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My Landing Page Obsession Killed My SaaS Product
TL;DR: Tayoou quit his telecom job to start a Shopify agency but found low willingness to pay. He pivoted to building ElemSprite, a SaaS to help Shopify store owners customize templates. He spent 2 months on the core product but then 3 months obsessing over the landing page as a backend developer unfamiliar with frontend design. After launching in month 9, he got 50 signups but zero paid conversions. Then Shopify released a native AI feature that did exactly what ElemSprite did, for free. His post-mortem identified critical errors: development cycle too long, skipped validation, chose cold start with no audience, poor user onboarding, and platform dependency risk. He is now building a new tool called Lift with a staged validation approach.
Key Insights
- Spending 3 months on a landing page vs 2 months on the product is a dangerous ratio that delays market feedback
- Getting Sherlocked by Shopify illustrates the existential risk of building features the platform itself can easily add
- 50 signups with zero paid conversions signals a validation gap, not just a marketing problem
- Cold start without an existing audience makes early traction significantly harder for solo founders
Actionable Takeaways
- Set a hard deadline to show your ugly MVP to 5 real potential users before polishing
- Validate willingness to pay before investing months in development
- Avoid building features that solve a pain point the platform owner can trivially fix
- Use a template for your landing page during validation instead of building from scratch
Principles Validated (2)
Read full article on indiehackers.comAdded Feb 15, 2026