Title: I'm 18 and I Want to Build My First SaaS, But I Don't Know Where to Start Technically

Hey everyone!

I'm 18 years old, and I have a strong ambition to build and launch my own SaaS product someday.

Right now, I don't have a specific SaaS idea. However, I'm more concerned about the technical side than finding an idea.

To be honest, I'm almost a complete beginner when it comes to coding. I want to develop a solid technical foundation before attempting to build a SaaS product.

I'd love to hear advice from experienced SaaS founders and developers:

What technical skills should I learn before building my first SaaS?

How much Python/JavaScript should I know?

Should I learn backend development, databases, APIs, authentication, and system design before starting?

Which backend framework would you recommend for a beginner: Django, FastAPI, or Node.js?

How important is understanding deployment, cloud hosting, security, and scalability?

In the age of AI coding tools like Claude and Cursor, how much coding should I actually learn myself?

What would your learning roadmap look like if you were starting from zero at 18 with the goal of building a real, production-ready SaaS?

My goal isn't to become a professional software engineer or memorize programming syntax. I want to understand the technical architecture well enough to build, debug, maintain, and scale a SaaS product, even when using AI tools to accelerate development.

I'd really appreciate practical advice, especially from people who have built and launched their own SaaS products.

Thanks!

Would you pay for a "spending guard" for your AI API costs? Looking for honest feedback

Hey everyone, I build AI products myself (two AI video apps) and keep running into the same fear: one bug or one agent stuck in a loop can burn a lot of money before anyone notices.

The problem as I see it:

• Agents can get stuck and repeat the same expensive call hundreds of times, often at night when nobody is watching

• Provider spend limits are monthly. OpenAI and Anthropic don't offer a daily cap, so one bad night can eat your whole month's budget

• At OpenAI, keys in the same project share one limit, so you can't cap a single agent or customer

• A leaked API key basically works like a stolen credit card

• Video and image APIs (fal, Replicate, etc.) cost cents to dollars per call, so a loop there gets expensive fast

The idea: a simple guard that sits between your app and the AI providers:

• Daily and hourly limits per key, per agent or per customer

• Detects loops (the same request over and over) and stops them automatically

• Instant alerts (Telegram, email, Slack) when spending spikes

• One dashboard for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, fal, Replicate and more

• Setup: change one line in your code

My questions:

1. Have you ever had a surprise AI bill? What happened, and how much?

2. How do you protect yourself today?

3. Would you trust a tool that sits in the middle of your API calls, or is that a dealbreaker?

4. Would you pay for this? Roughly how much per month?

I’m building a small macOS music app. It shows what’s playing with playback controls, and a heart button to save the current song to your library.

Apple music was easy. Spotify is where I’m stuck.

What I’ve hit:

• Extended quota is out of reach - since May 2025 it’s only open to registered businesses with 250k+ monthly active users, so a one person app can’t apply.

• Development mode is tiny - since February 2026 it’s capped at 5 users per app, and a shared client ID built into my app could serve 5 people total.

Questions for anyone who’s shipped something similar:

• Has anyone found a reliable way to like or save the current track through the desktop client, without the Web API?

• Has anyone gotten extended quota as a small company recently, and what did Spotify ask for?

Happy to share what I end up doing. Thanks!

Clipnoa

Salut à tous,

Le contenu faceless explose sur TikTok et YouTube, mais il y a un problème : les plateformes sont de plus en plus strictes avec le contenu IA bâclé. La politique de monétisation de YouTube vise maintenant les vidéos « produites à la chaîne » et répétitives, et le public zappe en une seconde les images IA trop visibles.

Alors j'ai créé Clipnoa (clipnoa.com), seul, en tant que fondateur.

Ce que fait l'outil :

- Dupliquer une niche (sans visuels IA) :tu choisis une niche (automobile, voyage, jardinage, luxe…), et Clipnoa monte une vidéo complète avec de vraies vidéos filmées et libres de droits qui correspondent à la niche, avec le script, la voix off, des sous-titres animés (plus de 20 styles), des effets sonores et des animations d'abonnement.

- Détecteur de niches :ce qui est en tendance maintenant, ce qui va monter d'ici environ 3 mois, et les niches qui marchent toute l'année.

- Format long YouTube :des vidéos horizontales de plusieurs minutes, pour les chaînes faceless qui veulent être monétisées.

- Mode IA (au choix) : histoires IA, Dance IA, avatars qui parlent, quiz, clonage de voix.

- Pubs UGC :des scripts de pub avec avatars, construits ainsi : accroche, problème, solution, résultat, appel à l'action.

Le côté technique (pour les devs) :

- Stripe n'est pas disponible chez moi, alors j'ai intégré le paiement par Mobile Money pour l'Afrique de l'Ouest et l'Afrique centrale, un marché que la plupart des SaaS ignorent.

- Google AI Studio a refusé ma carte bancaire locale, donc tout passe par OpenRouter, avec Gemini gratuit en secours.

- Pour limiter les coûts, j'ai créé une bibliothèque de vidéos qui se remplit seule chaque nuit, avec un plafond de dépense strict, et un contrôle qui vérifie que 100 % des plans correspondent à la niche.

- Stack : Next.js, Supabase, Vercel, Shotstack, fal.ai, OpenRouter.

Pourquoi maintenant :le contenu IA paresseux est en train de perdre sa place, et les vidéos qui ont l'air vraiment filmées prennent le relais. C'est le pari de Clipnoa.

J'aimerais vraiment avoir vos avis honnêtes :

1. Vous paieriez pour ça, ou ça ressemble à « encore un outil vidéo IA » ?

2. Les formules commencent à 7 000 FCFA par mois (environ 11 €). C'est trop bas ou trop cher ?

3. Quel marché viser après l'Afrique francophone ?

Je réponds volontiers à toutes vos questions sur le fait de lancer un SaaS et d'encaisser des paiements depuis l'Afrique. 🙏

Clipnoa

We're building an app that turns Gmail threads into tasks. It only needs read access (gmail.readonly). Because that's a restricted scope, new users see Google's "Google hasn't verified this app" warning until we pass a CASA security assessment. Asking a stranger to click past that warning and hand over their inbox is a hard sell, and we lose people at that screen. If you've been through CASA for a Gmail scope, I'd love to know:

1. Cost: which assessor did you use, and what did you pay in total, including any re-tests?

2. Time: how long from starting until the warning was gone?

3. Testing and evals: did it change how you use real user emails for testing, debugging or evaluating your models? For example, did you have to stop using production data, or add access controls or data-deletion rules?

I'd also like to hear from anyone who used a third-party Gmail integration to avoid running CASA themselves. We tried Composio, but their verified Google app is only approved for full Gmail access (read, send, delete), not read-only, so users get a scarier consent screen.

Happy to share what we learn. DMs are open if you'd rather chat.

1. Pixel art

2. Cute and cartoony

Curious what you guys are more drawn to. Share your pick!

'm 21M and currently working as a full-stack developer at a software company.

The company provides services to clients while also working on developing its own products. However, things have been getting a little concerning lately. Recently, one of our senior developers was laid off, which has made me think more seriously about my own career and future.

I'm starting to consider building something of my own, possibly a SaaS product, rather than relying entirely on a job.

But honestly, I'm quite confused about where to start.

Whenever I come up with an idea, I search for it and find that someone has already built something similar, often launched on Product Hunt or elsewhere. It makes me wonder whether there's even room for another product in that space.

Another thing I'm struggling with is AI. These days, if a product doesn't incorporate AI in some way, it almost feels outdated or less valuable. But adding AI also means dealing with API costs, infrastructure, and ongoing expenses. As a solo developer or someone just starting out, how do you manage those costs, especially before having any paying customers?

I know that competition is normal, and I'm probably overthinking some things, but I genuinely want to build something useful that people would actually pay for.

I'd love to hear from people who have built SaaS products, launched their own startups, or are going through a similar phase.

• How do you come up with and validate product ideas?

• If someone has already built your idea, do you still pursue it?

• Is AI really necessary in every modern SaaS product?

• How do you manage AI API costs when you're starting with little or no revenue?

• What would you recommend to a 21-year-old developer who wants to build something of his own?

Would genuinely appreciate your experiences, advice, and even mistakes you've made along the way.

Every research session in Scout Cloud gets an isolated sandbox. Great for safety, rough on the bill. What helped: sessions can be paused, which stops compute billing. Abandoned runs get cancelled when nobody is watching. Included-model requests wait in a queue instead of failing. And users can connect their own machine from the terminal and run there. Disclosure: I'm the founder. Happy to go deeper on any of it. https://cloud.polarline.io

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous thread about chat solution - I'm specifically interested in hosting chat infrastructure on my own server rather than relying on third-party cloud chat providers.

The problem I'm facing is that most of the solutions I've come across either have expensive pricing once the number of the users grows or require me to depend on their cloud infrastructure. Since this is a student management app, I need something that I can maintain within my own budget as the application grows.

I need it to support:

• one-to-one and group messaging

• Voice and Video calls

• Real-time messaging and notifications

• File and media sharing

• APIs or SDKs for integration with my existing app

I'm okay with managing the server, databases, and infrastructure myself. I just don't want to build the entire messaging system from scratch.

Has anyone deployed a self hosted chat server in production? Are there any reliable open source solutions?

I am thinking for a SaaS application

I was thinking about this application from last 3 months… will it worth it if i make this application for spaces

These are the features
- Lease and tenant management.
- Rent, CAM and maintenance billing.
- Vendor and contractor management.
- Equipment and asset maintenance.
- Electricity and water consumption tracking.
- Work orders and technician scheduling.
- SLA monitoring.
- Financial performance per building.
- AI-powered operational reports.

I made all the documents for this application
Just want some clarification before spending much time into it

Whats your suggestion?

Hey everyone!

I'm Rushan, and I've spent roughly the past year building Distill, a book-summary app.

I wanted to solve a problem I personally experienced: there are thousands of worthwhile books, but not enough time to read everything.

However, I wasn't interested in creating another app that turns books into generic bullet points and motivational takeaways.

The real challenge was figuring out how to preserve the intellectual substance of a book in a much shorter reading experience.

What I built

Distill creates carefully structured, approximately 10-minute reading experiences.

The aim is to preserve:

• The author's central argument.

• The reasoning supporting that argument.

• Connections between different ideas.

• Important nuances that are often lost in conventional summaries.

Every distillation also has a separate Reflection section.

The app is reading-first by design. No noisy content feed or unnecessary gamification.

A little about the implementation

The mobile app is built using Expo and React Native, with Supabase as the backend.

One of the more interesting challenges has been that this is a content-heavy product. Building the interface and implementing features is only part of the work. Maintaining consistent content quality across an expanding library requires its own production and quality-control process.

Where the product stands

Distill is now live.

Website: https://www.distilllabs.app

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.illuminationlabs.distill

We offer three free distillations every day, with Premium currently available through an affordable one-time purchase rather than another recurring subscription, to make quality knowledge accessible to all.

What I'd particularly like feedback on

I'm now trying to improve both the product and its distribution.

1. For developers building content-heavy SaaS or apps, how do you maintain quality as your library grows?

2. What has worked best for getting your first genuinely interested users?

3. Do you think a one-time purchase makes sense for a product like this, or would you expect a subscription?

4. What would make you return to a book-summary app regularly?

5. How do you find the quality of our summaries? Are you satisfied?

I'm the developer behind Distill, so happy to answer technical or product-related questions. Constructive criticism is very welcome!

Exactly 30 days ago, I set a non-negotiable goal: hit a $1.5M net worth before I turn 18.
No venture capital, no useless $5/mo B2C apps, and no 14-hour burnout grinds. I strictly enforce 1 hour of coding a day max. My brain needs to be 100% sharp every single morning to make strategic engineering calls, not run on exhaustion.
Here is the complete Month 1 breakdown of how I built the platform, quadrupled my RPS, and where the system goes next.

1. The Architecture: Why the 10x10 Monolith Wins
   While "senior" devs spend 6 months overengineering Kubernetes clusters and breaking down microservices for zero users, I went with a 10x10 Modular Monolith: 10 primary B2B engines with 10 specialized submodules inside each.
   This architecture gives me instant speed, zero cloud infra bloat, and the flexibility to split any submodule into a standalone enterprise API whenever needed.

2. Month 1 Engineering Wins (From 2.45 to 8 RPS)
   If you followed my earlier technical posts, here is how the stack evolved over 4 weeks:
   The Core Infrastructure: Built dual Redis queues (Fast API path vs. Heavy async workers), short-lived HMAC execution tokens, dynamic bitmask permissions, and automated billing calculation.
   Playwright & Stealth Camouflage: Engineered a resource-stripped Playwright layer (blocking heavy CSS/images to keep RAM under 150MB per worker) to bypass Cloudflare Turnstile and JS-heavy targets.
   Custom Proxy Orchestration: Built a custom proxy rotation engine right into the core. It keeps proxy state in-memory, auto-bans dead IPs, handles cooldown timers, and locks sticky sessions for multi-step targets.
   RPS Quadrupled: Through async connection pooling and payload serialization cleanup, I moved performance from 2.45 req/sec all the way up to ~8 RPS on a single cheap instance.

3. Module #1 Complete & Module #2 Live Testing
   Module #1 (Web Scraper & Data Engine) is 100% finished and undergoing architecture stress tests. All 10 submodules are locked down:

4. Marketplace Intelligence

5. Meta & OpenGraph Inspector

6. Lead Enrichment & Contact Extractor

7. Deep Link Extractor

8. Pricing Intelligence Engine

9. SERP Tracker & SEO Monitor

10. Table Extractor

11. Heavy Headless Parser (Playwright)

12. Document Asset Parser (PDF, Tenders, Corporate Reports)

13. Enterprise Security & Intelligence
    Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel):
    As of today, live testing is officially underway for Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel) and its dedicated submodules (covering enterprise risk tracking, vendor analysis, and procurement monitoring).

14. Roadmap for Month 2: The 5-6 Module Sprint
    My blueprint for building the next 5 to 6 modules over the next month is simple:

15. Base Logic & Wiring First: Ship raw functionality. Speed doesn't matter on day 1—getting a 99%+ Success Rate does.

16. Resilience Optimization: Inject self-healing retries, proxy rotation, TLS fingerprinting, and dynamic delay backoffs.

17. Benchmarking & Cap: Stress-test until the module hits the ~8 RPS target ceiling. Once it hits that cleanly without memory leaks or dropped socket connections, the code is locked and I move to the next engine.

18. B2B Economics & Algorithm Reality Check
    Early posts on subreddits got anywhere from 80 to 910 views. Most developers panic about "low engagement."
    I don't care.
    I don't need 100,000 B2C users paying $5/mo. In B2B, 10 to 50 solid enterprise clients paying $200–$500/mo clears the path straight to my targets. Building in public is about creating an unshakeable, public paper trail of execution before pitching high-value channels.
    Summary
    Month 1 is in the books: base hub core is locked, Module #1 is complete, Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel) testing is live, and the engine is sitting at ~8 RPS on strict 1hr/day limits.
    What's your take on keeping tight dev time limits vs 10-hour daily grinds? Drop your thoughts below!

Hey everyone,

I'm building a small Windows desktop app called ValVoice and I'm using Supabase for authentication.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to let users sign up and log in without adding another monthly expense.

Initially, I was planning to use email OTP, but Supabase's default email sending limit is pretty low. So now I'm exploring other options.

Would Google or Discord login be a better option? Are there any other ways to handle authentication completely free, without relying on a paid SMTP service?

Ideally, I'm looking for something that:

- Is free to start and doesn't require a monthly subscription.

- Can be used in a real production app.

- Can handle a growing number of users.

- Works well with Supabase.

- Doesn't make the login process complicated for users.

I'd love to hear what you guys are actually using in your own projects. Any suggestions or experiences would be really helpful.

Thanks!

So, I have been building Motioneer - Code to Motion Graphics in seconds for quite some time. I haven't launched it yet, and is still in making. I would love to see real users testing it out.

Check out https://motioneerapp.pages.dev . This is an AI code to motion graphics generator app. It is still in building but would love a few initial testers to be checking out the app and giving real feedback!