My wife thinks I'm wasting my time building a SaaS. She might be right.

That's a great line of thinking, never give up, my friend!

Hi Andrew,

I feel this. Stable job, side project already making money, but I'm still up at midnight fixing bugs because I can't let go of the problem I'm solving.
My family doesn't get it either. "You already have income from it, why the obsession?" But it's not about money anymore, it's about building something I wish existed.
You're doing this with no-code tools and a business degree? That's impressive. No excuses, just building. I respect that.
Those nights staring at the screen wondering if they're right? I've been there. Last week I spent 3 hours on something that still doesn't work perfectly. But the alternative is spending the next 10 years wondering "what if."

Your performance-based pricing is smart. Real differentiator in a sea of subscription fatigue.

Keep going. The people who think we've lost the plot will be the ones asking "how did you do it?" when it works out.

Man, the dinner-to-laptop routine hits close to home. I did the same thing for about a year and a half building dev tools on the side. My partner wasn't skeptical exactly, more like... confused about why I'd voluntarily add more screen time after a full day of it.

The performance-based pricing angle is actually really interesting though. I've seen so many churn tools that basically charge you a flat fee to send automated emails that may or may not do anything. Tying your revenue to actual results is gutsy but it forces you to build something that genuinely works. The tricky part will be defining what counts as a 'save' — like demogod mentioned, attribution in churn is messy.

One thing I'd suggest: don't wait until it's polished. Get a handful of beta users ASAP, even if it's rough around the edges. The feedback loop from real users will tell you more in a week than months of solo building ever will. And honestly, those early conversations are what kept me going when the motivation dipped.

i also feel this pain same like you i also working on NixQr The all-in-one QR-based OS for restaurants to automate orders, POS, and loyalty. I do my 9-5 job and then side hustle for it dont know is there someone accepting this or not.

the build, the grind, the imposter syndrome, the second-guessing...we all go through it. I've helped build a billion $ company that almost failed 2 years in, and now it's a category leader. Keep going!

I feel this so much. I'm building PromptGear - an AI website builder - and there are days when I question everything too. But then someone uses it and loves it, and it makes it all worth it. Keep going!

As long as you are loving/enjoying what you're building keep going. If it were easy everyone would do it. That being said, don't let it overshadow the important things in life, like spending quality time with your wife, and just relaxing and unwinding.
All the best on your journey!

Been there. The look from people when you say you're "working on something" instead of watching TV or just relaxing. It gets old.

What I've learned is that showing beats explaining. Nobody cares about your startup until you show them actual money, even if it's tiny. A £10 payment notification feels silly but it changes the conversation.

The performance-based pricing is smart. Most churn tools feel like they're designed to protect the vendor, not prove value. If you can make the "this worked" moment undeniable, you've got something.

One thing though: set a deadline for yourself. Not for launching (launch early), but for deciding if this specific idea is worth continuing. The danger isn't failing, it's building something mediocre for years because you're emotionally attached. Give yourself six months to hit a real milestone. If it's not working, pivot. That way you're being responsible, not reckless.

The performance-based pricing model you're describing is the hardest type of SaaS to execute, but also the most defensible if you can make it work.

Here's why it's hard: you're not just building a tool, you're building attribution infrastructure. To charge only when it works, you need to definitively prove causation — that your intervention is what saved the customer. Churn is messy. Was it your email sequence that stopped them from canceling, or did they just change their mind? Did your feature prompt work, or were they already going to upgrade?

The SaaS companies that charge £300-500/month regardless of results aren't doing it because they're greedy. They're doing it because proving ROI at the individual customer level is genuinely difficult. They shift that measurement burden to you.

But if you can crack the attribution problem, you've built something remarkable. Because the moment you can say "we saved you Customer X, here's the receipt," you're no longer selling software — you're selling saved revenue. And saved revenue is infinitely easier to justify than "access to a dashboard."

The question that will determine whether this works: can you define "it works" precisely enough that both you and your customer agree on what counts as a save? If you can nail that definition early, everything else gets easier.

The fact that you're questioning it means you're being honest with yourself, which is more than most founders do.

One thing that helped me reframe this: stop measuring progress by revenue alone in the early days. Measure by learning velocity — are you understanding your users better each week? Are you getting closer to the problem?

The founders who waste time are the ones who build in isolation for months without talking to users. If you're iterating based on real feedback, you're not wasting time — you're investing it.

Also, having a skeptical partner is actually a superpower. They force you to justify every decision, which makes you a sharper thinker. Use that friction productively.

The "pay only when it works" model is brilliant. Most SaaS founders get this backwards — they charge for access to the tool, not for the outcome.

Your wife will come around. Mine thought I was crazy too, building an AI secretary after forgetting her mom's birthday. Then she saw the first paying customer notification at 11pm on a Tuesday.

The look changes from "you're wasting time" to "okay, maybe you know what you're doing."

The dinner-to-laptop grind is real. But there's something about building your own thing that a 9-5 can never replace. Keep going.

yeah been there. my girlfriend gave me that same look for a solid six months while i was building stuff after work every night. the thing that helped was when i stopped talking about the product and started showing her the actual numbers, even when they were tiny. like "hey, someone paid me 9 quid for this thing i built" hits different than "i'm working on my startup."

the pay-only-when-it-works model is a genuinely smart angle btw. churn tools that charge regardless of results always felt backwards to me. if you can nail that, it's a real differentiator.

keep going. the people who think you've lost the plot usually come around once something clicks.