I’ve never really built a project in public before and it makes me a little nervous to write about it in such a personal way. I think that’s exactly the reason I think it’s something I need to do.
The WHY
Basically, like a year or so ago I wanted to try out Vue. I was not savvy to the JavaScript UI framework ecosystem when I ported a side project (statically generated by Hugo). I witnessed first-hand the impact of this on SEO and Social Media marketing as those two channels are a huge source of traffic for the site.
Sure, there are stuff like NuxtJs out there and Prerender.io. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about Nuxt when I started out and this project wasn’t necessarily worth going back to refactor that in. Prerender.io would probably work but the fact that you need a server running kind of defeats the purpose.
Alright, Why a SaaS?
Take all that stuff I just said and fast forward. According to my personal journal, it’s now February 24th, 2020. I’ve been working on what I consider to be my main project (a true startup). I’ve been running it on Google Cloud for a few months since I got a couple thousand dollars in startup credits. I’ve used about 36 cents in cloud credits in the 4 months since I started on the platform. Such a waste.
Unirender seemed like a good side business. It’s pretty much the antithesis of what I had been doing. The whole design of it is intended to be a little more personal than tech heavy and that’s something that should keep it entertaining to work on. A SaaS is by nature a tech heavy project. It should be resource intensive enough for me to slap a free tier on for 3 months and spend a bunch of my cloud credits. I’d never done a b2b startup so that’s also exciting. Plus, the concept is so easy to implement, it could be done in a weekend (or so I thought 😏).
How’s it Going
Well... I have 6 months of my credits left. I got plenty of time with the COVID-19 situation going down (that brought my main startup to a screeching halt). I really like the business model of open source with a paid hosted version. I spent a large part of my career on the backs of free tiers and open source, so it’s got a special place in my heart.
I’m going to try and get it done within the next month or two and upload it to GitHub. Then start a free hosted beta for like 3 months or until most of my credits are spent. At that point I hopefully will have ironed out the bugs and have a paying customer or two. From there, I’m going to run it like a well-paced marathon.
Feel free to keep up with this blog and don’t hesitate to email me hello@unirender.io