Why My First SaaS Became Obsolete in Only a Few Months

Photo by Chander R on Unsplash

The early stages of building software often create an illusion of durability: the belief that the market will reward being early and that a strong technical foundation alone can carry a product forward. My first SaaS taught me that this assumption breaks quickly. Despite launching before anyone else in my niche, the product became obsolete within months. The reasons were not mysterious — they were structural, predictable, and entirely within my control.

Won the Race, Lost the Marathon The first lesson was that being early is not the same as being competitive. I shipped the earliest version of the product before any real alternatives existed, but my competitors built faster, designed better user experiences, and responded to feedback more effectively. They simply executed more consistently. Being first bought me visibility, but it did not buy me staying power. A fast follower with a stronger product will always outpace a pioneer who stops evolving.

I Couldn’t Iterate Fast Enough My second realization involved the absence of a CI/CD pipeline. I had no reliable mechanism to push updates, respond to user issues, or continuously refine the interface. Every deployment felt manual, brittle, and time-consuming. As issues accumulated, so did user frustration. People do not wait for a product to improve when a smoother alternative exists. Without a deployment pipeline, the product stagnated while competitors advanced.

Shiny New Toy Syndrome Another factor was loss of interest. When a project’s novelty fades, momentum fades with it. In my case, the excitement of building the first version overshadowed the long-term commitment needed to sustain it. Software does not deteriorate on its own; it deteriorates when its creator stops caring. A SaaS without continuous stewardship quickly becomes a relic.

If a SaaS ships in a Forest with No One Around to Hear it, Does It Make a Splash? I also underestimated the role of distribution. Most of my energy went into engineering — architecting features, refining backend logic, and optimizing performance. Very little went into marketing, community building, or creating an onboarding experience that explained why the product mattered. Many technical founders fall into this trap for a lot of reasons. One reason is that developers tend to focus on the thing they’re good at. There’s also a certain catharsis to just building the thing, whether it finds a buyer or not. Even non-technical founders fall into this cycle, placing too much weight on perfectionism and the “just one more feature” trap. There is a feeling that you will only have one single chance to prove to the world that your product deserves to exist, so if it doesn’t have everything you think it needs to be successful, you would rather just keep it hidden away.

True story: I was advising a project that had already spent almost three years building its MVP, and had demoed it to a prospect that was willing to pay $20,000 USD for this software. I asked why didn’t they accept the check. They said it was because the software wasn’t ready. I asked what they were still missing that would’ve made it ready. They said that everything that that particular prospect was asking for was ready, but not all the features were ready yet for imaginary prospects they didn’t have yet would want. I hope that reads as ridiculous as it felt typing it.

Flying Solo Finally, I tried to build everything alone. Solo development limits throughput, feedback loops, and perspective. When the workload grew, the lack of support became a bottleneck that slowed updates and discouraged long-term progress. The project needed a team, but I attempted to shoulder everything myself. In hindsight, collaboration would have given the product resilience, continuity, and diversity of ideas.

The result of these combined factors was predictable. The product did not disappear because the market moved randomly; it disappeared because I built something that could not evolve fast enough to remain relevant. The experience taught me that shipping early is only the beginning. Sustaining a SaaS requires systems, distribution, collaboration, and, above all, ongoing interest.

The failure wasn’t a setback. It was an education in how software survives in real markets. And that knowledge has shaped every product I’ve built since.

read the full article here: https://cryptocadet.medium.com/why-my-first-saas-became-obsolete-in-only-a-few-months-6fecb397348d