Build Metrics

Shipping AI-powered side projects in public. Faceless YouTube pipeline · pSEO sites · trading bots. Sharing real numbers, wins and faceplants. No courses, no pa

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Analyzed feature usage. Settings absorbed dev time that 90% of users never touched. Made smart defaults. Removed the page. Freed 2 days/month. Zero complaints.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

DigitalOcean droplet: $24 (app server) Supabase Pro: $25 (database + auth) Redis Cloud: $15 (caching + queues) Modal: $250 (GPU inference) S3 + CDN: $8 (assets + logs) Monitoring: $18 (uptime + error tracking) Total: $340.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

One-timers are not churn. They needed a job done, paid, left. That is a transaction. Real churn is ongoing value that was not delivered.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

I surveyed everyone who canceled last quarter. Top reasons: (1) never hit the aha moment, (2) wrong price tier, (3) one-time need. Feature gaps ranked 7th.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Pricing churn was my fault. Single $29 plan. Light users felt overcharged, heavy users got a steal. Split into $19 and $49. Churn dropped 12% to 7%.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Document your failures. They're worth more than your wins.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

I've killed 6 projects this year.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

• Wrong audience • Overengineered • No distribution plan

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

I logged every upstream failure for 12 months. 23 total outages. OpenAI: 7. Vercel: 4. AWS us-east-1: 5. My own deploys: 4. API dependency is the single biggest risk for AI SaaS.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Zero budget. Zero followers. Zero paid acquisition. I wrote X threads about the problem my tool solves — not the tool. No links. No pitches. Just useful analysis of a painful problem.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

My first AI product was a broken MVP with missing features. I launched it anyway. 3 hours after the first commit. Week 1: 0 users. Week 2: 7. Week 4: 43. None of them cared about the missing features. They cared about the problem being s

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

"Show me your build in public timeline" > "Show me your resume."

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Start simple and only upgrade when the pain is real. My stack: Next.js + Supabase + Tailwind + Vercel. No microservices. No queues. One monorepo, 4 people worth of features.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

@gregisenberg The best founders I know just ship every day. No grand strategy.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

340 users, $3/mo each. No way I answer every question myself. Built a support bot: Slack webhook + Claude API + docs vector store. $12/mo cost. Handles 80% of tickets autonomously. Response time: 4 hours to 2 minutes.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Hot take: Most indie hackers spend too much time coding and not enough time selling.

I built a tool for 3 months. Zero users.

Then spent 3 months writing about the problem first. 200 people waiting at launch.

Distribution IS the product.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Posting my MRR ($847/month) publicly was scary.

But the response changed everything:
- 12 DMs with pricing advice
- 3 new paying customers
- 1 intro to a potential co-founder

Transparency builds trust. Stop hiding your numbers.

[Build Metrics @BuildMetricsIO]

Building in public: I automate faceless YouTube channels, pSEO sites, and trading bots. Sharing real numbers — wins and faceplants. No courses, no paywall. 🚀