It all started with an Idea

The Dream of Being an Entrepreneur

One of my greatest goals in life is to start my own business. Working as a software engineer, another long-standing goal has been to create some kind of app, make it production-ready by putting it behind authentication and a payment system, deploy both the backend and client to cloud infrastructure, and get actual paying users.

Working as a software engineer, I have come to realize that the most realistic path to doing this is through a SaaS business. I have always wanted to do this, but I never felt like I had an idea I could actually act on.

Then one afternoon, I was talking to a couple of friends who are also entrepreneurs. They are two vegan brothers who focus on living a healthy lifestyle and had started their own vegan cookie business. They regularly attended events like farmers markets to sell their products, and they also sold cookies by mail.

The Birth of an Idea

I hang out with these guys simply because they are good friends, so we naturally talk about a lot of things. One thing that really draws me to them is their entrepreneurial spirit. One day, I was asking them about their business, how things were going, and digging into the details.

During this conversation, one of my friends mentioned a problem he was having. He is very organized and naturally likes to know the bottom line at all times, including what he is paying for items, materials, shipping, and sales tax. With so many variables, he wanted constant clarity.

Then he said something that really stood out to me:

“With all these complex scenarios, mixing and matching different cookie combinations and packages, different sizes, all spread across countless spreadsheets, I don’t even want to add new products because it is such a pain to calculate everything. It takes so much time.”

They also mentioned that they had not found a product that did exactly what they needed. Instead, the functionality they wanted was scattered across several different tools.

That is when it hit me. Why not build them a product that could easily calculate all of these scenarios with minimal updates? A tool that would let them quickly see how price changes in materials and ingredients affected their bottom line. It also seemed like a great micro-niche, small businesses that frequent farmers markets and sell products by mail.

I am not trying to change the world per se, but it would be a dream to create something people could actually use, something that saves them time and headaches, provides real value, and is worth paying for.

Over the past couple of months, I have started building Mail Grub to help fulfill this dream and support some friends along the way. While building this app, I decided to document my journey across a few areas. This will include things I have already done, as well as future moments when I encounter new challenges.

Product

The first area is the product itself. What will it look like? What will the UX flow be for users? What features will be present? What do I decide to implement, and what do I decide not to implement? What is in store for the future?

The app has already evolved quite a bit, and I will try to walk through the decisions I have made and how the product has changed over time. If I am lucky enough to get users, I am especially interested in how they influence the direction of the app and which features they ultimately dictate.

Code and Technology Decisions

I will also be detailing the technical decisions behind the app, including what technologies I chose and why, along with the domain logic and general database schema.

Just like the product path, the codebase has evolved over time. These technology decisions have come with both benefits and drawbacks, but the most important thing is how much I have learned while bringing this app to production with real users.

I am also leaning heavily on my existing knowledge from over a decade of development experience, along with guidance from coworkers, people in my network, and others I trust and respect. Since I eventually plan to monetize this product, the code will live in a private GitHub repository, but I will document the decisions and architecture as thoroughly as possible throughout this blog.

Marketing and Sales

Last, but arguably most important, are marketing and sales. Unfortunately, these are also the areas I know the least about.

How do I bring this app to the masses? How do I find people who would actually find value in it and be willing to pay for it? What channels should I use? From a sales perspective, how should I sell the app? Should there be a free tier with limited functionality? Monthly or yearly plans? How do I approach potential customers at farmers markets or in online forums?

Although I am a bit introverted, I am excited to step outside my comfort zone, gain experience in these areas, and hopefully grow into a true founder in the online SaaS space.

Wrapping Up

Overall, since I started working on this, it has been something I have genuinely enjoyed building. I have learned many things outside the scope of my day job, and it has been incredibly rewarding to see the small, incremental efforts start to turn into something real.

This is a big goal I have set for myself, but in many ways, this blog will serve as accountability, helping me continue pushing forward and eventually release a real, live product that people can use.