Hi, I'm Tuomas and I'm building an invoicing app

Introductions
#1

I’m Tuomas and I’m a product guy/designer from Finland. Off the work hours, I relax by building small (as in tiny) software products. I like building digital stuff and I get to write code.

I’m building an invoicing app. It’s nothing new or innovative, it does not have a name yet or domain. It doesn’t have any USP’s. It’s just easy and fast way to write invoices. As crazy as it sounds, the product idea is not the main point.

What I want is to grow the app, optimize funnels, optimize the landing page and such. I want to keep the product simple, just solve a small problem. I have hard time describing my approach, gardening my tiny product like gardening the codebase in the book ‘Growing Object Oriented Software Guided By Tests’. I’m considering it as a hobby, so I’m not taking any pressure except I’d like to generate some revenue with it in year 2013.

I’m also co-organizing a local event, which I haven’t done before, so I guess that counts as bootstrapping… right? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Now that I have publicly confessed I’m building a invoicing app, I really need to put it out there as soon as possible :smile:

Nice to have a place like this!

–tuomas

#2

Hi, Tuomas! I like your idea of starting simple and working from there. I’ve almost always made the mistake of biting off too much at once, so your approach sounds wise. I’ve also created a very simple invoicing app myself, as a learning exercise. Look forward to see your approach!

#3

Hi Tuomas, nice to see other Finns here.

I like your approach. Putting things out there means accelerated learning, and the SaaS idea doesn’t have to be something new to succeed. Competitors means there’s an existing market.

#4

Thanks!

Thats exactly right, I’m trying to maximize my learning with a small product that I can chew. Since I don’t have to worry that much about the product itself, I can concentrate on learning how to bring to customer closer the product.

Thats my plan, time will tell how it goes…

#5

My approach is very much “why solve part of the problem elegantly, when you can not ship a complete solution instead?”

Building a simple app and then optimising the sales is such a great approach. Look forward to hearing how you go!

#6

What are you building the app in?

#7

I’m using Rails 4. I’m trying to keep my code very “old-fashioned” and simple. For example, I don’t want to use an heavy Javascript frameworks that would add extra complexity to the code base.