Editing Micro-SaaS, One Killer Feature

[[file:Micro-SaaS,_One_Killer_Feature_.jpg|500px]]

Learn how micro-SaaS founders can win enterprise deals with just one killer feature — an “edge-capability” wedge that slices into big accounts and expands over time.



You don’t need a platform to win an enterprise customer.
You need a wedge.

Specifically: a tiny, focused product with one enterprise-grade feature that solves a painful, expensive problem better than anything else on the market.
That’s the Micro-SaaS wedge play. And it’s a lot more realistic than “we’ll replace Salesforce in five years.”
Let’s unpack how it works — and how you can design your product, architecture, and go-to-market around a single, sharp edge.



The Myth of “Too Small for Enterprise”
Founders often think there are only two paths:
* 		Build a broad horizontal platform (and burn years + millions), or
* 		Stay in “indie hacker” land, serving only freelancers and tiny teams.
Reality is messier — and more interesting.
Enterprise buyers don’t wake up saying, “I wish I had another platform.” They wake up thinking:
* 		“Compliance is going to kill this rollout.”
* 		“We’re still doing this manual step in Excel, this is embarrassing.”
* 		“Security just blocked yet another tool.”
This is where Micro-SaaS with one enterprise feature wins:
Small surface area. Deep integration into one painful moment. A single capability that’s “enterprise hard” but “micro-SaaS sized.”
Think: SOC 2-friendly audit trail. Think: rock-solid SSO. Think: clean export into the system of record that everyone else avoids touching.
The product can be tiny. The impact doesn’t have to be.



What Exactly Is an “Enterprise Feature Wedge”?
Let’s define it:
An enterprise feature wedge is a focused capability that:
* 		Solves a high-stakes, high-friction problem inside existing workflows
* 		Is costly or annoying for incumbents to implement well
* 		Unlocks permission to deploy in big organizations
* 		Naturally leads to expansion once embedded
You’re not trying to out-feature a giant platform. You’re slicing into one overlooked space:
* 		The integration everyone hates building
* 		The compliance report no one wants to maintain
* 		The workflow that’s important, but not “core” enough for the big vendors to obsess over
What Makes a Strong Wedge?
1. Pain Lives in the “Last Mile”
Your wedge should sit in the last mile of an existing process:
* 		After Salesforce, before finance
* 		After Jira, before reporting
* 		After call recordings, before QA
You’re reducing a nasty gap between tools, not inventing an entirely new habit.
2. Clear, Quantifiable Business Impact
Enterprise features get bought because they:
* 		Reduce risk (compliance, security, auditability)
* 		Save significant time at scale
* 		Unblock revenue (renewals, expansions, implementations)
If your wedge is “nice to have,” it’s not a wedge. If it gets mentioned in quarterly business reviews, you’re onto something.
3. “Obvious” to End Users, “Hard” for Competitors
The UI should feel almost boringly simple. End users should get it immediately.
What’s non-obvious:
* 		The robustness of your integration layer
* 		The correctness of your logic
* 		The reliability of your infrastructure
Your unfair advantage is all the boring, unsexy engineering hiding behind one clean screen.



Real-World Style Examples (Without the Fairy Tale)
These aren’t official case studies, but they illustrate the wedge pattern.
Calendly’s Enterprise Scheduling Layer
Calendly started as “just a link to book meetings.” Micro, right?
The wedge wasn’t the calendar UI. It was:
* 		Organizational controls
* 		Round-robin rules for sales teams
* 		Integrations with CRMs and routing tools
Once that logic powered high-value sales meetings, it became very hard to rip out.
Micro-SaaS Audit Trail as a Service
Imagine a tiny SaaS that does only one thing:
Capture, normalize, and export audit trail events for third-party applications.
Your “one enterprise feature” might be:
* 		Tamper-evident logs
* 		Pre-baked reports for SOC 2 / ISO 27001
* 		Ready-made connectors to SIEM tools
The product is just a few screens:
* 		Event stream viewer
* 		Report generator
* 		Integration settings
But to the security team, you’re the reason a deployment is allowed at all.



Architecture: How Do You Build a Tiny Product with a Big Feature?
Let’s sketch an architecture for a hypothetical Micro-SaaS wedge: “Enterprise-ready Approval Workflow” that plugs into existing tools.
<pre>
┌─────────────────────────────┐
          │       Client Apps          │
          │  (Jira, Notion, Custom)    │
          └────────────┬───────────────┘
                       │ Webhooks / API
                       v
              ┌───────────────────┐
              │  Ingestion Layer  │
              │ (API Gateway)     │
              └────────┬──────────┘
                       v
            ┌──────────────────────┐
            │  Rules Engine        │
            │ - Approval policies  │
            │ - Role mapping       │
            │ - SLA timers         │
            └────────┬─────────────┘
                     v
          ┌─────────────────────────────┐
          │ Persistence + Audit Store   │
          │ - Events                    │
          │ - Decisions                 │
          │ - Metadata                  │
          └────────┬────────────────────┘
                   v
      ┌────────────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────┐
      │ Admin UI + API         │    │ Enterprise Features │
      │ - Workflows            │    │ - SSO (SAML/OIDC)   │
      │ - Policies             │    │ - SCIM provisioning │
      │ - Reports              │    │ - Export to SIEM    │
      └────────────────────────┘    └─────────────────────┘
</pre>

Notice what’s big here:
* 		Rules engine reliability
* 		Audit store correctness
* 		Security and identity integration
Notice what stays small:
* 		Number of screens
* 		Breadth of features
* 		Surface area of the UI

A Tiny but Real Code Slice

Here’s a simplified example of how a Micro-SaaS wedge might expose an enterprise-y API for approvals:
<pre>
# pseudo-FastAPI example

from fastapi import FastAPI, Depends
from typing import Literal
from auth import require_enterprise_scope
from rules import evaluate_policy
from audit import log_decision

app = FastAPI()

@app.post("/v1/approvals/decide")
def decide_approval(
    item_id: str,
    actor_id: str,
    action: Literal["approve", "reject"],
    _: str = Depends(require_enterprise_scope),
):
    decision = evaluate_policy(item_id=item_id, actor_id=actor_id, action=action)
    log_decision(item_id=item_id, actor_id=actor_id, decision=decision)
    return {"item_id": item_id, "decision": decision}
</pre>

This endpoint is boringly straightforward. That’s the point.
The complexity lives in:
* 		require_enterprise_scope: SSO / SCIM-aware permissions
* 		evaluate_policy: policy engine with org-wide rules
* 		log_decision: compliant audit record with retention guarantees
Your UI might be three pages, but these internals are what legal and security actually care about.



Go-to-Market: Land with Users, Expand with One Checkbox

You can design your GTM to mirror the product:
* 		Bottom-up free or cheap plan
* 		Simple self-serve usage
* 		Integrates with a few common tools
* 		No enterprise features yet
2. Enterprise wedge as an “unlock”
* 		Turn on SSO
* 		Turn on compliance exports
* 		Turn on advanced routing, approvals, or reporting
Practically, that looks like:
* 		Individual teams adopt your tool because it just… works
* 		Adoption spreads quietly inside the org
* 		One day, IT notices and says, “We need SSO, audit logs, and user provisioning”
* 		That’s your moment. Your “tiny” enterprise feature becomes the reason for a bigger deal.
Price it like a wedge, too:
* 		Simple per-seat or per-unit pricing
* 		Enterprise feature bundle as a clear step-up
* 		No 12-tier matrix that scares procurement



Common Traps to Avoid

Trap 1: Building a Platform by Accident

You start with one feature, then add:
* 		Dashboards
* 		Chat
* 		Tasks
* 		Docs
Suddenly you’re competing with half of the SaaS universe. For no good reason.
Stay brutally honest: does this new feature sharpen the wedge, or just make you feel more like a “real product”?

Trap 2: Ignoring the Buyer While Chasing the User

Bottom-up motion is great, but someone signs the contract.
Talk to:
* 		Security
* 		Compliance
* 		Finance
* 		Ops
Ask, “What stops you from approving tools like ours?” Then make that your enterprise wedge.

Trap 3: Overengineering Before You Have Proof

Let’s be real: you don’t need SOC 2 on day one.
You do need:
* 		Solid logging
* 		Non-insane data model
* 		A clear path to hardening the product
Design with enterprise in mind, but don’t spend six months on compliance before a single user cares.



Designing Your Own Wedge: A Simple Checklist

Ask yourself:
* 		What workflow are my users already doing in another tool (or in Excel)?
* 		Where is the last, painful 10% that everyone hates?
* 		Which enterprise persona feels that pain most acutely (security, ops, finance, sales)?
* 		What’s the one feature that would make them say, “We can’t do this ourselves, and our platform vendor won’t prioritize it”?
* 		Can I build that as a tiny product with a deep, boringly reliable backend?
If you can answer those with conviction, you don’t need a suite. You just need a wedge.



The Wedge That Wins

Micro-SaaS is often framed as “small ambitions, small customers.” That’s lazy thinking.
When you pair a small, focused product with one genuinely enterprise-grade capability, you get the best of both worlds:
* 		Indie-level speed and clarity
* 		Enterprise-level impact and defensibility
You don’t have to replace the whole machine. You just have to own the one part everyone secretly relies on.
If this resonated, I’d love to hear about the wedge you’re building — or thinking about building. Drop a comment with your idea, follow for more deep dives on SaaS strategy, or share this with a founder who’s still trying to boil the ocean instead of sharpening their edge.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@connect.hashblock/micro-saas-one-killer-feature-652dcc00857f