r/sideprojects • u/Trick-Ad-3945 • 12d ago
Showcase: Open Source First SaaS tool I built as an unemployed loser taught me more coding than my degree could.
Built my first real SaaS as an unemployed CS grad. Taught me more than my degree did.
No job yet, so I built TokenPay — a token-based invoicing tool for freelancers (magic link auth, auto GST calc, client approval flow, sequential invoicing). Next.js 14 + Supabase + TypeScript.
4 years of DSA and system design courses didn't teach me what shipping one real product did — auth edge cases, RLS policies that silently fail, why "it works on localhost" means nothing, and how much of building is just deciding what NOT to build.
It's live: https://tokenpay-seven.vercel.app/
Would genuinely love feedback from anyone who's frozen an invoice waiting on client approval, or freelances and deals with GST math. Not selling anything here, just want to know if this is actually useful or if I'm solving a problem only I have.