Thirty days ago I had:
- No landing page
- No logo
- No users
- No idea if anyone cared
Today I have:
- 312 signups
- 41 paying users
- $1,287 MRR
- A product I almost quit three times
This is the honest breakdown. No hype. No fake growth curve. Just what actually happened.
The Idea
I built a simple developer tool called StackTrace.
It turns messy production logs into readable incident summaries using structured parsing and AI tagging.
The problem was simple. When something breaks at 2 AM, nobody wants to scroll through 4,000 lines of logs.
You want:
- What failed
- Where it failed
- Why it failed
- What likely caused it
That’s it.
The Tech Stack
I kept it boring on purpose.
Frontend
- Next.js 14
- TailwindCSS
- Vercel
Backend
- Node.js
- Express
- PostgreSQL
- Redis for rate limiting
- OpenAI API for log summarization
Auth & Billing
- Clerk for authentication
- Stripe for subscriptions
Infrastructure
- Railway for backend
- Supabase for database
- Cloudflare for DNS and caching
No Kubernetes. No microservices. No clever architecture.
Just ship.
Week 1: Build Fast, Build Ugly
Goal: Get a working prototype in 7 days.
What I shipped:
- Log upload
- Basic parsing
- AI summary
- Copy to clipboard button
What it looked like:
- One page
- No dashboard
- No branding
- Zero polish
I sent it to 14 developer friends.
Result:
- 9 tried it
- 4 said “this is actually useful”
- 2 asked if it was paid
That was the first signal.
Week 2: Add What Users Actually Asked For
Instead of adding features I wanted, I only built what users requested.
Top requests:
- API endpoint instead of manual upload
- Slack integration
- Save previous reports
- Redact sensitive data automatically
So I built exactly those.
Metrics at end of week 2
- 87 signups
- 11 active weekly users
- 0 revenue
Still validating.
Week 3: Launch on Dev.to
I wrote a transparent post about debugging production faster.
No marketing language. Just story plus screenshots.
It hit the front page for 12 hours.
Traffic spike
- 6,421 visits in 24 hours
- 201 new signups
- 19 trial activations
That was the moment it felt real.
Pricing Experiment
I tested three models:
- $9 flat monthly
- Usage based
- Free tier plus $19 Pro
Flat monthly confused people.
Usage based scared people.
Free plus Pro converted best.
Current pricing:
- Free: 20 log analyses per month
- Pro: $19 per month unlimited
- Team: $49 per month shared workspace
Revenue So Far
Day 30:
- 312 total users
- 41 paid
- $1,287 MRR
- 6 churned
Churn reason breakdown:
- 3 said they rarely hit incidents
- 2 found internal tooling sufficient
- 1 just experimenting
Churn taught me more than signups.
The Biggest Mistakes
1. I Overbuilt Early
I wasted two days building a fancy analytics dashboard no one used.
Users just wanted summaries.
2. I Almost Added Microservices
At one point I convinced myself I needed a worker service, event queue, and separate AI processing pipeline.
Reality: I had 15 users.
Premature complexity is ego disguised as architecture.
3. I Avoided Charging Too Long
I waited until week 3 to turn on payments because I felt awkward.
That delayed real validation.
If someone will not pay, they are not validating your product. They are validating curiosity.
What Surprised Me
People Want Boring Tools
The most common feedback:
“This is simple but saves time.”
Developers do not need revolutionary platforms. They need friction removed.
Transparency Drives Growth
The Dev.to post brought more trust than ads ever could.
Developers can smell fake growth posts instantly.
Be honest and specific.
What I Would Do Differently
- Charge from day 1
- Build landing page before polishing UI
- Talk to 20 users before writing serious code
- Keep scope half as big
Current Challenges
- Preventing AI hallucinated root causes
- Reducing OpenAI API costs
- Handling large log files efficiently
- Deciding whether to build self hosting option
The next milestone is $3k MRR.
If I hit it, I’ll document the path.
If I fail, I’ll document that too.
Final Thoughts
Building in public is uncomfortable.
You expose numbers.
You expose mistakes.
You expose doubt.
But it forces clarity.
Shipping a real product in 30 days taught me more than 2 years of reading about startups.
If you are thinking about building something, do it small.
Solve one painful problem.
Charge early.
Talk to users constantly.
And document the journey.
Developers respect honesty more than polish.
Top comments (12)
honestly the 'almost quit three times' part is what stands out. I've been doing the weekend builder thing and that dip hits hard around week 2-3 when novelty fades and it's just work. the 2am log scrolling problem is so real - I've been in that exact spot squinting at a terminal thinking "why did I not build something for this months ago." $1287 MRR at day 30 is legitimate signal. congrats on shipping through the dips.
This is so inspiring! Building and launching a SaaS in only 30 days is a massive goal. I really appreciate how honest you were about the challenges, not just the wins. It shows that consistency is just as important as the code itself.
Solid execution — the 'boring tech stack' approach is honestly the biggest unlock for solo SaaS builders. No Kubernetes, no microservices, just ship. That resonates hard.
One thing I've noticed building in this space: discovery is the real bottleneck once you have a working product. You can have the best dev tool in the world but if nobody finds it, those 312 signups never happen. The marketing breakdown (Reddit, HN, X) is valuable because most devs underestimate how much hustle goes into distribution.
Curious what your retention looks like after the first month — that's usually where the real story starts for SaaS. The 41 paying users out of 312 signups is a solid ~13% conversion which is well above average.
Also worth checking out directories like saasrow.com for getting your tool listed — curated SaaS and AI tool directories can drive surprisingly consistent organic traffic once you're past the initial launch wave.
This was insanely refreshing to read, and just love how you focused on solving one painful, very real problem instead of chasing a revolutionary idea.
The honesty around churn, pricing confusion, and almost quitting makes this way more valuable than typical SaaS success posts.
Posts like this genuinely push people to ship instead of overthinking 🙌
and I genuinely hope you smash that $5K MRR milestone soon !!
"Premature complexity is ego disguised as architecture" — this line needs to be on a poster in every startup office.
I'm in a similar boat right now. Solo building two SaaS products (a waitlist platform and a community chat widget), and the hardest discipline isn't writing code — it's resisting the urge to over-engineer everything.
Your pricing experiment is super valuable data. I went through the same mental gymnastics and landed on a similar freemium model. The insight about charging early is spot on — I delayed monetization on my first product and it just delayed real feedback.
The 13% signup-to-paid conversion is honestly impressive for a dev tool. Most I've seen hover around 3-5%. Whatever you're doing in that onboarding flow, keep doing it.
Curious — how much of your traffic came from this Dev.to post vs Reddit/HN? I've found Dev.to to be surprisingly effective for developer-focused products.
"People want boring tools", I love this because it's 100% true. Sometimes you just have to get work done and a simple tool is the best. I started building qwikchek.com for the same reason, I was tired of spending WAY too much on vulnerability scanning and code testing tools, just wanted a simple fast tool to check for vulns on apps before production.
Love the article!
The simplicity of the product actually feels like its strength. Clear problem, clear outcome.
This kind of honest documentation is what makes tech communities strong. People learn from real journeys.
So many nuggets of wisdom in this post. I appreciate the honesty and clarity with which you share your journey.
Product validation through looping in users as early as possible is definitely key.
Congrats on the milestones so far! And good luck with the next ones!
I am looking forward to seeing how this grows. Whether it hits 3k MRR or not, the lessons shared here already make it worth it.
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