Motivation#
I wanted to build a real, working product—just for fun. My idea was to create a simple micro-SaaS (ha, more on the “simple” part later) that tackles a very common pain point I’ve seen in many companies.
In my past roles, one tool always popped up: Spreadsheets (Excel or Google Sheets). They’re fantastic for organizing data and processes. Originally, we’d use them on our local machines—no big deal. Then came Google Sheets with its “multiplayer” aspect. But until a few years ago, even that was mostly one person entering data while everyone else just viewed it.
Fast forward to now, and big companies with elaborate internal systems often realize they’re missing certain functionalities in their CRMs or ERPs. How do they patch these gaps? They whip up a shared spreadsheet in Excel or Sheets, letting multiple people edit away. That works fine…until you have hundreds of rows, daily changes, and no one knows who did what or when.
Ever seen a project slip three months behind, and nobody notices until the deadline passes? The updates were in the spreadsheet, but no one had time to check it daily (or even weekly). Yes, Excel and Sheets have comparison tools, but with frequent edits, you end up digging through tons of changes just to find that one critical update from two weeks ago.
That’s where the motivation for my new micro-SaaS came from.
At First…#
I figured this would be super simple: let users paste a spreadsheet link, and boom—get real-time notifications about every change. Easy, right?
I also wanted to experiment with AI, so I tried having ChatGPT write the code. It looked promising: it caught row additions, cell edits, you name it. So I built the marketing pages, the user interface, authentication. Then I took it for a deeper test drive—and realized it was basically useless in a real-world sense.
Why? Because humans don’t care that a formula changed from =SUM(A1,A2) to something else automatically. We want context—who changed what that actually matters for our projects, orders, or inventory. AI alone didn’t grasp that nuance, no matter how many prompts I threw at it.
So, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote the logic myself. I also tried Cursor IDE for AI-assisted coding (spoiler alert: it didn’t fix everything). This turned out way more complicated than I’d hoped, especially for a micro-SaaS. Honestly, if I didn’t have 20+ years of experience as a developer, product manager, team lead, QA, etc., there’s no way I could have pulled it off alone.
After about 28 calendar days, working roughly 6 hours a day for 3–4 days a week (so maybe 9–12 full workdays total), I had a fully functional MVP. That’s actually pretty sweet, considering my laid-back sabbatical schedule.
It’s Alive—Day 0#
So I have this MVP. I’ve tested scenarios, written automated tests, done some calculations, set everything up—and now I’m wondering, “Where do I find my users?”
In typical startup culture, you’d blast it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Product Hunt to get as many eyeballs as possible. But for a niche micro-SaaS, that can backfire by bringing in random traffic that doesn’t convert—or worse, tries it once and never comes back.
My plan? Start small and personal:
- Alpha testing – Identify 1–3 users who truly need this. Get direct feedback, iterate, improve.
- Validation – Scale up to 10–15 users, still hand-picked. They’ll be using the real product, but we’re not calling it “alpha” anymore.
- Next Level – Once it’s polished, we’ll do the big marketing push.
I’m still in Phase 1, and waiting for those first alpha testers can be tough (I know my own impatience!), but that’s the game plan. I want real-world feedback to shape the product before going all out.
Summary#
I’ll stop here for now. I’m on sabbatical, working around 6 hours a day, 3 days a week (blogging included). I’ve set a goal to land at least 1 alpha tester by the end of this month, and 10–15 users by the end of March. Even with a relaxed schedule, having concrete KPIs gives me direction.
Once I move beyond Phase 1, I’ll share the lessons from finding those initial users—and where I stumbled.
Thanks for reading. If you’re curious, want to test it, or just say hi, feel free to reach out.
Stay tuned, and let’s see where this journey takes us!
Thanks for reading, and let’s keep building great things together.
