This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by godbright
When I started building inov-ai, I wasn’t aiming for a product i was just in the journey of learning a flashy framework used to simplify the development of apps powered by LLMs. But before i know it i was in the journey of solving a real problem the pain of collecting and making sense of user feedback. Like many solo founders, I began with an idea, a tight budget, and more stubbornness than resources (Lucky being a student you get a bunch of free resources with the github student account) . Here’s a look at the gritty path of building an AI-powered SaaS product without a team, capital, or much of a safety net.
Lesson 1: The payments infrastructure Isn’t Built for Founders third world Countries
My first real hurdle wasn’t code or design it was payments. In most African countries stripe is not supported, well you would ask why did this guy start with stripe whilst there a lot of solutions out there which are supported in Africa, Well the answer was after research and considering the kind of customers that i was targeting, i was concerned that people might not be aware of the payments providers and they might hesitate to pay through them and second it was clear that all the other providers would not pay in the currency my customers would paying in, so then Stripe was an obvious choice, And thus where my journey to uncover other alternatives such as Stripe , Lemon squeezy and Polar started. But Alas, That meant I couldn’t just plug and play payments like most tutorials show. I researched endlessly, used a third-party service to incorporate abroad, verified my identity across borders, and finally, weeks later, got my first payment infrastructure live. It was messy, expensive, and time consuming.
But when the first payment notification came in (BTW it came in 3 days after incorporating stripe and weirdly enough it was not even from someone i had shared the platform with, it was just a random person in the world), it was worth it.
Lesson 2: Marketing is not an easy fit
When I posted Inov-ai on Product Hunt a popular launching tool for Saas products, I imagined at least a few hundred curious eyes. What I got was... silence. No upvotes, no traction. It was humbling.
That failure led me to explore better channels. I learned that niche communities (like certain Reddit subreddits and indie founder communities on X) were way more effective. I got real feedback, improved my landing page copy, and even landed my first customer through organic Reddit posting.
Lesson 3: User Feedback is Gold (and a Mess)
Ironically, even while building a feedback tool, I struggled with user feedback. It came in from mostly back and forth whatsApp messages, Reddit, support forms on our site, DMs all scattered. That’s when I realized inov-ai needed a smarter interface. So I built Airi, an AI bot that lets you chat with your feedback. You can ask, "What are users struggling with on onboarding?" and get a direct summary from real user data.
Lesson 4: Low Resources Means High Ingenuity
When your server has limited RAM and CPU, (Due to limited resources we are still rocking the T2 micro from AWS upgrading soon) and it sure sometimes crashes randomly under traffic, you don’t throw money at the problem you build a Telegram bot to ping you when it goes down. That's something that i picked in my rounds through Reddit posts, And so i build a bot that now also alerts me to new user signups, when the server starts or when it shuts down unexpectedly. It’s not elegant, but it works, and it proves you don’t need fancy dashboards to stay in control.
Where We Are Now
inov-ai is live and improving fast.
It helps SaaS product teams turn raw customer feedback into actionable insights by:
- Automatically organizing and tagging input from surveys and forms.
- Detecting patterns, sentiment, and key themes
- Letting you chat with your feedback through Airi to explore what matters
We recently landed an amazing startup business called ghala, And because we are still in the season of iterating fast and improving the product, we have been receiving a lot of constructive feedback.
We also opened up a free trial because we want more early-stage teams to explore the product, And above all we are learning a lot from the marketing experience.
Just click this link to check it out: [inov-ai(https://inov-ai.tech) and if you’re building in the trenches too, I’d love to hear your story.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by godbright
godbright | Sciencx (2025-07-01T13:08:19+00:00) Building AI-Powered Tools as a Solo Founder: Lessons from the Trenches (inov-ai). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/07/01/building-ai-powered-tools-as-a-solo-founder-lessons-from-the-trenches-inov-ai/
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