A small idea that turned into a micro SaaS. A rough founder's journey

Over a year ago I had the need of being able to quickly capture my thoughts. Opening a new notepad desktop/mobile/web app always annoyed me, I wanted something quicker and more usable in my workflow.

At that time it was a "20h side project". Oh, I wish I knew back then, that over 1200 commits later we'll finally release the paid version of the app.

I invested in this project more than I should have. With the premium subscription as low as $3 per month, I won't see positive ROI for a long, long time. On top of that, I'm giving you access to the PRO version for free. More on that at the end.

Why did I decide to continue and not just bail out of this idea?

I love creating products

And this was my first, like real standalone product - a proper SaaS. I knew it might fail, but I also knew I'll learn a lot by doing it. This was the true investment.

As a guy with open-source background, who released a bunch of WordPress plugins (free and premium) I do have experience with products, but I think it's a different experience than working on a standalone product. You're independent and product discovery is much more challenging. It was also outside of my own development experience, so the product was entirely created by my team (thanks folks!). I focused more on the feature set and business side of things.

This is where I failed as well. And I know that already. Here's what went wrong and what could be better.

It will be easy and fast to develop

As I mentioned earlier, it was supposed to be a 20h project. A quick design, a quick code hacking, bundling the package, and it's done. Then we decided to add that feature, and this dongle, and the payment form, and create a landing page, and... you know how it is. The whole operation scope just blew into a we-need-to-do-this-all monster.

Creating a product for yourself is much different. It doesn't have to be pretty, it can have some issues if you can live with them. Building for the public adds about 80% to the whole effort. It has to be at least decent. With our approach it's even worse - it has to be close to perfect.

We managed to keep the app features simple, though. It was supposed to be a simple app at a very cheap price, and we succeeded with that. The problem was with underestimating the work required to do that. We did such a thing the first time, with fairly new technology for us.

What we could do better was to allocate way more time to prepare for this project and do our research. More on allocating time below.

The side project is meant to be developed on a side

That instruction is in the name! The side project, duh!

Well, no. I think not allocating a sacred time for that project was the main mistake and that maneuver cost us over 1 year (I'll spare you that meme).

Really, we did that project for over a year. Whenever the client work came in, we almost immediately jumped to that. Of course, I needed to maintain our cash flow but now I know they tricked me with the "side project" name. The side project was meant to be done more like: this side up for at least a while, before coming back to the client work.

What I could do better was to plan that project just like I was planning the client's work. Schedule the time for that particular work, create the deadline, and measure success. This way everyone would stay accountable and we'd have clear expectations about when we're releasing.

Because that project development was a never-ending story, we decided to at least start some marketing. That was another issue.

People on the waitlist are supposed to wait

We created the landing page first, booted up the waitlist, and did some organic and paid campaigns. We even released the free version in the meantime!

The plan was great: we pump up the hype for the app, gather some emails on the waitlist, release the PRO version, and sip out the glory from the victory cup.
We managed to gather over 1000 people on the list, and the main problem was... they probably forgot why they are there. It. Was. Too. Long.

We should've sent more campaigns to warm up the leads. Maybe even do some challenges, gamification, whatever. I know, it would take even more time to execute, but we'd probably have way better feedback after going live. It was hard to plan the marketing efforts when we didn't know the exact release date, though.

After releasing the PRO version only about a dozen people signed up for the trial. That was way too small than we anticipated. If you have a different experience, share that in the comment!

So now what

The MadNotes PRO is out there, ready to be downloaded, and ready to take your money 😉 Now we're optimizing the process and gathering actual customers.

The experience acquired along the way is priceless. I'll for sure use it to build a better business in the future, and there are a couple of ideas.

We don't abandon MadNotes, hell no. We want to truly make it perfect, but for that, I need feedback from the actual users. We all use it internally, but it's different. If you'd like to try the App and share some thoughts (or just try it!) I have a special offer for you - a 1-month trial of the MadNotes PRO. Just click the link and set up your account. You can cancel at any time.

I'd really appreciate if you could share this article with your circle. Thank you!