I’ve Monetized Windows Utilities. Now I’m Trying to Build a SaaS From Zero.

I have spent a lot of time building focused Windows utilities and selling them through the Microsoft Store under Automata Labs.

That experience taught me how to find narrow problems, ship a reliable solution, make a listing understandable, support users, and keep improving an app after launch. It has generated revenue.

But building a SaaS is a different challenge.

With a small Windows utility, the job is often: identify a concrete annoyance someone is already searching for, fix it cleanly, show the result in screenshots, and earn enough trust for a one-time purchase.

With SaaS, I need to earn recurring trust. I need a user to believe the product belongs in their workflow every week, not merely that it solves a one-off problem.

My current attempt is Stria, a client-work platform for freelancers, independent consultants, and small studios.

The entry point is deliberately narrow: scope creep often arrives as a client email—“Could you just add…”, “While you are in there…”, or “Can we squeeze in one more revision?” The freelancer has to decide, often quickly, whether the request belongs in the original agreement or needs a revised price, timeline, and approval.

I am building an AI-assisted workflow where a freelancer forwards that request, compares it to the approved scope, and gets an evidence-based starting point: likely in scope, likely out of scope, or unclear and requiring review. The broader product also handles the surrounding workflow: proposals, approvals, projects, invoices, and payments.

I recently launched and the honest starting numbers are not glamorous: I have put the product on the major directories, written initial content, and posted in relevant communities—but I am still trying to earn the first activated users without buying ads.

That is what I am going to document here:

Which free distribution experiments create qualified visits rather than vanity traffic

Whether freelancers trust an AI-assisted scope check enough to use it before replying to clients

Whether “scope creep prevention” is a strong enough wedge to introduce a broader freelancer operating system

Which features matter once someone has actually signed up

My working assumption is that the product does not need to be everything to everyone on day one. It needs to solve one expensive, repeated moment so clearly that a freelancer thinks: “I wish I had checked this before I said yes.”

Question for other founders: if you have moved from paid one-time software to SaaS, what most surprised you about acquiring and retaining the first users?

I’ll share the experiments—especially the ones that fail—as I run them. Stria is at https://getstria.com.