💥 I Failed My University Entrance Exam… and Ended Up Building a Stripe Analytics SaaS for Bootstrapped Founders
Hey IH community đź‘‹
My name is Nizar, and this is the story I never thought I’d share publicly.
A few months ago, I was supposed to follow the “normal” path: prepare for my university entrance exam, focus on textbooks, do what everyone expects.
Instead… I failed the exam. Completely.
But the truth is: I wasn’t failing because I was incapable. I was failing because I was obsessed.
Obsessed with tech.
Obsessed with building.
Obsessed with the idea that I could create something meaningful—even if it didn’t come from a classroom.
While my classmates were studying, I was deep in the weeds of Supabase RLS policies, Stripe Connect OAuth flows, creating dashboards, fighting TypeScript errors at 3AM, and shipping features nobody had asked me to build yet.
And from that “failure,” something was born:
🚀 My first real SaaS: a Stripe Analytics platform for indie founders & bootstrappers
I wanted to solve a very real problem I was having:
❌ Stripe gives you numbers, but not insight.
❌ No easy way to see real MRR, churn reasons, ARPU, LTV, or subscriber history in a simple dashboard.
❌ Existing analytics tools are expensive, heavy, or built for VC-backed startups—not solo founders.
So I built RevPilot — a clean, simple Stripe analytics dashboard that helps founders:
track MRR, ARR, churn, ARPU & LTV
visualize subscription history
sync their Stripe accounts with one click
benchmark their performance
understand their customers with real metrics
This is my first serious SaaS, fully coded by me, with all mistakes, refactors, and “why is this API returning 500 again?” moments included.
