Ivan Balias

Help Stripe SaaS recover revenue lost to failed payments — smart retries + dunning, pay only on recovery. Building Lirova solo · NestJS/Prisma · pre-launch

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

SaaS founders obsess over cancellations.

Meanwhile 20-40% of churn is involuntary - cards that expired, banks that declined. The customer never chose to leave. Their payment just failed and the subscription died.

Expired cards alone cause 42% of failed payments.

Stripe recovers ~35% of these by default. The other 65%? Gone.

That's the leak I'm building Lirova to fix - smart retries + dunning that recover the rest, before they churn.

Pre-launch, looking for early users on Stripe. Demo (sample data): https://t.co/gKtMZE2PYY

#buildinpublic #SaaS

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

Building a payment-recovery tool solo, and the biggest surprise so far: the hard part isn't retrying failed charges. It's knowing when NOT to.

Spent two weeks on the "stop" logic, not the "retry" logic:
- card reported lost/stolen → retrying flags you with the bank, never do it
- hard decline that needs the customer to act → another charge attempt is just wasted
- no idempotency → you double-charge someone, now you're refunding + apologizing

Turns out "recover more revenue" is 80% defense. Don't move money you shouldn't, don't hammer the card network, don't charge twice.

Anyone else building money-touching code — what's the edge case that scared you most?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

@NithurM @realwfa the 2024→2026 climb is the part people don't see - looks overnight, actually two years. nice work crossing $6k. what flipped in the last few months to steepen the curve?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

huge milestone, congrats 👏 distribution gets you the signups - but at $23k MRR there's a quieter leak distribution can't fix: renewals that fail (expired cards, declines). customers who never chose to leave, just lapsed silently. usually a few % of MRR once you're at this size. are you tracking failed payments separately from real churn yet?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

@assentorp first $4 hits different than any number after it 😄 congrats on shipping something people actually paid for

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

@mddanishyusuf 65 paid on Stripe is a real milestone, congrats 👏 the jump from "first users" to "they keep paying next month" is the fun part. what's your retention looking like so far at this size?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

yeah, you're right - blind retry on a hard decline is mostly wasted. that's the whole point imo. retry only helps on soft stuff (insufficient_funds near payday, temp processing errors).

the bank-says-no cases (do_not_honor, declines that need the customer to act) - retrying just burns attempts. those need a different path: email the customer to update the card or contact their bank, not another charge.

so it's less "retry harder" and more "read the decline code and only retry the ~10% that's actually retryable. the rest is dunning, not retries."

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

high churn is usually two things mixed together. some people actually leave. but some just had their card fail on renewal - they never decided to go. that second part you can recover without touching the product.

are you retrying failed renewals or do they just lapse? with 453 subs that adds up fast

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

@optimalfocus Ha, honestly — English is not my native language, so I rely on tools to keep from sounding broken. but this failed payment thing is literally something I create, that part is my fault

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

Day 175 consistency is the real flex here 👏 (and rest up after the teeth 🦷)

At $2.1k MRR with a steady install flow, you've got enough renewal volume now that failed payments start nibbling - expired cards, declines, the customer never chose to leave. Quiet few % of MRR. Worth watching as you push for that $9k. Tracking it separately yet?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

@BrianMRey Honestly the screenshots are the better content — real numbers beat opinion tweets every time. $946 with 94 subs and 11 trials is a healthy shape. Are those 11 trials converting clean, or losing any to failed first-charges?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

18% → 12% is a solid target. One thing that changes the math though: split that number into voluntary vs involuntary first.

If a chunk of your 18% is failed renewals (expired cards, declines) rather than people choosing to leave, that part isn't a "convince them to stay" problem — it's recoverable with retries. Worth knowing which half you're fighting before setting the goal. What's your failed-payment share look like?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

62 subs and ~$940 is real traction for day 49 👏

Heads up as you push past $1k: with 62 active subs you've now got enough renewals that some will start failing (expired cards, declines) — quiet MRR leak that looks like churn but isn't. Cheap to watch early. Are you tracking failed renewals separately yet?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

Building in public: a dunning / payment-recovery tool for SaaS on Stripe. Solo, pre-launch.

The thing that surprised me most while building it: "just retry the failed card" is a trap.

- Retry a card reported lost or stolen > you annoy a real customer and the bank flags you
- Retry too aggressively > the card network starts throttling you
- Retry without idempotency > you double-charge someone, now you're refunding and apologizing

So most of the engineering wasn't "retry the payment." It was deciding when NOT to - reading the decline code first, and stopping on the ones you should never touch.

Involuntary churn (expired cards, declines on renewal) eats a few % of MRR for most subscription businesses, and the customer never even chose to leave. Felt like a problem worth solving.

Anyone else here dealing with failed renewals? Curious how you handle it today - ignore, manual, or something built-in.

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

$5k solo is the milestone most people quit right before - congrats 👏

Quiet thing that shows up around here: at $5k you've got enough renewal volume that failed payments (expired cards, declines) start costing real money - customers who never chose to leave. Recovering that is usually the cheapest MRR you'll ever add, because you already earned it once. Worth a look before the next 5.

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

This is the whole reason I'm building Lirova — recover the renewals that fail silently, before they count as churn. Pre-launch, on Stripe. Demo (sample data): https://t.co/cCCkDyc9FY

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

Hot take: most "churn reduction" advice solves the wrong problem.

It's all about convincing people who want to leave to stay — better onboarding, exit surveys, win-back emails.

But the cheapest retention win isn't about changing anyone's mind. It's the customers who already wanted to stay, whose card just failed on renewal. They didn't churn. The payment did.

Fixing that is billing logic, not persuasion — and almost nobody treats it as a separate problem.

What % of your "churn" do you think is actually just failed payments?

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

Love this — the 10-year arc makes it hit harder. Congrats on the $500.

Heads up for the next stretch: as renewals stack up, expired cards start silently killing a slice of that MRR — the customer never decides to leave, the card just fails. Cheap to plug early, annoying to backfill later. Worth a glance at your failed-payment rate.

[Ivan Balias @IvanBalias]

+256% is serious momentum 👏

If you're chasing a 2x, don't sleep on the revenue you already "won" but are leaking: failed renewals. At this growth rate you've got a real renewal base now, and recovering involuntary churn (expired cards/declines) is pure upside — no new acquisition needed. Often a quiet few % of MRR. Easiest lever before your deadline.