I Spent 2 Years Building a SaaS. Then I Pivoted to Selling Spreadsheets.

For the past two years, I've been working on and off on a side project called FinancialAha. It started as a SaaS app for financial planning and projections. Today, it's a collection of premium Google Sheets templates. Here's why I made that pivot - and what I learned along the way.

I've tracked my personal finances in a spreadsheet for years. Every time I reviewed my data, I naturally improved the setup. Better formulas. Cleaner dashboards. More insights. Eventually, I hit Google Sheets limitations. The obvious next step? Build an app.

So I did. I spent months building a proper financial planning tool with projections, charts, and all the features I wished my spreadsheet had.

The app worked fine technically. But I ran into two issues that killed it:
1. Privacy concerns. Financial data is sensitive. I didn't want my own data sitting on someone else's servers - why would my customers? The whole point of tracking finances is control. Handing that to a third party felt wrong.
2. The subscription model didn't fit. SaaS economics make sense for the business: recurring revenue, predictable growth, funding for development. But for consumers? Most people review their finances a few times per year. Paying $10-15/month for something you use quarterly doesn't add up.

I was building something that made business sense but didn't fit how people actually behave. One weekend, while updating my personal spreadsheet, I had a realization: most people just need a good spreadsheet. They don't lack the motivation to track finances - they lack the knowledge (or patience) to build the tracking system themselves.

People hate Math. Personal finance is 99% Math!

So I packaged my spreadsheet, set up a simple landing page, and shared it in a few places. That weekend experiment became a business.

One year and a few months later, FinancialAha is being used by people across 40+ countries. The product:
- Premium Google Sheets templates (budgeting, net worth tracking, investment planning)
- One-time purchase, lifetime access
- Your data stays on your Google Drive - we never see it
- No subscriptions, no accounts to create

We keep adding new templates based on what customers ask for. The roadmap writes itself.

1. Find what people hate, not what they want.
   Nobody wakes up wanting a "financial tracking solution." But plenty of people hate the confusion of not knowing where their money goes. Solve the hate, not the want.

2. The business model should fit the behavior.
   Subscriptions work when usage is continuous. One-time purchases work when usage is periodic. Don't fight this.

3. Privacy is a feature.
   For sensitive data, "we don't have access to your data" is a stronger selling point than any feature list.

4. You don't need a SaaS.
   Spreadsheets aren't sexy. But they're familiar, flexible, and people already know how to use them. Sometimes the boring solution wins.

5. Launch fast, iterate based on real feedback.
   A weekend landing page taught me more than months of building in isolation.

FinancialAha is now a standalone product focused purely on templates. We recently relaunched the site and keep expanding the catalog. The model is simple: find financial tracking problems people struggle with, build the spreadsheet that solves it, sell it once.

No venture scale ambitions. Just a solid side project that helps people and pays for itself. If you want to take a look you can find it here: https://www.financialaha.com/