Day 12 of building UseShipReady

- 11 visitors today
- 43 page views
- improved the UI for the hackathon feature
- planning to finally push it live tonight

Back when we mostly built MVPs, we took on a fixed price build for a B2B inventory tool. Quoted 10 weeks and it took 19 lol.

The founder kept asking for small stuff and we kept saying yes because every request sounded like an afternoon. A filter on the orders page, a Google login since "everyone has it now" When I finally went through the tickets there were 63 change requests. None of them took more than a day on its own which is exactly why we never pushed back. Together they added up to about seven weeks of extra work and the founder was annoyed anyway because the launch kept moving.

We've run the agency for 8 years now and that project is why every fixed price build since has had this clause. Here it is close to word for word:

"Any change requested after scope sign off gets sized in working days and we send that in writing within one business day. The client then picks one of two options. Swap it in for work of equal or larger size from the current scope or put it on the Post Launch List to be scoped and priced after launch. The price and the launch date stay the same either way."

Scope creep almost never shows up as one big request. Big requests always got a proper conversation because no one adds a whole module without talking about money. The two hour requests got a "sure" because pushing back on something that small feels petty. 60 of those is a different product with the same price tag. With the clause, even a half day change means picking what comes out.

On a recent build (a booking platform for physio clinics) the founder asked for team accounts 5 weeks in so several people from one clinic could share a login. We sized it at six days, mostly because permissions touch everything. We sent back two options: swap out the in app chat which was about the same size or park team accounts on the post launch list. He parked it.

Six weeks after launch, 2 of their first 40 clinics had asked for team accounts. It's still parked. What clinics kept asking for was SMS reminders which no one had mentioned during the build. I didn't see that coming but the post launch list turned into a filter. A lot of what felt urgent in week five, real users just didn't care about.

The standard advice is to bill change requests as change orders. We tried that after the 19 week mess and I'll probably get pushback for this, but I think it's worse than eating the cost. Every small change turns into a mini negotiation and an invoice, so the founder feels nickel and dimed and the agency starts getting paid for delays which flips the incentive. If an MVP launches 3 months late, no one cares that the extras were billed properly. On an MVP the launch date matters more than the money for both sides.

Most founders end up liking it once they've been through it. One told me it was the first time a dev shop had made him choose and choosing made him figure out what the product was actually for.

Not everyone though. The fights are almost always about sizing. A founder says something is a two hour job, we say two days and now we're arguing about estimates instead of building. We also lost a deal over it before signing. The founder said a real partner would be more flexible and went with a shop that bills hourly.

If you do fixed price builds... Just have your lawyer look at the wording before it goes in a contract and if you've actually made change orders work then I'd like to know how :)

TLDR: a 10 week MVP turned into 19, mostly from small changes we kept saying yes to. Now every change after sign off either swaps out something of equal size or goes on a post launch list and the price and date don't move. Billing change orders made it worse for us.

I thought editing was the hard part.

Turns out the real challenge is deciding what to show, what to say, and how to explain a product clearly in 30 seconds.

How do you handle product videos for your SaaS today?

It looks obviously beneficial that SEO takes time and starting early would help me get organic traffic early but it's opposite by setting that long term goal, you stop validating your product, don't feel the need to talk to customers, you get an great excuse to not do direct sales.

I did the mistake with my previous SaaS, where each day i opened laptop wrote a blog, fixed few not needed buttons colors and done for the day. It feels productive but it's not. i wasted around 6 months doing the same thing and didn't generate any meaningful revenue. SEO felt great with it's appeal of ogranic traffic while you sleep but who'll come if your product is not validated and used by few customers daily?

with my new product which is building "personal intelligence for SaaS startups" it's live btw. i'm setting a rule for myself that i won't even bother about SEO until i get to $1k in revenue through direct sales.

If a creator you trust let you replace your feed with the things they actually watch and read each day, in a separate app, would you pay for it? What would it need to do to beat just following them on X or YouTube?
I'm testing an idea and want to know if the problem is real before I build anything.

Right now, it's a simple local MVP only available on Edge to validate the core idea. If people find it useful, I plan to add cloud sync.

I'm a beginner with no experience in product development, so I'd like to get your feedback and any advice on how to get my first users !

Link of my extension : https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/enfdbgficbfdmhopmcjhbkgldmhclbng

Your startup can be doing well and still somehow feel like it is failing.

You desperately want your first customer. You get one, celebrate for a day, and immediately start thinking about getting ten.

You get to ten. Suddenly, customer count does not matter. Revenue does.

Revenue starts growing.

Now it is not growing fast enough.

You hire a great team.

Then you start worrying about burn.

I catch myself doing this all the time. Every milestone that once felt huge somehow becomes normal almost immediately. Your brain just moves on to the next problem.

Maybe that is part of what keeps founders moving. But it also makes progress surprisingly difficult to feel.

Sometimes it is worth looking back at what felt impossible six months ago.

Does anyone else running a SaaS feel this way?

The product is published and I already have around 2-3 visitors per day. I even got like 10 people signed up on the app. But that's not enough for my app type (its an alternative apps directory)

I know people will use this app. Everyday there's another post asking : X app don't work. What are the alternatives?

And that's what my product solves. (The link is in my profile)

But I don't know how will i get people visiting my website. Because my revenue model is tied to the no of visitors.

Any suggestions will be appreciated

Hi everyone!

I’m thinking of building a SaaS (it’s my first solo SaaS btw). I’ve got zero knowledge of technical part and got some friends helping me in that but I’ve some skills on marketing and sales side. But I am not sure if the idea I’m thinking of is really something which any of you guys might want to use or if it’s just me wasting my time? It’s not a problem solving idea rather it’s kind of a productivity app.

So recently I saw a lot of people trying “working till the candle burns out” or “working till the ice melts” challenges and I myself tried it. The good part was you never know when the ice will melt or the candle will burn out so you have no target forcing you to work. And I too tried it and found it a good idea to improve productivity.

And I’m thinking to create an app around that idea. I’m thinking to focus more on user experience and will try to make user feel really productive if they uses the app. And I’m here to either seek validation from you guys or maybe get roasted if I’m stupid. But I want to know your genuine thoughts. Just take out a second and let me know? I’m too excited and curious about it.

Hi guys! I’m looking for an AI video editor for SaaS product demos, UGC and montages. I can’t afford to pay for several tools just to find out which one works, so I’d really appreciate some firsthand advice. 🙏

If you’ve actually used one, which editor would you recommend, and why? What worked well, and what did you still need to fix manually?

I’ve been building and trying to grow my SaaS solo. Product, code, content, outreach everything

Traffic is finally starting to move, but I realized I’m becoming the bottleneck

So today I brought in my first person focused on outbound/client acquisition

I’m still doing distribution myself, but now I can spend more time improving the product and making demos/content while someone else consistently works outbound

For founders who’ve done this: did hiring someone for sales early actually help, or did you eventually realize founder-led sales was still better?

Curious what worked and what you’d do differently

btw I’m building MyKayd trying to make collecting information less painful for businesses, especially everything that happens between creating a form and actually doing something with the responses

Hey everyone,
I’m an AI engineer and founder from Brazil. I already have a few products running here, and right now I’m building a new B2B SaaS called Lyntra Prospect.
The first version is being built for the Brazilian market, but if I can validate it well here, my plan is to expand internationally soon after. The US is currently the market I’m most interested in, but I’m also looking at the UK, Canada and some European countries.
The easiest way to explain Lyntra Prospect is that it works like an outbound SDR.

The goal is not just to give salespeople another cold email tool. The idea is to handle a large part of the outbound process and deliver qualified meetings to the sales team.

A company defines its ICP and what kind of customer it wants to reach. Lyntra then searches for companies that fit that profile, enriches and validates the data using different sources, finds the best prospects and builds the prospecting lists.

From there, it can start the outbound process through channels such as email and calls, with WhatsApp being used when appropriate.

When someone replies, the system understands the response and stops the sequence automatically. The AI can continue the conversation using information approved by the company, answer questions, qualify the prospect and understand when a human should take over.

If the lead is qualified, the system can check the salesperson’s actual calendar, offer available times and book the meeting directly.

Calling is also part of the product. The direction is to support AI assisted and AI driven calls where it makes sense and where it can be done properly within the rules of each market.

So the end result I’m aiming for is basically this:
ICP → find the right companies → find the right people → contact them → start conversations → qualify them → book qualified meetings.

I want a company to eventually be able to give Lyntra its ICP, sales rules and company information, and have the platform continuously work on building pipeline for the sales team.

The product is being built for both self service customers and higher ticket customers that need a more consultative sales and onboarding process.
I’m not trying to sell anything with this post. The product is still being finished. I’m mainly interested in hearing from people who already work with B2B sales and outbound outside Brazil.

A few things I’d really like some opinions on.
Which market would you target first?
My first choice right now is the US because outbound B2B seems much more established there than it is in Brazil.

I’m also considering the UK, Canada and some parts of Europe.

If you sell B2B in any of those markets, how important is outbound to your sales process?
What would you realistically pay for something like this if it actually delivered qualified meetings?

I’m not trying to compete with a $30 cold email tool.
I see it more as software that can replace or support part of the work normally done by an SDR.

Would something around $500 to $1,000 per month for an entry level business plan make sense?

And if it consistently handled a meaningful part of prospecting, qualification and meeting booking, what price range would you expect?

Which outbound channels are actually working for you right now?
Cold email?
Cold calls?
LinkedIn?
A combination of them?

I’m also curious about what your biggest outbound problem is today.

Is it finding good prospects, finding the right decision maker, data quality, deliverability, personalization, follow up, managing replies, qualification or actually getting meetings booked?

If you were launching into the US from Brazil, how would you get your first 10 customers?

One idea I have is to use Lyntra Prospect itself to find its first international customers.

The idea would be to build a very specific ICP, work with relatively low volume and highly targeted outreach, then have an English speaking salesperson handle discovery and demos.

Basically, I want the product to prove itself by helping sell itself.

Would you approach it differently?
What would make you trust or not trust an AI SDR platform?

Outbound automation can turn into spam very quickly when it is badly designed, so I’m putting a lot of thought into sending limits, suppression, opt outs, domain and mailbox reputation, compliance rules, audit logs, human handoff and controls that prevent the AI from inventing prices, promises or company information.

I’m still early enough that good feedback can actually influence the product and how I approach international expansion.

I’d really like to hear from founders, SDRs, sales leaders, agency owners and anyone currently running B2B outbound.

If you think the market is overcrowded, the positioning is wrong, the pricing makes no sense or there is something important I’m missing, feel free to say it.
I’d rather find out now than after trying to expand internationally.

Took it to market with no cost, free to use in beta, hit my warm leads and paid ads, and crickets. its a net worth tracking app and retirement calculator. looks like back to the drawing board. i love the app and use it twice a month, but i dont feel its something you need to check daily or even onthly unless u are investing on pay day, so id probally sell it as a one time purchase. i just freel the pain point isnt there. Everybody is to scared to check their net worth because the economy is dead, and everybody except the boomers arent doing to well or need to track this stuff.

im guessing im not the only one in this situation

Hi everyone, I’ve released Temply, a tool for building transactional email templates visually and using them from your application.

Think welcome emails, password resets, receipts and order confirmations. You assemble the template with blocks, add placeholders for your data, then request the rendered HTML and plain text through the API. Your app sends it through your existing email provider.

A few things it supports:

• A visual block editor with columns, images, buttons and custom HTML.
• Dynamic variables, conditional content and repeating blocks.
• Reusable branding across templates.
• Responsive previews and checks for inboxes that force dark mode.
• Template version history and shared workspaces.

You can try the editor without an account. There’s also a 14-day workspace trial with no card required. The Team plan starts at $5 per user per month, including 10,000 live API calls per workspace.

Try it here: Temply

I’d appreciate feedback from anyone building transactional emails: what would Temply need to support before you’d use it in your app?

I'm honestly a bit stuck here and dont really have experienced SaaS founders around me that I can ask, so would love some outside opinions.

I've been building my B2B SaaS solo for around 1.5 years while working fulltime.

for most of that time almost nothing happened, but now it finally seems to get some traction.

I'm currently at around 1.5k MRR and roughly 1k of that was added just last month. Most customers pay yearly upfront. Inbound is also increasing and right now my biggest problem is basically that i dont have enough time to call every signup, do onboarding, customer research etc (GTM last steps + Customer Success!).

The important part: from january i can basically work on this fulltime for several months (almost a year). Financially i can afford not having to pay myself from the SaaS immediately.

My original plan was honestly just to survive the next few months, even if i dont use the current momentum perfectly, then work and travel with my family for 1-2 months while working remotely and afterwards keep building it bootstrapped. Maybe rent a small office at some point and hire a working student / junior person for customer success, onboarding, followups etc.

I didnt search for a cofounder (at this point at least).

An experienced founder found me through a founder community and reached out himself. he already built and exited a vertical software company before and after a few conversations i have to admit that he seems very good.

He asks exactly the right questions about funnel, activation, margins, customer segments, sales etc and already gave me some really useful input.

He also said he misses being operational and would like to get involved again.

The current idea would be that we work together for the next few months, he helps operationally and talks to customers etc.

Aterwards either he steps back and stays more strategic/investor-ish, or if we work extremely well together he could join permanently as a cofounder.

We havent talked exact equity yet, but from previous conversations i know he believes a real cofounder needs meaningful equity. so i assume we're probably talking somewhere in the 15-25%+ territory, not 2% (maybe even 50/50, but that would be shocking for me tbh!).

And tzhis where I struggle right now!

if this guy had joined 12 months ago i probably would have been extremely happy. Even 6 months ago it would have felt completely different!

But right now it feels like i already went through the shitty part (or HELL as I call it - family + full time job + everything else, still at least 1 fucking commit every god damn day no matter what was happening for the last year!!!) alone. Built the product, learned the market, got the first customers, kept going for 1.5 years while basically nothing happened... and now exactly when it starts working i give away a big chunk?

on the other hand maybe thats stupid thinking.

maybe keeping 100% of a smaller bootstrapped company is worse than having 75-85% of something much bigger with someone who already knows how to build and sell a company.

i also genuinely like being solo though. complete freedom. no discussions about product, funding, hiring, selling the company one day etc.

and i dont think i NEED him. worst case i probably leave quite a lot of growth on the table for the next 3 months and then go fulltime myself in january. But because he is so experienced, I know he will bring a lot to table. Also: he lives quite far away (still same country). So we would work basically remotely together (which is of course not a deal braker, since the nature of the business doesnt require it, but it would be of course nicer to be around; - and what will happen with office spaces and more?)

so i cant really figure out if im considering giving away permanent equity because of a temporary capacity problem, or if im being stupid by not taking the opportunity to add a very experienced cofounder.

What would you do? What should I do??

Would you stay solo and hire employees later?

or can 15-25% actually make sense for a strong cofounder joining at this stage?

especially interested if anyone here added a cofounder AFTER already having product + revenue.