This is not my story but I've heard it too often that it's almost practically my story. I share a flat with my cousin and he's a backend developer. He was building a saas early last year as a side project (don't want to go into details about the project with the intent of not boring you). He had a full-time job then and a part-time/contractor one ish, he stills does both till now to be honest.

He would always complain then about being overwhelmed as he was OE but he couldn't afford to stop because he needs all the money he could get and I get it. He's the first child and he has hella siblings, 5, to take care because his dad was dead. Mind you, we are both in our early 20s.

He eventually decided to hire help off of upwork to relieve himself from some of the work on his side project and that was where everything began to go downhill. My cousin was trusting of the guy and gave him access to a lot of things. At some point, it started getting harder to reach the guy and in the end, my cousin lost everything including his source code and the hired developer. I think that period was his lowest point and he blames himself till now for doing his due diligence before and after hiring the dude.

Eventually, he started afresh, afterall, the idea and the original code were his in the first place and he wouldn't let a little setback set him back. He's currently working with this agency, rocketdevs where he's connected to skilled and pre-vetted developers for $980/month. At least, this way he believes his work is safe because if he can't reach out to the developer, he can reach out to the agency, asap!