Six-Month Retrospective on an After-Work Side Project
Since late last year, I’ve been building a small SaaS product as a side project. Honestly, the results are modest: 12 paying users and about 60,000 KRW in monthly revenue. Still, I thought writing down what I learned over six months might help someone, so here it is.
- Month 1: I built 40 features. No one uses them. Most of them were features I built because I wanted to.
- Month 3: I had 20 acquaintances try it while I watched over their shoulders. Eight of them just left on the first screen. That was a real shock.
- Month 4: I deleted 20 features. Instead, I completely reworked the onboarding screen three times. Conversion went from 4% to 11%.
The biggest lesson: 70% of development time should actually go into validating my assumptions. Code only creates value when those assumptions are right.
For the next six months, my goal isn’t adding features—it’s improving the payment page. 60,000 KRW in revenue is embarrassing, but the fact that that 60,000 KRW came in via card payment felt meaningful in its own way.
9 answers
If even the 60,000 won/month plan is being paid by card, that means 12 people actually paid real money. I'm at 0 won, so I'm jealous lol
Well, with just 12 people, it’s hard to say the market has really been validated yet, isn’t it? If those 12 weren’t acquaintances, you’d probably have to look at it differently.
If you completely reworked onboarding three times and went from 4% to 11%, that’s a massive win. Honestly, that alone makes the six months worth it.