Building the boring stuff (pricing, auth, payments) and learning Reddit the hard way.
I have no idea if anyone read yesterday’s post. Maybe 2 people, maybe 0. I’m not gonna lie and pretend I have some big audience watching this, because the whole point of this experiment is starting from nothing.
So here’s what happened on Day 2.
The product side
ZeroToSale already has the bones of a real SaaS, but a lot of that “bones” stuff is invisible until it actually works end to end. Today was about making sure the boring parts don’t break, because boring parts are exactly what kills a launch.
Pricing. Two options: $9/month, or $89 one-time for lifetime access. Free users get the first 3 steps of the journey (idea validation stuff), the rest is locked behind pro.
Auth. Sign up, log in, straight into onboarding. No email confirmation friction, because every extra step before someone sees value is a reason to leave.
Stripe. Checkout flow, webhook that upgrades your plan the second you pay, customer portal so people can manage or cancel their subscription themselves. Tested it end to end with a real test card, the upgrade hits the database correctly.
The gating. Steps 1 to 3 are free so anyone can try the core idea (AI generates a personalized roadmap step). Steps 4 to 14 are locked for pro. That’s the actual monetization test of this whole experiment, can a $9/mo or $89 offer convert when you have 0 audience and 0 ad spend ?
None of this is glamorous. Nobody tweets “I configured a Stripe webhook today” and gets 500 likes. But if step 7 of the roadmap is literally “get your first sale”, the payment flow better not be broken when that happens.
The audience side
This is the part I actually find harder than the code.
My Reddit account was brand new, 3 karma when I started this. The plan isn’t to spam ZeroToSale everywhere, it’s the opposite. I’ve been spending time on r/indiehackers, r/SaaS, r/assetbuilders, r/Freelancers and r/freelancing, just... answering questions. Real ones. Someone asks “how do I validate my idea”, I answer like a person, not like a brand.
Karma went from 6 to 16 today. Doesn’t sound like much, but on Reddit, going from “new account nobody trusts” to “account that can actually post without getting auto-removed” is the real unlock.
And today I did the scary part: sent my first 2 DMs. Reached out to people I’d already talked to in comments, solo founders at the exact stage ZeroToSale is built for (just launched, first sale, trying to figure out what’s next). Offered free pro access in exchange for honest feedback within a week.
No replies yet. Might get zero. But that’s the data point I actually care about, not likes, not views, whether a real person says “yes, I’ll try this.”
Tomorrow
More Reddit conversations, more DMs, and depending on replies, maybe my first onboarding session with an actual stranger using ZeroToSale.
Zero budget. Zero audience. Still zero sales. Day 2 done.
Follow the build:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martincavil
Portfolio: martincavil.com/en
Subscribe for the next post: substack.com/@martincvl