Back in November I wrapped up the Vibe.NET series with the launch of DSAR Helper - a simple tool to help UK SMEs manage Data Subject Access Requests. It was a good build: clean workflow, Stripe integration, PDF generation, shipped on time (almost).
Next can something many developers that try a side-project SaaS see - nobody came!
Six months on it’s worth being honest about why. The problem wasn’t the product, it was the problem and target buyrer. DSAR requests hit most small businesses occasionally at best. When one lands, a spreadsheet and a carefully worded email is genuinely enough. There’s no recurring pain, no search traffic, no moment where someone thinks “I need a tool for this.” It’s a vitamin: nice in theory, not solving a real pain.
The enterprise compliance tools that do well in this space earn their place because they solve it at volume: redaction, audit trails, and team workflows that a solo operator simply doesn’t need. I could have built toward that but with no organic traffic hitting the site there was no signal worth chasing. I perhaps could have really pushed it with outreach to get feedback to find product/market fit some way down the line but there’s better ideas to work on.
The real value was in the learning: Stripe from scratch, PDF generation, validating a deployment pipeline end to end. All useful, none wasted. As a product it missed the mark solving a problem people aren’t searching for - I could have validated that with a simple landing page.
Lesson filed. On to the next one.