I might be stating the obvious, but before you start coding your 10th SaaS, ask yourself: what do you actually like more — building or selling? And why is every project you've ever made still sitting in a drawer, used by exactly nobody?
The hard part for me isn't building the thing. AI does most of that now, and does it well — as long as you know what you want and what "done" looks like. The hard part isn't picking what to build either. There are 9 billion humans on this planet; literally any project can find its user.
The hard part is selling. I have zero idea how to sell what I build.
If that landed, keep reading. This isn't another "10 growth hacks" post — it's a pain I'm pretty sure you share.
We don't pile up projects because we're prolific. We pile them up because we're afraid.
I have receipts. So do you. Open your GitHub right now and count the repos where the last commit is init: setup project. Count the half-finished landing pages. Count the Stripe accounts you set up "for later." And how many domains? :)
That's not a portfolio. That's a graveyard.
Here's the truth: we don't keep building because we love building. Well — we do, but that's not the whole story. We keep building because building is the safe option. Code compiles or it doesn't. Tests pass or they don't. Builds are binary — you get an answer in 30 seconds and you feel productive.
Selling? You DM 50 strangers and 49 ignore you. You post on Reddit and get downvoted, or worse, banned. You launch on Product Hunt and... honestly, I never figured out how that thing actually works. There's no npm run sell. The feedback loop is slow, ambiguous, and bruising.
So you go back to the editor. Because the editor never tells you you're not good enough.
Three reasons your project is in a drawer — none of them technical
1. Code gives you dopamine. Selling doesn't.
Every successful build is a tiny hit. Every working feature is a tiny win. Selling has no instant feedback — it's delayed, often negative. Your brain picks the dopamine.
2. Code is a place where you're in control. The market isn't.
In your editor, you decide what's true. In the market, the user decides. That's terrifying for people who picked engineering partly because it's a domain where logic wins. The market doesn't care about your logic — it cares whether you showed up where it lives.
3. "Just one more feature" is socially acceptable procrastination.
Nobody will judge you for spending the weekend "improving the onboarding flow." Everyone — including you — would judge you for spending the same weekend cold-DMing 30 strangers into silence. So you pick the option where failure doesn't look like failure. Because nobody sees it.
The question you actually need to answer
Try to be honest:
Do you like building more than selling?
If yes — that's fine. Beautiful, even. But then stop calling yourself a founder. You're a craftsman who likes making things, and that's an honorable job — just a different one. Either find a co-founder who loves distribution and pay them in real equity (not promises), or accept that your projects will live in a drawer — and that's okay, if the building itself gave you joy.
If no — if you actually want users, revenue, real conversations with people who paid you money for the thing you made — then you'll have to learn to sell. I haven't yet. So this isn't a "how to" guide. It's a note from the trenches: what I figured out about myself and where I'm going next.
Where I am right now
I have a project right now — DevPinger. GitHub pull requests and Jira issues, delivered to one Telegram inbox with inline action buttons. Narrow pain, specific product — exactly the kind of thing I've built ten times before and shoved in a drawer.
This time I'm trying something different. I'm trying to sell what I haven't fully built yet, before I sink more weeks into another tool that, in my subjective opinion, will end up unwanted. I've already opened a $9 lifetime preorder — 30 seats. Small, but an honest signal: either people will pay, or they won't.
It might still flop. But this time it'll flop for the right reason — because the market said no, not because I built something nobody ever heard of.
Your 10th SaaS won't save you. The first uncomfortable DM you send tonight might.
Honest question for the comments: how many half-finished projects are sitting in your drawer right now — and what's the real reason none of them ever shipped? I'll start: I have nine. The real reason isn't any of the technical excuses I told myself.
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