Micro-SaaS Wedges: Stealing One Feature at a Time

Learn how to build a micro-SaaS wedge by productizing one enterprise feature for SMBs, from idea selection and positioning to architecture and pricing.

You don’t need to build “the next Salesforce.” You just need to steal one feature they refuse to ship to small teams — and do it better, faster, and cheaper. That’s the core idea behind micro-SaaS wedges: take one enterprise-grade feature, wrap it in focused UX, aim it at SMBs who actually need it, and wedge your way into a crowded market. Let’s unpack how that works in practice.

What Is a Micro-SaaS Wedge, Really? A micro-SaaS is a tiny, focused SaaS product, usually:

Built by a solo dev or small team
Serving a narrow problem
With low overhead and high gross margins

A wedge is your entry point into a market — something small but sharp that lets you slip between incumbent solutions and your customer’s unmet needs. Put them together and you get: Micro-SaaS wedge: a small SaaS product that focuses on a single enterprise feature, sold directly to SMBs who otherwise can’t access or configure that capability. Examples:

“Salesforce-level lead routing” as a standalone tool for HubSpot or Pipedrive users.
“SOC2-style audit logging” for startups that can’t buy Big Vendor X yet.
“ML-based forecast overrides” as a plugin for spreadsheet-driven finance teams.

You’re not building the whole platform. You’re monetizing one sharp slice of it.

Why “One Enterprise Feature” Is a Goldmine Enterprise platforms are full of features that:

Are locked behind expensive tiers
Require months of implementation
Assume dedicated admins and complex org charts

SMBs, on the other hand:

Still need lead routing, approvals, compliance, analytics, etc.
Don’t have the time or budget for a 12-month rollout.
Are happy to pay $49–$249/month if you give them a button that “just works.”

That gap — between overbuilt enterprise feature and under-served SMB need — is where micro-SaaS wedges live. Let’s be real: SMB tools often ship “lite” versions of those heavy features. They look nice on a pricing page but fall apart when you push them. That frustration is your growth channel.

Spotting a Good Micro-SaaS Wedge Not every feature deserves its own micro-SaaS. You’re looking for a specific profile. H3: 1. It protects or grows revenue Strong wedges tend to live around money:

Closing deals faster (quote approvals, CPQ helpers)
Preventing churn (health scoring, usage alerts)
Protecting compliance (audit logs, access reports)

Revenue-adjacent problems justify spending even in bad markets. H3: 2. It’s painful to do manually Ask: What are people hacking together in spreadsheets, zaps, or Notion templates? If you see:

Weekly “Franken-reports”
Shared inbox rules that keep breaking
Homegrown scripts running on someone’s laptop

…you’re staring at a wedge. H3: 3. There’s already proof it matters at the top end If there’s a big vendor that sells this exact capability but only to large companies — great. Their marketing pages are free demand validation for your SMB version. Look for phrases like:

“advanced,” “enterprise,” “governance,” “admin console,” “policy engine”
hidden in the top tier of pricing pages

Your pitch can then be: “The enterprise feature you’ve been eyeing — without the enterprise contract.”

A Simple Wedge Architecture (ASCII Sketch) You don’t need a huge system. You need a clean core and solid integrations.

+---------------------------+
|  SMB Tools (HubSpot,     |
|  Notion, Stripe, etc.)   |
+------------+--------------+
             |
             v  webhooks / APIs
+---------------------------+
|   Micro-SaaS Wedge       |
|   - Rules / Policy Engine|
|   - Feature Logic        |
|   - Audit & Analytics    |
+------------+--------------+
             |
             v
+---------------------------+
|  Notifications / Outputs  |
|  - Email / Slack          |
|  - Webhooks               |
|  - Reports / Dashboards   |
+---------------------------+

Core idea: sit in the flow between existing tools and the outcomes users care about. Don’t replace their CRM or billing system; augment it.

Example: Lead Routing as a Micro-SaaS Wedge Imagine a tiny product called RouteSharp. Who it serves: SMB sales teams on HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Close that want Salesforce-style lead routing — without Salesforce. Pain today:

Leads land in a shared inbox.
Manager manually reassigns when they remember.
Hot leads wait hours because it’s no one’s “real job.”

RouteSharp wedge:

Connects to CRM via API.
Every time a new lead appears, it runs through rules: geography, deal size, product interest, round-robin.
Assigns the lead, pings the rep in Slack, and logs the decision.

You don’t need 50 features. Just:

Rule builder
Integrations
Simple analytics (“who got what, and how fast did they respond?”)

H3: A quick pseudo-implementation Here’s an ultra-simplified routing rule engine sketch:

from typing import List, Dict

def pick_owner(lead: Dict, reps: List[Dict]) -> str:
    # 1. Filter by region
    regional_reps = [
        r for r in reps
        if lead["country"] in r["countries"]
    ] or reps   # fallback: everyone

    # 2. Filter by product interest
    product_reps = [
        r for r in regional_reps
        if lead["product"] in r["products"]
    ] or regional_reps

    # 3. Round-robin by least recently assigned
    sorted_reps = sorted(product_reps, key=lambda r: r["last_assigned_at"])
    chosen = sorted_reps[0]

    return chosen["id"]

This isn’t production code, but it mirrors your product’s core promise: “Give me a lead. I’ll give you the right owner — every time.” The rest of the product is UX, auditability, and pricing.

Positioning: How You Describe the Wedge Micro-SaaS wedges live or die on positioning clarity. Bad: “A flexible rules-based engine for your CRM.” Good: “Get enterprise-grade lead routing for HubSpot in 10 minutes.” Notice the elements:

Audience: HubSpot sales teams
Promise: enterprise-grade routing
Time-to-value: 10 minutes

Similarly:

“SOC2-style audit trails for early-stage startups”
“Approval workflows for Stripe, without engineering”
“Forecast overrides that plug into Google Sheets”

The more your tagline sounds like something a founder would say out loud to a friend, the better your SEO keywords usually are.

SEO for Micro-SaaS Wedges You’re not chasing “project management software.” You’re chasing:

“HubSpot lead routing”
“SOC2 audit trail SaaS”
“Stripe approval workflow tool”
“Google Sheets sales forecast override”

H3: Content that actually moves the needle

Wedge feature pages
/lead-routing-for-hubspot
/soc2-audit-trail-for-startups

2. Make these obsessively specific: screenshots, integrations, before/after diagrams. 3. Outcome-focused case studies

“How we cut first-response time by 63% with automated routing”
“How a 12-person startup passed SOC2 with lightweight audit trails”

4. Playbooks, not blog fluff

“The 5 routing rules every SMB sales team should implement”
“A startup-friendly SOC2 logging checklist”

All of that reinforces a tight cluster of problem-specific keywords around your wedge.

Pricing & Expansion Paths A good wedge is:

Cheap enough to swipe a credit card
Important enough that churn is annoying, not casual

Common patterns:

Per-seat pricing for user-facing wedges (approvals, routing, collaboration).
Volume-based pricing for event-driven wedges (logs, webhooks, transactions).
Plan-based pricing (Starter / Growth / Scale) with limits on rules, integrations, or projects.

The sneaky benefit of a wedge: once you own a critical feature, you can expand sideways into adjacent capabilities. RouteSharp could later add:

SLA alerts
Territory visualization
Coaching insights (“who responds fastest?”)

But all of that comes after you’ve nailed a tiny, sharp promise.

Common Failure Modes (And How to Avoid Them)

Too broad, too soon “Workflow automation for everyone” is not a wedge. Pick a vertical, tool, and outcome.
Underestimating integrations If you claim “HubSpot routing,” your HubSpot integration must be rock solid. The wedge lives in someone else’s ecosystem.
Ignoring the admin persona You’re often selling to the ops person or team lead, not the CEO. Your UX and copy should match their language.
No clear “install to win” moment If it takes 3 weeks to see value, your wedge isn’t sharp enough. Aim for a visible win within one working day.

Wrapping Up: Choose a Smaller Battle You don’t have to outbuild the giants. You just have to:

Find one enterprise feature SMBs secretly crave.
Wrap it in focused UX and clean integrations.
Position it around an outcome, not a technology.
Use SEO to own the specific problems that feature solves.

If you’re thinking about starting a micro-SaaS — or rescuing one — start by asking: “Which feature in a big, expensive tool could I clone, simplify, and sell directly to the teams that can’t reach it yet?” Pick one. Sharpen it. Ship it.

If this sparked an idea, drop it in the comments — I’d genuinely love to hear which enterprise feature you’d wedge into the SMB world.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@Praxen/micro-saas-wedges-stealing-one-feature-at-a-time-5f10fa253a6a