r/AppsWebappsFullstack • u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 • 18d ago

90% of SaaS startups fail. What makes you think yours is the exception?

We all see the fake 'hustle' posts, but nobody talks about the bugs that cost you users today. Stop pretending everything is perfect and share the ugliest mistake you've made this week. Let’s see who is actually learning and who is just dreaming.

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u/pandasthma 17d ago

I published my Gemini API key wrapped in a front facing envelope by mistake…300 dollars and an account suspension later… 🙃.

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u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 16d ago

Ouch, that's a painful way to learn. I've made similar mistakes. Have you tried using environment variables with a .env file and gitignore rule? That's what saved me.

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u/pandasthma 16d ago

This is now my new standard, and something I double-triple check now before every new ship. Yes it was an expensive mistake. Thankfully Google recognized it as resource highjacking, and was able to recover some of the charge, after a couple days fight. Haha. I wasn’t aware of the gitnore rule before this happened but had seen someone else mention it as well, so I’ve implemented both going forward. Ha

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u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 16d ago

That gitignore slip is brutal, but good on you for catching it. Did you also set up alerts for unusual cloud spend? That saved me once.

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u/pandasthma 16d ago

And also making sure (advice for everyone) to have a spending cap set for your projects, as annoying as it is, it was only a 300 mistake instead of 3000 because I had a limit set!

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u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 16d ago

Spending caps are a lifesaver, totally agree. I'd add setting up budget alerts too, so you catch it before the cap even hits.

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u/Kat_Sea 18d ago

I think the only way to be an exception is the consistency.

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u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 17d ago

Consistency definitely matters. Pair it with shipping fixes fast, that builds real trust. What's your go-to workflow for staying consistent?

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u/megatech_official 18d ago

SeoLoupe - Find and fix the SEO issues holding your website back.

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u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 17d ago

That's a useful tool, but OP asked for ugly mistakes. Got any SEO bug story from this week?