covertly growing a boring saas whilst saving the world in my day job

in 2023, I started a job in operations at an ngo, after getting bored of feeling like a glorified plumber in my swe job.

i quickly realised that on top of the company being a mess operationally, they had literally no tech person.

literally.

over time, heads started turning to me, and i was eager to make those heads happy.

the last of these questions was one i decided i want to put to bed.

probably the most insane, messed up use of our spreadsheets was in tracking each person’s annual leave.

people would email around their leave dates, and hope the person would be bothered to type it in error free to the desolate mess of a spreadsheet that was meant to track what people hAD TAKEN AND HAD LEFT.

Believe it or not, it was a mess.

on top of this, my boss was incredibly cheap (and so was i), so just buying something to fix the problem wasn’t really an option.

i started googling – enter google apps script.

apps script is the extremely-not-shit version of what vba was to microsoft office. it’s a set of tools that lets you get the computer to do what most people spend their 9 to 5s slaving through with mail, sheets, docs etc.

and it’s free.

i started building an apps script program that would just copy all the steps people were taking via their emails, sheets and calendars and just making it way less painful.

by the time i left, it was one of the most loved, most time saving and more people-impressing things i had offered to the company.

i’ve always wanted to figure out how to make money online.

I don’t crave money badly, but i want to prove to myself i can figure it out.

i decided that job had taken enough from me – i was going to take this and sell it.

on and off for the past 6 months i’ve productised and launched the tool on google workspace marketplace.

it currently has 100 downloads and one paying customer who i discovered through direct outreach, but i already had a connection with.

it currently looks really shit in quite a few ways: the payments flow is horrible, the site sucks, there’s no social proof, poor ux and documentation, and i have done 0 marketing other than direct outreach and mindless hope that people will stumble on it.

if i fix these things, i’m pretty sure it’s something people would actually want.

when i launched it, i got extremely distracted building something i thought would be cool during a 6 week sprint for builders called buildspace nights & weekends (RIP)

pursuing stuff i think is cool is my worst fucking trait, but that’s for another post.

i spent the day today working on marketing from change please, a coffee shop that helps homeless people looking for employment opportunities by training them to be baristas and offering them work.

it was really fun, and i will be doing it every week.

i’m really excited to see the product grow, see more and more people using it and get to my first 100 users within the next 6 months. when i achieve that, i will have achieved the main thing i have ever been unsure i could do – be an entrepeneur.

for anyone reading this, don’t do stuff because you think it’s cool or will impress someone. either do it out of love, or do it out of a fuck you to anyone who made you feel like you couldn’t do something, including yourself.

watch me grow, i’ll do my best to help you grow with me.