4 organic users, 400K impressions, 0 paying customers. Building in public update.
I want to start by saying I had zero business building this. No CS degree, no startup experience, no network. Just a problem I kept running into personally and a curiosity to see if I could actually ship something real.
Trakly is a mobile first budgeting PWA that gives you a Financial Health Score (0-100) that improves as your habits do. The idea came from seeing people try YNAB or a random ledger and quit within a week because the maintenance load was too high. I wanted something that built the habit first and showed you data second.
Here's everything that happened so far:
The Build
I used Cursor, React, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind, Supabase and Stripe. No prior experience with most of these. Learned as I went. The hardest parts weren't the features, they were the invisible stuff like fixing a race condition on the free trial so users couldn't grab it twice, getting Stripe webhooks to actually fire correctly, and figuring out why my env vars were silently failing on Vercel.
I deliberately skipped the App Store entirely. No 30% cut, no $99/year developer fee, no approval delays. PWA only. Users install via Add to Home Screen and it works on any device.
What I shipped:
- Financial Health Score (0-100)
- Budget categories with progress bars
- Daily streaks to build the tracking habit
- Savings goals
- Paycheck Planner
- Demo mode so people can try it without signing up
- CSV import and export
- Dark and light mode
- Subscription Graveyard, No Spend Challenges, Bill Detection
Pricing is $7/month or $59/year with a 7 day free trial. YNAB charges about $15 so I'm sitting at 53% cheaper with a cleaner experience.
Distribution
This is where things got interesting. I launched with basically zero audience.
Reddit: posted in r/SideProject, r/SaaSDevelopers, r/SaaS and r/micro_saas. Best post got 2.3K views and hit top 13 in the sub. I also learned the hard way that r/personalfinance will permanently ban you if you mention your own product even subtly. Lesson learned.
Twitter/X: started an account as NotAFinanceGuru and went verified on day one. Strategy was simple, find threads with 500K+ impressions and leave genuinely good replies. Hit 100+ followers in under a week and crossed 200K impressions in the first few days. Namecheap's official account (124K followers) even replied to one of my posts which was wild.
Indie Hackers: published a post about the security layers I shipped before touching prod. Got manually approved by a mod which felt like a win.
Where things actually stand
Honest numbers:
- 4 organic users, all strangers who found it on their own
- 0 paying customers so far
- Demo mode is live and converting visitors to signups
- All infrastructure is solid, security hardened, Stripe working
The hardest part right now isn't the product. It's the silence after shipping. You build something you're proud of and then wait. The feedback loop disappears and your brain starts reading silence as failure even when nothing is wrong.
But I keep reminding myself the market is validated. YNAB has millions of users. People pay for budgeting tools. I just need to find my first 10.
What I'm focused on next
- Getting that first paying customer
- Adding a demo video to the landing page
- Setting up PostHog for proper funnel tracking
- Emailing my existing users personally to get real feedback
If you've made it this far, I'd genuinely love your thoughts on the landing page or the app itself. Demo works without an account at trakly.pro and roasts are welcome.
Building in public is the only way I know how to do this.
The part that stands out to me is not the 0 paying customers yet, it’s the gap between “budgeting market is validated because YNAB exists” and “why would someone pick Trakly today?”
Being 53% cheaper than YNAB might help later, but I’m not sure it’s the strongest early wedge. People who already pay for YNAB probably don’t mainly feel “this is too expensive.” They probably feel “I trust this enough to run my money through it.”
Your sharper angle might be the habit-first part: people try YNAB or ledgers and quit because maintenance is too heavy. That’s a concrete failure mode.
If demo mode is already converting visitors to signups, I’d look very closely at what they do inside the demo before signup. Do they interact with the Financial Health Score? Paycheck Planner? Streaks? That probably tells you which promise is landing.
I’d also personally email the 4 users with one very specific question:
“What were you hoping Trakly would make easier than your current budget setup?”
That answer is probably more useful right now than another feature.
this is really useful, thank you genuinely
the YNAB price comparison as the main wedge was probably lazy thinking on my part. you’re right that trust is what keeps YNAB users paying, not price. the habit-first angle is way more honest to what Trakly actually does differently
the demo tracking point is something i haven’t done at all yet and now i feel like i should have from day one. i don’t have PostHog set up yet so i’m basically blind to what people actually do inside the demo before signing up. that’s going on the list this week
and the email to the 4 users with that one specific question is exactly the kind of thing that’s obvious in hindsight. i’ve been putting it off because it felt awkward but “what were you hoping Trakly would make easier than your current setup” is a much better question than anything i would have come up with
going to action all three of these. appreciate you taking the time to actually read it properly
400K impressions and 4 sign-ups — that gap usually isn't top-of-funnel. Where do you think the real cliff is: click, signup, or pay? Curious if one channel was carrying most of the noise.
honestly i don’t know yet and that’s probably the real problem
most of the 400K impressions came from Twitter replies on viral threads, not people actively searching for a budgeting app. so the traffic quality is probably low intent by nature
my gut says the cliff is between click and signup rather than signup and pay. the demo converts visitors to signups okay but i have no PostHog or funnel tracking set up yet so i’m basically guessing
one channel is definitely carrying most of the noise, Twitter replies on high impression threads. Reddit has been rough, got banned from two finance subs for mentioning the app
Ill be setting up proper funnel tracking this week so i can actually answer this question with data instead of vibes
My bet: click→signup looks fine in aggregate but splits ugly by source. Twitter-reply traffic and organic search are basically two different funnels with the same UI. Splitting that view from day 1 saves a week of debugging.