Refi App - From SaaS to open source product
Tags: javascript, firebase, product, opensource
Published: 2021-12-05 08:18:59

Original post from https://thanhle.blog/blog/refi-app-from-saas-to-open-source-product

## **Why should you read this article?**

- Lesson learned for your next side-project
- Why Open source is good for starting

## What is Refi App

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gn5v4o4h4bue2jagua8y.png)

An open-source GUI tool to make interacting with Firestore less painful

[Refi App](https://refiapp.io/)

## ...once upon the time

When I work with Firestore for the first time, so many things excited me. It has real-time data, nicely SDK for most languages I can think of.

But when really dig in, I make an accident that drops a collection by thinking it is just a document, the same issue happened to my colleagues, luckily, it is a dev environment, I just need to ask for sample data and insert those again.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/luzox105siohdngj8enm.png)
 

When I first worked with FireStore I faced many issues

- How can I filter documents by some criteria?
- How can I insert a new document from a JSON, in fact, I have to write a script to insert some new documents
- I have to use GC Storage to back up the data, which I need to spend more time learning about. WTF 🤬 why not just export and import by a JSON file?
- If I edit the same field of many documents, I need to go through documents and documents to edit.

So I talk to myself

> I need to save other developers from Firestore 😎
> 

### It might be a SaaS product

From the beginning, I believe there are many many developers out there who have the same pain with Firestore (Yeah, there is no number or feedback to prove it, just my feeling 🤡). For that reason, I draw a beautiful canvas to prove I'm right and Refi will bring me money by solving other developers pain

I built Refi App with a goal in mind

- It must be FAST and FRIENDLY for development
- Users shouldn't worry about their data getting stolen

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pgxuwvcau0a6hh546ev3.png)
 

After about 2 months of building, It was ready to launch, this is the most interesting time I have

- Building a new landing website
- Starting to marketing Refi App
- Thinking about domain
- Setting up auto-update
- Refi App logo
- Adding feedback function
- ...etc

Those tasks keep going more and more and I was lost in it. It's quite difficult for me though when trying to do something I'm not good at. I want the landing page should be a professional, exciting feature introduction, but I can not design it LOL. I want to add a testimonial but I don't have any, also I don't want to fake it.

### Getting users is HARD

The plan is, I will test it with my college, but they are afraid of using it, since their project is important and it's in the finance domain, so security is the first priority.

[https://gfycat.com/samefamousamazontreeboa](https://gfycat.com/samefamousamazontreeboa)

So I tried to post it on Reddit, Twitter, and Hackernews. I didn't want to post it to Product Hunt because only want to post it there when Refi App got market-fit state, if it gets market-fit state, posting on Product Hunt will bring me a huge amount of users and upvote

However... nothing follows the plan, I don't have many users and if I do, I don't know if they like it or not, I don't know if Refi app really helps or they just tried and then come back to Firestore webpage.

I fail on this step many many times before and these are exactly the same steps how I fail before 🙃

### Test and sell before building

That is what I haven't learned. I did try to search why I can not get any users, all the way lead me to an answer

> I do not have any connection with my target users
> 

[https://gfycat.com/ifr/SandyImpureAsiantrumpetfish](https://gfycat.com/ifr/SandyImpureAsiantrumpetfish)

I don't know many users using Firestore. I'm not sure that my colleague has the same problem as I was when using Firestore. People using Firebase don't know me!

After realizing the point I fail, I start building my Twitter profile, and this time, I don't know how to write content. I don't know how to make my tweet interesting for others.

So I searching for an answer

> I was trying to post my product on social and think people will care and used it.
Instead, giving before asking them to do anything is the key
> 

And that time, it was totally different, I tested to share knowledge with a group at Facebook and now it got more than 1k likes (average likes on my post is about 20) which is a big change

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/647hucozby966q0tm9pn.png)
 

### It was getting better, but I didn't care about it like before

Refi app is getting more users, but slowly, really slow. And I have a new job that doesn't touch anything with Firestore so I starting to ignore building Refi App.

To be honest, I feel excited when building a new product, imaging it got huge users and money will flow. And when the reality is different from my expectations, I feel down. I don't have any connection with users to give me feedback and most importantly, courage me to keep building!

Then I post Refi app on [https://tinyacquisitions.com/](https://tinyacquisitions.com/) with the hope that someone gonna find it useful then take it off

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/q745gb40t0781fgm0tis.png)
 

And it actually get someone excited, I was happy to hear that. However, they like to put a paywall to the Product, which gets me bored.

When I built Refi app, I want it to have the same business as [https://tableplus.com/](https://tableplus.com/) which is free for daily tasks and only charges when they want more advantage features. So I declined

## Why open-source?

For now, I see many products that appear to solve the same problem I was tried with Refi app

- [https://www.rowy.io/](https://www.rowy.io/) - turn your Firestore into Airtable
- [https://firefoo.app/](https://firefoo.app/) - which is a really good tool

 And I am no longer working with Firebase so I think it is better to make Refi lead by the community, it will open more opportunities for anyone to contribute and keep Refi moving forward

It turns into a great journey

{% twitter 1466050821712273410 %}

## Conclusion

- Finding users is hard if you don't own any community target the issue
- By turning a failed SaaS into open source, you can get a community and lots more opportunities
- Keep #BUIDL