Solo Dev Saturday 🧱 - May 2025 Progress Report
The final touches on the MVP, unexpected work, and loneliness.
Hey there Solo Dev!
Somehow we’ve already reached the end of May. It’s officially summer. The months where the office grows hotter, and the prospects of sitting inside by yourself start to seem less exciting.
Especially after a long day of work doing the same.
But nonetheless, we build on.
In the last report, I detailed the UI of Solopreneur Liftoff, claiming I was “close to MVP”.
What a load of quack.
Dev Corner 🏗️
Sure, I was close in terms of the functionality being there.
But I was lacking all the surrounding infrastructure:
Email feedback
A working top bar for navigation
Changing email
Changing and resetting password
The option to delete ALL data
Actually paying for the product
Payment status verification
A landing page
Deploying the product
So, with that list, and a week of vacation, suddenly the deployment deadline I had set for myself didn’t seem so far off. And I think it’s time to come clean: I wanted to launch the MVP in May. Well, today’s the last day, and it’s not out yet.
But it will be in a few days.
I implemented the full list above. All that’s left is to deploy a landing page, some final testing and then the full product. Then we’ll have liftoff (to a vanishingly small audience, but hopefully I can find some beta testers).
So what’s been added?
All the “boring” stuff. The things that sit around your cool features, making the product actually work.
Email feedback
I wanted sending feedback to be easy for users, so they can tell me why Solopreneur Liftoff sucks.
I found this cool product called Resend. I got it set up, and added a modal in the product you can access through the top bar on any page.
Account settings
I realized there was no way to update your account information, or delete all your information. So I added it.
Luckily, when I set up my backend, I took care to model the relations in the database, such that information can be deleted through a cascading deletion: if a user is deleted, the database automatically deletes relevant rows for that user in other tables.
Forgot your password?
Another use case I found for Resend: sending an email to recover an account if you forget the password.
I added a new endpoint to allow users to reset password (as long as they can verify it’s their account and do it within the time limit).
Payments
I added an embedded stripe checkout to the register flow.
Landing Page
Finally, I started setting up a landing page for the product. It’s quite far along, but needs more polish. It’s also currently lacking actual product screenshots, so that’s a bit of a minus.
Liftoff Insights 🌱
This month felt different.
For the past two months of development I had a constant feeling of progress. I was cranking out the features left and right, setting up my database, creating the UI. This month there was none of that.
At times it felt like a grind.
I would have new realizations constantly. There's no way to reset your password. There’s no way to send emails. How the hell do I even set up the payment? You know, boring stuff.
And they’d just. keep. coming.
It made me realize I had retreated into the feature factory those first two months. Happily coding away, leaving the annoying stuff for later.
But now, it’s time to emerge.
But what about revenue?
Well, there’s none. The product isn’t released. So far, I’m down $60 paying for AI assistance, and somewhere between 50-100 hours of development time (best guess, let’s meet at the middle and say 75).
I stopped paying for Claude. I was running into way too much limiting, especially trying to use the “Projects” feature now that my product had grown. I swapped to paying directly for Cursor.
10/10 swap. Highly recommended.
Top 3 Lessons Learned
The top 3 Solo Dev takeaways I learned this month👇
Nobody cares about 80% of what you do. Your job is to identify the 20%, and lean into it.
There’s so much more to do when you get through your list of features.
You will go through the trough of disillusionment with your project. That’s why so many side projects die.
Community Connection
We’re smashing into June with the initial release.
My expectations for the launch?
Zero.
I’ve been building this product blind. Mostly as a way to learn, and get used to the Solo Dev style. Hopefully, I can get some testers, and some feedback that can point me in a direction.
I’ll keep supporting and adding to this product, cause I believe there’s something there.
But I’ll also be taking more time to focus on Substack, scaling back the dev time, for now. There’s a season for everything. Substack season is next: I want to actually grow.
This season of development has taught me one thing: it’s very easy to start to feel isolated. And it’s even easier (at least for me) to lean into that isolation.
It’s made me reflect on development in general. Much of the time it’s a lonely way to work. We put on the playlist, lock in, and disappear for 8 hours. Often, we forget to unlock the door again.
So that leaves me with just one question for you: how do you fight the isolation of development?
I hope this newsletter can become a help for you in that fight.