104 days building Debnix- Full story

Six months ago I didn't know what I'd build. I'd spent years starting things and not finishing them, coding on and off since before AI tools existed, switching between Python, Django, data science, never sticking with anything. Two years disappeared into a meme Facebook page that hit 100K followers. Then IELTS, then PTE, then 18 months trying to learn German, all eventually abandoned too.

Around February this year, scrolling my feed with nothing else to do, I came across a handful of posts from Shopify sellers complaining about inventory. I didn't know Shopify well. I didn't do deep research. I just saw a real problem and started building.

I wrote an actual business plan first this time, six-month timeline, competitor research, a list of names I never used. With AI doing the heavy lifting on code, I built the first working version in one month. I'd planned to validate the problem with ten sellers before writing any code. I asked exactly one. They were using spreadsheets and starting to outgrow them. That was enough. I kept building.

I launched 104 days ago believing that if I built something good, people would just find it. They didn't. I tried posting about it on r/shopify, got banned. Posted on the Shopify Community, banned there too. Eventually pivoted to the actual Shopify App Store on a stranger's advice, submitted, got rejected with a clear reason, fixed it, resubmitted, approved six hours later.

Since then: organic search traffic is up roughly 6x over the last couple months and compounding on its own now. I ran my first paid App Store ad last week, real impressions in a strong position, zero clicks so far. One real store installed along the way, synced 378 real products, used the app for about a week, then uninstalled without a reply when I reached out.

This week I also found and fixed a real privilege-escalation vulnerability in my own database, a way a regular user could've flagged themselves admin and read every connected store's data, including live Shopify tokens. Tested it two different ways before trusting it was actually fixed.

Right now, Day 104, I have zero active users. That's not the update I expected to still be writing this far in, but the traffic is real, the security is tighter, and I'm still here, still shipping, still fixing what I got wrong instead of starting over.

Happy to answer anything, the SEO approach, the security fix, why I think zero reviews might be the real bottleneck right now, whatever's useful.

Debnix is live on the Shopify App Store if you want to take a look: apps.shopify.com/debnix