How I Finally Built a $10K/Month SaaS (30 Failures)

Thomas

• Background and origin story
  • Founder of Uneed, a product alternative platform generating $10,000 per month.
  • Launched more than 30 projects over many years; all failed before Uneed.
  • Examples of past projects include Gum Affiliates (a Gumroad marketplace), Frisbee (a feedback exchange platform built in a day but never published), and numerous abandoned GitHub repositories for projects such as a website builder, a Twitter feed app, a plans manager, and a bookmark manager.
• Pivotal moments and turning points
  • Identified five core reasons his projects failed: giving up too early, unclear purpose, loss of momentum, relying on “build it and they will come,” and poor timing.
  • Pivoted Uneed from a simple front‑end tools directory to a launch platform; revenue initially dropped but grew step by step to $10,000 per month.
  • Capitalized on timing by launching an alternative to Product Hunt amid community complaints and creator demand for better launch visibility.

Products and Offerings

• Core product(s) and what each one does
  • Uneed: a launch platform where creators showcase tech products, redirect traffic to listed sites, and offer paid options to skip the line or advertise.
• Supporting tools, side projects, or experiments mentioned
  • Past experiments include Gum Affiliates, Frisbee, Cidi, a bookmark manager, and various GitHub prototypes, most of which were abandoned.

Metrics and Financials

• Revenue figures, user counts, and financial milestones
  • Revenue oscillates between $8,000 and $10,000 per month; reached $10,000 in the most recent month reported.
  • Platform reached 40,000 users and 2,000 paying customers.
  • Attracts 30,000 unique visitors per month and generated 10,000 outbound clicks to listed products in one month.
• Software costs and resource efficiency
  • Not explicitly detailed beyond the tech stack choices.
• Exit or acquisition specifics (if explicitly stated)
  • None discussed.

Strategy and Growth

• Overall vision and positioning
  • Position Uneed as a creator‑friendly alternative to major launch platforms, emphasizing fairness and visibility for smaller products.
• Primary growth engine or method
  • Distribution via personal social channels, especially Twitter, combined with consistent public posting to build and maintain momentum.
• Key tactics, channels, or strategic steps
  • Validate market demand by ensuring competitors exist.
  • Sell ideas by deeply understanding the market and having a clear distribution plan.
  • Iterate repeatedly, learn from failures, and stay consistent through timing challenges.

Tech Stack and Infrastructure

• Tools, platforms, and technical approaches referenced
  • Next.js for full‑stack development.
  • Supabase for the database.
  • Resend for email and marketing automation.
  • Vercel for hosting and Qovery for environment management.
  • Umami for self‑hosted analytics.
  • Ferno for customer support.
  • TypeIt for social media scheduling.
  • Polar as merchant of record for sales.
• Notable technical decisions, trade‑offs, or architecture choices
  • Chose a lean, managed stack to ship quickly and maintain control over analytics and support.

Lessons and Advice

• Direct advice given to other founders
  • Do not expect overnight success; treat building as a marathon, not a sprint.
  • Prioritize sustainability and personal life to maintain long‑term momentum.
  • Validate ideas by ensuring you can sell them and that a market (with competitors) exists.
  • Build and maintain distribution channels before or alongside product development.
• Hard‑won insights and key takeaways
  • Momentum decays quickly; consistent communication about your product is essential.
  • Timing matters, but persistence through timing misses can unlock later success.
  • Most projects fail not because of technical shortcomings but due to unclear positioning, poor marketing, or premature abandonment.