3 months of building, 0 paying customers. Here's everything I did wrong and right.
I finally realized I was optimizing for the wrong thing.
Three months ago, I started building TourKit, a lightweight product tour platform for SaaS apps.
Every week I shipped something new.
- Analytics
- URL-based tours
- AI tour generation
- Mobile onboarding
- JSON import
- Better docs
Every time I finished a feature, I'd think:
"Just one more feature, then I'll start marketing."
That "one more feature" turned into three months.
The funny part?
I had almost no conversations with potential users during that time.
When I finally started posting on Reddit and talking to developers, I got feedback in a few days that probably would've changed my roadmap back in week two.
Another mistake was assuming people would immediately understand why TourKit exists.
They didn't.
I kept talking about features.
Developers kept asking questions like:
- Why not just use Appcues?
- Why not build it myself?
- How is this different from Shepherd.js?
That forced me to find a much clearer answer.
Today, I think TourKit's biggest strength isn't "more features."
It's being developer-first.
A single script tag.
Works across frameworks.
Mobile-friendly tours.
AI-assisted onboarding generation.
No enterprise setup.
The product is in a much better place now. The business isn't.
Current score:
✅ Working product
✅ Documentation
✅ Free & Pro plans
✅ Real developer feedback
❌ 0 paying customers
My next goal isn't another feature. It's getting five people to use the product and tell me what they hate about it.
Building software is comfortable. Talking to people isn't.
I'm learning that the second one matters a lot more.
For those who've already launched a SaaS:
What changed the most after you got your first few users?
The gap between "shipped a feature" and "talked to a user" is the real story here, three months of building vs. a few days of Reddit feedback that would've changed your roadmap in week two says a lot. Good that you've landed on developer-first as the answer instead of just adding more surface area.
When you get those five people, are you planning to watch them use it live, or just ask them after the fact what they hated?
(Building gnxsales.com, an AI sales agent for early SaaS founders, happy to compare notes.)
One thing that stood out is that your roadmap didn't really change because of feedback—it changed because the questions people asked exposed the assumptions behind it. "Why you instead of Appcues?" isn't a feature question, it's a positioning question. Once that answer becomes obvious, deciding what to build next usually gets much easier.
This is exactly what I realized
That's exactly why I wanted to continue the conversation.
I think there's one strategic business decision sitting underneath that realization that's probably too much to unpack properly in a thread.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you on?
I'd love that. Thanks for taking the time.
You can reach me at rajchavan.dev@gmail.com(mailto:rajchavan.dev@gmail.com).
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Just sent it over by email.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts once you've had a chance to read it.