How I came up with an idea to build a tiny API for developers

I’m a full-stack developer and this is my short story on how I came up with a SaaS idea.

I’ve already built the MVP. But still, the idea isn’t validated yet.

Why did I decide to build MVP before the idea validation?

First, It took me a little time to build the MVP, around one week. I think you will agree that it is much easier to present the idea when you can show the working prototype, compared to a slideshow. So, I’ve counted this process as “preparation” work before the idea validation.

Second, this isn’t an abstract idea that should solve someone's pain somewhere. Simply, it solves my problem, so I’ve thought that other developers might face the same issue.

The story

One day, while working on daily tasks, I received an "urgent" request from the project manager, that we need to do a small grammar fix in the customer's transactional email.

This was a pain for me because I was forced to switch from the current working task, to make a simple change (which isn't even programming). After I made the change, I had to go through the process of creating a merge request, waiting for review, and notifying the project manager about the change.

Also, there were 4 people involved in this task: the client, the project manager, the developer (me), and the team lead (reviewer).

So much time and effort had to be devoted to just one tiny typo in the email...

I thought to myself, “There should be a better way to manage transactional email templates”. After I started searching for a software, where you can manage email templates, and render them with dynamic variables through an API. To my surprise, I couldn’t find one that would be suitable for me.

This is how I came up with an idea to build Templid - a tool to manage transactional email templates outside the codebase.

Currently, it’s a working solution with the dashboard, where people can manage their email templates. And a single API endpoint to render templates with dynamic data.

I’ve already implemented this solution in a couple of projects. And the cool part is that even a project manager (or any person familiar with HTML) can modify the template or edit text without bothering the developers.

Presently, I’m looking for “early adopters” to try my solution and give me feedback.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading my story. If you have any questions, please write down your comments, I’ll be happy to answer.