It’s been over 4 months since I pushed my first commit to GitHub for my SaaS.
Though it’s only been a month or two since I started making real progress.
I’m at a point with the product that I’m currently using it for myself (every link I use on YouTube is tracked through the platform) and within just a couple of weeks I’ll be onboarding the first users.
I spent two months building Creator Kiwi before it ever left my machine.
The biggest mistake I made was waiting so long to deploy my application.
A piece of advice I heard around that time (shoutout to Theo) was to ship to production as soon as you can.
This doesn’t mean letting people sign up immediately, but having a deployed version of the app in a production environment.
There’s two benefits of this - the first is it finds issues with your implementation that you could never test in a local environment.
Aside from the expected build errors (which you can typically fix without deploying) almost every integration I had with an external system, whether that be my payment processor or OAuth didn’t work.
The earlier you can have your app hosted on a real domain somewhere on the internet, the faster you’ll find bugs.
If you get into the practice of deploying early and testing your app in a production environment (the only one your users will experience), it will save you hours down the line.
I’ve spent at least 8 hours just debugging weird build issues and other errors I never expected on localhost.
The second benefit, and the one that I think is more important, is it makes what you’re building feel real.
Having an app on localhost just feels like another side project you’re going to abandon next week.
When you deploy it on a real domain you can visit on any one of your devices, the thing you built is more useful and makes sense to improve.
Even if you don’t have any functionality yet, simply seeing your app running with a working connection to Stripe feels good.
The best feeling I’ve had recently has been using my own product and finding value from it.
Of course, every time I use it I write down at least 2 bugs I found or improvements that could be made, but that’s the point.
You’re on the right track when you can dogfood your own product and still find value from the scrappy first version.
The last recommendation I’ll leave you with is to allow signups as soon as possible.
This doesn’t mean you have to give anyone access, just allow users to have an account in your system.
If you’re still validating the idea, a simple email waitlist works fine.
But once you’re building the thing, let people sign up and show them a screen where you introduce yourself and tell them it’ll be ready soon.
I just did this for Creator Kiwi and I wish I did it sooner.
The users who create an account before you have a product to offer are much more likely to use what you’re building and have valuable feedback to give you.
I’ll hopefully have a letter in a few weeks sharing some of what I’ve learned from those conversations.
I’m trying to change the style of these newsletters (along with my videos), so I hope this was valuable.
Have a great week.
Cole
P.S. Let me know what else you’d like to know about building (and finally shipping) a SaaS. I read every reply
P.P.S I’ve been giving access to my list of solo founder tools as a free lead magnet for joining this newsletter. If you want to see it, you can find it here.
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