably take 18 to 24 months to climb up to maintaining 200 subscribers.
Good luck.
Doing something just a little bit better is also not going to cut it. Peter Theil gave a good talk on this recently: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec05/
Just doing OK in SaaS is harder than it looks.
May I ask what mythical realm you are posting to HN from? I hail from planet Earth, and I would have to estimate that approximately 99% of all software we use is a) mediocre and b) nonetheless a source of value! ;)
I think the point of the OP's quote is that there is room for many companies in any market, even ones that seem saturated (such as Italian restaurants). You can compete and make a good money just by delivering some value, and if you can really nail one aspect of your delivery, you can make a living without needing to be the next Airbnb.
To answer the OP's question, just about any bootstrapped business fits this model. There are several prominent HNers with small niche side agencies or businesses, some of which follow the SaaS model. There are a lot more that don't frequent HN. I think anything built on the side that makes any amount of money would qualify.
The analogy was Italian food. That's a huge market. Picking a huge market would be a critical mistake if your goal is to be a small bootstrapped SaaS company.