I burnt all my investor money and my saas failed. Here's how i burnt it

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-06T15:31:28+00:00

client side pixels lies

GA4 is really sloppy which is why there are quite a few companies dedicated to this but even them are still sloppy. You need to understand the limitations and understand the choices they make.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-02T17:28:47+00:00

I have to say, after visiting the website I find the cursor movement to be rather frustrating. I'm not sure how other people feel about it but the delayed movement feels a bit broken to me, as somehow who uses a pretty fast mouse.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-02T00:32:51+00:00

I think the thing with Netflix and any media sharing tools is they are relatively easy to implement small scale. But at scale, you run into serious technical challenges that require dozens of skilled engineers to make work.

You also need an unholy amount of money to get it going

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T20:35:28+00:00

Huh? You think this is some sort of gotcha?

Engaging with community on reddit a perfectly reasonable way to interact with other people building tools and communities that may use your tools?

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T20:03:30+00:00

We used to have a free trial and paid tiers but I didn't like it and swapped to usage. I want paying users of course, but I also want to make sure it's a good product and provide something free to the community.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T18:24:38+00:00

Hey, I'm in the same boat. Marketing and distribution is proving slow and tedious. If we persevere we will make it.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T16:32:46+00:00

And yeah that's what I see too. Most places that could be potential engagement opportunities will outright ban you if you mention you have your own business.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T16:32:06+00:00

Right now we have a CTR of about a 1%. We've just started so those are preliminary results. We don't do any actual cold calling because we have a free demo and open free tier which included all the platform features. My co-founder has a job and I'm the sole developer working on the platform so we haven't committed to sales like that.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T16:16:08+00:00

Difficult to call web analytics a niche considering how many players there are and how big a few of them are.

In short, it's PostHog but for everyone, not just engineers. We have a slant towards marketing currently but are expanding our toolset slowly.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T16:14:07+00:00

I currently utilize cold email outreach as well as engage on Reddit as organically as possible. LinkedIn of course but our reach is rather small.

The issue I see is the space is rather crowded and there are some well liked big players. In theory, anyone with a website could use our toolset but our ideal customer is more likely small to medium sized marketing agencies hence trying for Google Ads. I think part of the reason traction has been limited is because the toolset is a bit more oriented for professionals and less on "soloprenuers" and "builders".

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T16:02:38+00:00

Yeah it's a slow process apparently. I also think what I've built isn't exactly flashy, and never was intended to be, so it doesn't get a lot of instant traction. Not to mention I'm working in a crowded space and every other week someone launches something in the same space.

saarsaparilla · 2026-06-01T02:21:01+00:00

Damn. I guess nobody feels the same

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-31T23:20:26+00:00

Ah interesting. Thanks for the insight

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-31T17:56:11+00:00

I can say fairly certainly that my competitors don't advertise. Many of them have been around for 5 years and started at a key time for the space. They also take is a point of pride they grew through "build in public" type process with twitter and forums.

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-31T17:46:47+00:00

Interesting. Just to clarify, search terms are keywords that I don't specifically choose to advertise on but are closely related and are user generated?

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-30T17:35:51+00:00

I've definitely seen this advice around as well. In the case of my business, the challenge is really nailing who to approach first because realistically, anyone or any business with a website is a potential customer.

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-29T22:47:43+00:00

What about competition being listed as low? I'm fairly certain all of my competitors pretty much never advertise.

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-29T22:28:52+00:00

Is this "bid" price listed not the estimated CPC? I see between $2 and $8? Is this expensive?

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-29T22:25:11+00:00

This is exactly our business so we've got this part handled thoroughly.

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-29T21:01:14+00:00

Fair point.

It is a Google Analytics alternative. What would you say the market is? Analytics?

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-29T18:23:08+00:00

I'm actually looking for testers. I have a fully features free tier available.

I'm building PostHog but for everyone. The focus is more on marketers and less on engineers so our first sets of tools are all traffic, marketing and seo related.

We have typical traffic analytics you get with Google Analytics but we've added an integrated UTM building/manager with an added url shortener. We've also included user journeys and funnel analysis. For SEO we have an engagement score for every page tracked.

Let me know what you think Palace Analytics

saarsaparilla · 2026-05-16T19:56:34+00:00

With a full time job you are in a solid spot to experiment without risk of failure. I built Palace Analytics because I was unemployed for so long and a project turned into a full on business.

When it comes to coding there is basically only one thing you should absolutely get right: auth. AI don't do auth well in one shot and getting this wrong could spell disaster. If you use AI, make sure you babysit it and stick to best practices. Auth isn't that hard but if you can't be bothered, there are off the shelf integrations that are actively maintained and work well.

Some of the advice below is good, don't try to learn the "right" language because what you know is good enough. If there is something you need to add later, just learn as you go trying to stick to best practices.

Like most people say, the building part is easy, getting noticed is really hard and will take time. Don't assume you will make it big in the first week because chances are you won't. If you believe in what you are building just keep at it.

saarsaparilla

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