Six SaaS business categories worth building in 2023

Executive overview

Most founders waste time searching for ideas rather than picking a high-growth category and going deep. Six sectors — AI marketing tools, cybersecurity, AI customer support, IoT sensor management, digital twins, and no-code platforms — are at inflection points where the infrastructure exists but the software layer is still being built.

Pick one that fits your obsession. Build the network, attend the events, and become the domain expert before writing a line of code.

The edge goes to founders who choose a category early and compound knowledge faster than competitors.

AI-supported marketing tools

• ChatGPT and similar models can already generate briefs, blog posts, emails, ads, and social copy end-to-end from a single prompt
• Every marketing team will use an AI tool in this category — the market is multi-billion and still wide open
• Opportunity: build the workflow layer that chains these models into repeatable marketing pipelines for specific verticals

Cybersecurity for distributed teams

• As internet access expands globally, attack surface grows proportionally
• Social engineering is the primary vector — remote workers are the weakest link
• Gaps: phishing protection tools, device security checklists, penetration testing software for SMBs
• A stolen unlocked phone gives attackers access to email, which resets every other password — a single-point-of-failure most tools ignore

AI-supported customer support

• Companies already have the training data: years of support tickets, rated answers, and product feedback
• Ingest that corpus into a fine-tuned model and a custom bot can handle ~95% of current support volume
• Build the ingestion and orchestration layer on top of existing support software — the core AI doesn't need to be built from scratch
• Beachhead strategy: wedge into one support platform, then expand to own the category

Connected sensors and IoT management

• Sensor hardware costs are falling exponentially; deployment volumes are growing at 2–3x per year
• The missing layer: management software for fleets of devices
• Example: ATM sensor that started as theft protection now handles cash-flow analytics, routing for cash trucks, and hardware diagnostics for operators running 150+ machines
• Build the insights, tracking, and management platform on top of existing sensor hardware — or pair your own sensor with a subscription software layer for recurring revenue

SaaS for digital twins

• A digital twin is a physics-compliant virtual replica of a physical object or space, kept in sync with the real world
• Use cases already in production: training operators on new equipment before it ships, scanning industrial plants with drones to replace outdated schematics
• Software needed: infrastructure, workflow, analysis, and management tooling for digital twin pipelines
• The category is at its beginning — being an early participant compounds into durable advantage

No-code platforms

• Existing no-code tools (Bubble, Airtable, GoHighLevel) already support businesses generating millions per month — built without writing code
• White-label model: configure a solution on someone else's platform, sell it under your own brand — customers don't know or care about the underlying stack
• Two entry points: build on an existing platform and serve a niche, or build your own platform with a templating and API layer that others build on top of
• Speed to market is the advantage — idea to working software in weeks, not months