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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.

This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.

It would be really surprised if you never heard of Microsoft Excel. For starters - Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications. The same is the case with Microsoft PowerPoint - a software heavily used by millions of users for presentations.

Let’s see some of the products around Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.

Sheet2API: Convert an existing Excel Online spreadsheet into a restful JSON API. This can be useful for powering simple web pages using the spreadsheet as a CMS, creating mock-up Apps, or sharing data with another organization without spending weeks deploying a custom solution. Currently at $600 MRR.

Sheet.Best: Power-up Spreadsheets and turn spreadsheets into REST APIs to connect to anything. Currently at $1200 MRR.

OpenAsApp: Automatic app creation for every spreadsheet user. Create and share great apps based on your data in Excel, Google Sheets, or databases. No coding required. Raised $4M in funding.

LoveSpreadsheets: Supercharge with spreadsheets data. Simple Data Analytics products for Startups, Small Businesses, and Analysts.

TrumpExcel: Excel training for everyone. Learn all about excel with tutorials and trainings.

APISpreadsheets: Instantly Use Your Spreadsheets as an API and Database. Use Excel spreadsheet data to power up your apps.

Chandoo.Org: A one-stop hub for everything around Excel and PowerBI. Profitable and made thousands of dollars by teaching Microsoft Excel.

CalcFusion: Transform spreadsheets into APIs. Create custom functions in Excel and integrate them into your workflow.

QuickQuery: Seamlessly convert any database into Excel Report. Empower your business users with a simple and secure tool to generate excel reports without involving IT.

Sila: Your Seamless PowerPoint Moderator. Let your participants annotate the slides. Sila is the moderator you need, empowering all participants to participate directly in your slideshow.

Premast: Create your own library, upload & share files, and use it inside PowerPoint directly using Premast Plus add-in. You can share with your team where they can use and access inside PowerPoint.

Dropbase: Turn Excel files to live databases, instantly. Centralize offline data. Import files. Process and clean up data. Export to a live database with 1 click. Raised $150K funding.

GeckoBoard: The shareable spreadsheet dashboard Easily transform your data in an Excel spreadsheet into a streamlined, shareable dashboard anyone can understand. The estimated revenue is $6M/year (includes a lot of other integrations apart from Microsoft Excel).

TackleBox: Create an automated link between Excel and PowerPoint Quickly inject Excel content into PowerPoint slides. Get alerts when updated content is available. Update presentations with the click of a button.

Alchemyj: Convert Excel into API. AlchemyJ enables analysts and developers to build APIs or generate Java programs from Excel spreadsheets that contain the calculation model at any complexity level.

ReshapeXL: Data Wrangling in Excel. A simple and effective way to process your data in Excel.

Molnify: Turn Excel files into web apps. Convert existing Excel model or start from scratch. No programming required. Easy to maintain and your Excel still works as-is. Your first app is 2 minutes away.

SpreadsheetConverter: SpreadsheetConverter runs as an add-in in Excel. It converts spreadsheets to modern web pages with advanced functionality that would be very costly to develop using a professional web designer. Create any live calculator or chart and put it up on the web in no time at all. 

SliDo: Live polling for PowerPoint Insert live polls, quizzes, or Q&A directly into your PowerPoint presentation. Estimated revenue is $30M/year (combined product revenue with other products).

TackleBox: TackleBox delivers automated PowerPoint presentations, real-time dashboards, and powerful insights.

Negative Nancy says - “Excel is super old. Why not build an app for advanced technologies like Google sheets and Airtable”?

Me - Agreed but most tools that can work on Excel can be further extended to work with Google Sheets and Airtable too. The idea is to start somewhere. If you are comfortable around Excel, start with Excel and extend to other similar tools. Also, Microsoft Excel is super popular and has users several times higher when compared to Google sheets and Airtable. Excel is apparently still used by 750 million users and still sits at the top across all similar products.

Negative Nancy says - “PowerPoint is not interaction friendly”

Me - Right and that is why you need to build products that make it more interactive with live Q&A, Polls, and Graphs. More in the next sections around this. PowerPoint is already used by millions of users across the globe and a solution around PowerPoint that could make it more interactive will help many people using PowerPoint.

Deep-dive & Some niches

• Excel sheet data to API converter: People have loads of data in Excel sheets. Create a Micro SaaS solution that can convert an Excel sheet into a consumable API. The tool should provide a drag and drop GUI so that users can drop their Excel sheet or just upload it from their local folders. Once the sheet is uploaded, provide a directly consumable API to read the data. Many legacy systems generated daily CSV files and a tool like this will make it easy to read this data and upload it to any other system via API. Sheet.Best solving a similar problem is currently at $1200 MRR.

• Excel data to graphs: Converting Excel data into consumable and embeddable graphs often takes time as there is no direct solution. Creating graphs from Excel sheet data inside an Excel sheet is easy but converting this data into a graph and embedding that into an external site isn’t easy. Create a Micro SaaS solution so that users can upload their Excel sheets and just be able to create a graph by selecting the graph/chart types (Pie chart, Bar Graph, etc) and then be able to map the Excel sheet columns to the Graph. Once the columns are mapped, the tools should provide embeddable javascript code to display the graphs on any website.

• Excel uploader for web apps: Create an ‘Excel uploader’ that can be integrated into web applications. File upload, processing is often a complex scenario for web apps as they need to handle the size limits, virus checks, etc. Create a Micro SaaS solution that can solve this problem. The solution should provide an uploader plugin so that web apps can implement Excel upload functionality into web apps. This is similar to SimpleFileUpload except that this would be for uploading and processing the Excel sheets. SimpleFileUpload is profitable and started making revenue. Make sure your solution can do a little bit of processing (displaying the data on screen after the upload and allow edit functionality of the data by showing data in cells etc) and can upload to multiple backend systems like AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, etc automatically based on configurations.

• Excel courses & training: Excel is still a popular platform and is used by millions of users. if you have enough expertise in Excel (or related tools like PowerBI etc), start an eco-system around it. Create daily tutorials and newsletters around these topics. The creator economy is growing at an exponential rate and your email subscribers are truly valuable. Along with daily tutorials and newsletters, also create one-time courses (video courses), templates around the subject. This like these could take time but over a period once your SEO builds up, you will start seeing traffic. BetterSheets is doing the same thing for Google sheets and is profitable. You can do the similar one for Excel sheets. Chandoo.Org is doing this everything around Excel/PowerBI and is profitable with thousands of dollars by teaching Microsoft Excel.

• Interactive PowerPoint Presentations: The current PowerPoint presentations are not interactive and are not dynamic. Create a solution that could make the PowerPoint more interactive with the dynamic embedding of data and graphs. The current PowerPoint presentations also don’t have any kind of insights tracking to understand who opened the presentation and how much time is s[end on going through the presentation. Create a SaaS solution that can provide all these features to PowerPoint presentations. Make sure the tool can provide interactive Q&A, live Polls, etc too. This is in similar lines of SliDo and TackleBox that are profitable.

• Products around Microsoft Office 365 Excel Online: Microsoft Office 365 launched API to provided access to the online Excel sheets created using Office 365. Thousands of corporate companies using Microsoft Office 365 to create and maintain Excel sheets online. If you have never heard of Excel online, see here. Users can collaborate and work on Excel sheets. Provide an easy API wrapper to create an API to consume this data. Organizations have loads of data in Microsoft Office 365. Your Micro SaaS solution should be able to connect these Microsoft Office Online Excel sheets and provide a readily consumable API to read/update the data. See here on how to do this technically. More info here and here. Sheet2API is currently at $600 MRR by solving a similar problem for MSOffice Online Excel sheets and Google sheets.

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