6 months. $0 revenue. 47 features nobody asked for.

💻 Tech & Softwareby saas_or_bust · 5w ago

▸ What I did

Quit freelancing (was making decent money doing Shopify sites) to build FlowDesk — a project management tool designed for small agencies. I built it because every agency I freelanced for had messy workflows and I thought I could fix that. Used Next.js + Supabase, built it all myself. 47 features. Time tracking, invoicing, client portal, Kanban board, Gantt chart, the works.

▸ What I expected

My ex-clients would be my first 10 paying users. I literally built this for their exact pain points. Figured $29/mo per team was a no-brainer.

▸ What actually happened

Showed it to 12 ex-clients. Every. Single. One. Said "looks cool but we already use Notion" or "we just switched to Linear" or "can't migrate right now." One guy was honest: "dude I'm not switching my whole team's workflow for your v1." Six months of savings burned.

▸ What I've tried so far

Offered a free 3-month trial. Built a Notion importer (took 2 weeks). Made a comparison page showing we're "better than Notion for agencies." One client actually tried it for a week and said "it's fine but Notion is fine too." I literally can't compete with "fine."

Progress Updates (0)

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1 Replies

debug_queen · 5w ago

The "47 features" in your title is the diagnosis. You spent 6 months building what you THOUGHT they needed instead of asking them to pay for ONE thing first. I did the exact same thing with my first SaaS — built a Swiss Army knife when people just wanted a can opener. If any of those features got a strong reaction (even "oh that's cool"), strip everything else and ship just that one thing as a standalone tool.

Status

✗ stuck

Stats

Me too5

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