StorePreviewer 2.0, a tool that helps developers and agencies to preview and optimize their app store presence (also my first SaaS), has been live for three months now and I would like to give you a little update on what has happened so far and how two days last week felt like a constant roller coaster ride 🎢 (the "please let me out of here" and not the funny type of roller coaster ride).
The stats
👨👩👧👦 8 Customers
🔁 3 Annual Plans
💰 $35 MRR | $171 Total Revenue
📲 36+ App Store Previews created
Overall, I am really satisfied with the results so far. Just a couple of weeks ago, StorePreviewer reached customer numero three and now seeing that I am approaching the 10th customer is truly amazing. There is a lot of work ahead but this gives me enough validation to continue and be motivated. The journey so far has been anything but easy, but I am enjoying the ride. I will certainly talk more about the mental aspects of bootstrapping products in the future as I think it gets often neglected or not enough talked about.
Let's talk about stress
Speaking of mental aspects. Let's talk a bit about stress and the before-mentioned roller coast ride.
Monday = Churnday?
I hope this day of the week doesn't really exist and it was just a coincidence that after a week of zero transactions, Monday before last proved that things can change very rapidly. We start with nine total customers and me hoping that the next slack message will definitely be the 10th customer. Well, that didn't happen. Someone canceled. The second churn. I have always read about other Indiehackers and their painful first churns experience but due to excitement, it never crossed my mind that it could also very likely happen to me soon. It happened. It's real and it feels terrible. What I great Monday morning, I thought. Well, until 30min later, another customer canceled his/her subscription 🤯 I started the doubt the whole existence of the universe at that moment. It was a stressful day at University for me, so I couldn't focus too much on the things that were going on. There wasn't much I could do anyway. Three hours later, my phone rang, and I saw a new customer subscribed with a yearly commitment. The day started to feel brighter again until 2 hours after the next customer churned. 30 min later, another one signed up.
What a Monday!
You probably ask yourself what could have been the potential reason for this, but unfortunately, I have to tell you that I have no real clue why. Initially, I thought that there might have been a bug or outage that caused some problems but everything ran smoothly. Well, until seven days later...
A great Sunday morning
Usually, when we talk about a great Sunday morning ☀️, you might think about a nice chilled-out brunch, a good cup of joe ☕ and a calm, relaxed mind 💆♂️ that helps you recharge for the upcoming week. Yep, that definitely wasn't my Sunday.
I woke up, brushed my teeth, unlocked my phone and saw a Sentry error message that was very unusual. Essentially, the database connection to my backend server broke off – crashing the backend. This was the first time that a "critical" error happened in production and let me tell you: My heart rate went from chill to Usain Bolt real quick. I checked the logs and it looked like the app hasn't been used that morning but still – there are eight customers and I don't want to let them down. Not even on a Sunday morning. It took me about two hours and two coffees to finally fix it. The rest of the day was chill.
