I've been a developer since 2010. 16 years building software for companies. 2 years freelancing. I've shipped production apps, worked with teams across different domains, handled real infrastructure at scale. I'm not new to this.
What I clearly don't know yet is how to sell things.
What I'm new to is building for myself — no client, no salary, no guarantee anyone will ever pay for what I make. That's a completely different game and I'm learning it from zero.
This is an honest account of my first month as an indie dev, building something I genuinely needed.
Why I built it
Every time I started a new React Native project, I lost the first 2–3 weeks before writing a single line of product code.
Auth. Onboarding. Dark mode. i18n. Service layer. Design system. Settings. Over and over again.
At some point I stopped accepting that as normal and extracted everything into a single, clean base. The architecture uses a factory pattern — mock services for development and demos when there's no backend yet, real HTTP services for production. One env var switches between them. Once you have a backend, the mock layer should be removed — it's a dev tool, not a production pattern.
I also added CLAUDE.md and Cursor rules so my AI tools would actually understand the architecture from day one.
That became Typevera — a React Native + Expo starter kit.
What it is
- Auth + OTP, onboarding, dark mode, i18n
- Clean service layer with factory pattern — mock services for dev/demo, real backend for production
- Demo mode — runs fully offline during development, no backend needed to get started
- Design system, notifications, user profile, settings
- AI-ready — CLAUDE.md + Cursor rules included
- TypeScript strict + Expo Router
It's not a skeleton. It's a fully working app you open, run, and start building your product on top of.
The launch
I listed it on PeerPush, posted on X (where I have 52 followers), and started posting on Reddit.
1 month numbers:
- 276 visitors
- 0 sales
- Top source: Reddit (96 visits)
- Google: 11
- X: 11
Reddit was the only thing that moved the needle — and even then, not enough to convert.
What I changed
Someone on Reddit randomly audited my landing page. Good feedback.
Over the month I made several changes to make the page more honest and credible:
Replaced the hero image with an animated terminal showing real output (912 packages · 3.5s) + a live QR code to try the demo instantly in Expo Go
Moved demo videos higher so visitors see the app running before reading anything
Added "One-time payment · No subscription" under the CTA
Rewrote CTAs to be more direct
Small changes. Still 0 sales. But the page is cleaner and more honest now.
The uncomfortable truth
It's 2026. Everyone is building AI wrappers, AI agents, AI everything.
I built a React Native starter kit.
No viral hook. No AI angle. No "shipped in a weekend and made $10k MRR" story. Just a tool I built for myself because I was tired of repeating the same setup.
The honest question I keep asking myself: if I built this for me and I use it every day — why doesn't anyone else seem to care?
The answer I keep coming back to: I haven't found my people yet. The product isn't wrong. The distribution is.
Why I'm not stopping
Two reasons.
I'm already using Typevera to build my next project (not ready to share details yet). The kit saved me weeks of setup. It works exactly as advertised. That was always the point.
the kit is far from done. Here's what's coming:
NestJS backend — auth, OTP, social login, push notifications, Prisma + PostgreSQL, local Docker setup, and a GCP deploy script. All wired up and ready to go. When this ships, mock services become what they always were — a dev tool — and buyers get a full production-ready backend they can deploy in minutes.
Next.js landing page — the same config-driven landing page behind typevera.com, packaged as a separate kit. SEO-ready, dark mode, Lemon Squeezy integrated.
Full bundle — mobile + backend + landing page. One price, everything wired, full-stack from day one.
That's a different product with a much stronger value proposition than what launched a month ago.
What's next
- NestJS backend integration (in progress)
- Next.js landing page kit
- Full bundle launch
- 2-week break — coming back with more to show
- 2–3 more products planned for this year, all built on top of Typevera
If you're building with React Native and tired of redoing the same boilerplate — Typevera is live. €79 early bird, one-time payment.
And if you've been through this — 0 sales, real product, keep going anyway — I'd love to hear how it went for you.
Building in public at @salgueirodev
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