Building Tallylark in public here's what's actually happened since my last update

It's been a while, so here's the real state of things rather than a polished highlight reel:

Product: MVP is live and working end-to-end at app.tallylark.com — auth (email + Google SSO), client/invoice management, a 4-stage automated reminder engine, Stripe payment links and subscription billing, all tested and deployed.

Positioning: Did a full firsthand competitor audit, actually signed up for trials of Chaser, Paidnice, FreshBooks and Wave instead of trusting review sites. Found some genuinely surprising things: Chaser's real pricing is $2,148–9,708/year (not the ~$40/mo I'd been assuming), and Wave flat-out refuses to onboard any business outside the US/Canada. That research reshaped the whole pitch, Tallylark is now positioned specifically as "the invoice reminder tool for consultants who bill through Google Docs, PayPal, and bank transfer, not just Xero," since every competitor requires adopting accounting software before they'll send a single reminder.

Real validation: Talked to someone in my personal network (a self-employed gardener, not even my target ICP) who currently pays someone else to handle his invoicing because he hates it. Price point confirmed as fair and he gave genuinely useful feature feedback (line items, saved templates, more payment methods) that's now actually on the near-term roadmap instead of just a maybe.

Distribution: Given some real personal constraints (can't do personal outreach or post on my personal LinkedIn), I leaned into a Company Page instead and I'm regularly posting content on a weekly basis. Xero App Store integration is next up as the highest-leverage distribution bet, since it needs zero personal outreach at all.

Happy to answer anything about the stack, the pivot, or the audit if it's useful to anyone else validating something similar.