Mistakes I Made Building My First SaaS Starter Kit

Glen Alloy — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:50:13 +0000

Over the past few weeks, I worked on building my first reusable SaaS starter kit using Next.js, Prisma, JWT authentication, and Lemon Squeezy billing.

The goal was simple:

Stop rebuilding the same foundation every time I start a new SaaS idea.

But while building it, I made a lot of mistakes — and honestly, those mistakes taught me more than the successful parts.

Here are some of the biggest lessons I learned.

1. I Tried to Build Everything at Once

At the beginning, I wanted the starter kit to include:

authentication
billing
teams
admin dashboard
analytics
notifications
multi-tenancy

Basically… everything.

That was a mistake.

I realized very quickly that trying to build every possible feature slowed me down massively.

The turning point was when I focused only on the essentials:

auth
dashboard
billing
clean architecture

Everything became simpler after that.

Lesson:
A smaller finished product is better than a huge unfinished one.

2. I Over-Engineered Too Early

I spent too much time trying to make the architecture “perfect.”

I kept reorganizing folders, abstractions, and services before I even had a working product.

Eventually I realized:
You understand the correct architecture after building, not before.

Lesson:
Get the product working first. Refactor later.

3. Billing Was Harder Than Authentication

I expected authentication to be the hardest part.

It wasn’t.

Subscription handling, webhook syncing, and keeping billing state consistent turned out to be much more complicated than I expected.

Especially handling:

successful payments
subscription updates
cancelled plans
syncing state to the database

Lesson:
Billing systems have a lot of edge cases. Keep them simple.

4. “Build It and They Will Come” Is Not Real

This was probably the biggest lesson.

I thought:
“If I build something useful, people will naturally find it.”

Reality:
Building was only half the job.

Distribution, content, visibility, and trust matter just as much as coding.

Lesson:
A product without traffic is invisible.

5. Shipping Taught Me More Than Planning

For a long time I stayed in “planning mode.”

But actually finishing and launching something taught me:

more about architecture
more about product thinking
more about distribution
than endless tutorials ever did.

Even though the project is still evolving, I’m glad I shipped it.

Final Thoughts

Building this starter kit changed how I think about side projects.

Instead of spending days rebuilding authentication and billing for every idea, I now have a reusable foundation I can iterate on.

Still improving it, but the process itself has already been worth it.

Curious:
What mistakes did you make in your first SaaS or side project?

P.S. While building this, I turned the setup into a reusable SaaS starter kit for my own projects. It includes auth, billing, dashboard UI, and Prisma setup. Happy to share it if anyone wants to check it out.

DEV Community: Glen Alloy

Mistakes I Made Building My First SaaS Starter Kit