My SaaS startup story from Feb 2019 to present and lessons learned!

In 2017 I am watching Tylar Tringas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tringastyler/) on a random youtube video where he shares his story of building StoreMapper reveneu and makes revenue examples like; it buys me a coffee, it buys me a lunch, it pays my rent, etc. Watch the video it is cool (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3d1asTrWUQ)

I kept thinking for a while about this idea of making tiny software and selling it on the internet and many times I talked myself out of building something small. I was always thinking that people will pay once you build something super cool and pixel perfect. I was wrong.

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In Feb 2019 I reached out to the SaaS Growth Hacks Facebook group to see if anyone else is interested as you can see in this screenshot, and started building FeedbackHero, my 3rd MicroSaaS. (The first ones were in Pakistan and Afghanistan many years ago and I built them using VB6, VB .NET, ASP .NET and PHP, this can be done in another story)

I kept FeedbackHero with me for a very long time and one night on 15th October 2019, I decide to open QuickTime Player and do a screen recording and launch it on ProductHunt without any editing. Here is the launch link (https://www.producthunt.com/products/feedback-hero) but some how still not feeling motiviated about "micro" SaaS.

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As a result of this shame on "micro", a "mega" SaaS was born, Zooc. Basically even the logo of FeedbackHero was continued in Zooc. I got into the developer mode and kept building features for a year. In October 2020 we launched it on AppSumo, here is our launch link (https://appsumo.com/products/zooc/) and on the day of our campagin going live, we are bug fixing and fire fighting. No beta testing period. Very bad.

To put things in perspective; FeedbackHero full demo took me 1.5 mins and Zooc full demo took me over 60 mins.

FeedbackHero full demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msR9U2aibks

Zooc full demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQmtzE2q9I

Zooc failed and I have posted top 40 reasons here (https://lnkd.in/eqWukP88)..2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣3️⃣After) I believe this failure was a stepping stone to success.

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After a few fruitful years of my agency business I am back in the highly scaleable startup track. I am searching for a cofounder and am all over the place with this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk-4fSmFdTM) and finally find a complementary cofounder and we go and start VoiceKitt.com!

We are building a voice assistant for in-car user experience. Something like Siri, but ours works.

We are lucky to get into Techstars Berlin acceleration program, but unlucky in raising enough funds and close the company down in April 2024.

Now I am back to square one, where I was in 2019. Bootstrapping multiple MicroSaaS products.

Lessons learned; start small, ship fast, be consistent, be more consistent in low times. 🚀

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