makeee's comments

> I'm sure its nice to have that glue code written for you

I think you answered your own question there. There aren't any rules dictating how many lines of code must be written before it counts as "creating something".

Founder of https://divjoy.com here. There's a lot of good options mentioned in this thread. Divjoy offers a fair amount of customizability prior to code export, allowing you to pick CRA or Next.js, specific CSS framework, Auth0 or Firebase, and other technical options. Give it a try if that sound appealing :)

I made https://divjoy.com, which was mentioned by the other commenter. I'm obviously biased, but I'd say about 95% of users I talk to say they feel it saved them significant time. Of the people that request a refund, the issue is generally that they aren't happy with the UI kit (I give them Bootstrap, Bulma, or Material UI, they want Tailwind instead) or the database integration (I give them Firestore, they really want something relational). So basically, boilerplates can save you time but make sure you're still using the appropriate tech given your project and pre-existing knowledge. Happy to answer any questions.

I was doing some contract work on the side while building the MVP, but switched to full-time right after launching it. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that though.. basically burnt through all my savings over 4 months. Right as I was starting too look for more contract work I ended up winning a $15k grant from YC [0] which bridged the gap until I got to profitability. Now at around $6k - $10k/m (not recurring, so it varies).

[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2...

I've been a solo-founder for the past 12 years (currently: https://divjoy.com). I use a kanban board in Notion and work about 4-6 productive hours a day on average. Some days it's 2, some days it's 12, but I don't force myself to a super strict schedule because that has led to burnout in the past.

I try to take a day off every week, but often it's random based on whether friends/wife want to do something fun on a given day.

The only exception is if I'm leading up to a big product launch and need to grind through that "last 10%". In that case switching into hyper planning mode seems to help me a lot. AMA!

I think you can validate a market exists by talking to people and looking at existing products, but you can't validate product market fit without building the product and seeing if people will pay.

I built a dev tool that helps people jump-start React development projects (think boilerplate, but way more customizable). As soon as it hit $2k/month, where I could barely live off the revenue, I felt that was product market fit for me. It was solving a problem for some amount of people and I could continue to work on it full-time. Now doing ~$6k/month.

My project is https://divjoy.com, a React codebase generator that gives you a complete web app with UI, auth, database, subscription payments, and many other small details that are annoying to build yourself.

You can customize your tech stack and play around with the built-in "low code" editor by clicking a template on the homepage (no login needed).

Feedback much appreciated!

Spent a couple years working on a Patreon competitor that did some cool things with the Instagram and Twitter APIs to unlock premium content (you pay then auto-follow their secondary private account with premium content). API changes screwed me over. Should have bailed then, but I kept trying as an undifferentiated Patreon competitor for another year without much luck. Lesson: If you have a unique twist stop trying if that twist doesn't pan out. Also beware of social network APIs.

Hey, I've been a solo-founder for the past decade and happy to chat anytime. Twitter/email in bio.

You may like https://startupschool.org, as they have weekly group sessions where you can talk about your struggles. I took part for two batches and met some other solo-founders that I've stayed in touch with.

I'm building https://divjoy.com, which gives you everything you list as part of a Node/React/Firebase/Stripe codebase. It's fairly lightweight. You handle admin stuff through your Firebase and Stripe console directly. It integrates with Stripe's hosted Checkout [0] and Customer Portal [1], so all that user-facing UI is handled by Stripe.

[0] https://stripe.com/payments/checkout

[1] https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/customer-porta...

It depends a lot on what your product does, so it's hard to give an estimate. I've built SaaS products that only took a few weeks. I've built ones that took 6 months.

One way to save significant time/money is by using a SaaS starter kit. There's one for just about every stack these days: https://bullettrain.co (Rails), https://divjoy.com (Node/React), https://saaspegasus.com (Django), https://spark.laravel.com (PHP/Laravel). Ideally you're not wasting any time on this boilerplate.

Hosting: Yeah I really need to expand those hosting options. It was one of those things I expected to do much sooner, but didn't end up getting as many requests for hosts as I expected (at least compared to other features). That's changing a bit now now that Divjoy gives you something a bit more advanced. That attracts customers with more complex needs and, it would seem, more opinions around hosting. Firebase Hosting and Heroku are up next. Probably AWS after that.

Previewing code: Happy to send over an example codebase if you shoot an email to [email protected] :) I'm going to be rolling out a code preview so customers can explore what their code will look like when exported. Plan is to let non-customers browse at least some it it.. or maybe just view half of each file.. or maybe I'm overthinking it and I should just let everyone see the code and emphasize they aren't legally licensed to use it. Anyway, definitely something I've been thinking about.

Glad you like it! By functions as a service do you mean functionality hosted by me or shipping serverless functions with the codebase? At the moment you get any necessary server logic as serverless functions (formatted correctly for your chosen host) or if you choose "Other" for your host you get an Express.js server. Definitely interested in supporting AWS cognito/dynamo/s3 or bundling all that up into an AWS Amplify option.

Yeah there's always a bit of a trade-off there. You naturally learn how things work very well by building them yourself. In terms of the code that Divjoy gives you, I try to keep abstractions to a minimum and include as many helpful code comments as I can.

Totally understand that! TS is coming at some point.. just don't have an ETA yet as I need to iron out some issues with TS support in the editor.

Great to hear! Out of curiosity, would you prefer Divjoy offer the UI for that or would you want to roll your own (or use the official Tailwind UI)?

Check out http://docs.divjoy.com for a changelog and roadmap. Tailwind is coming this year. If there's anything you need that's not on there feel free to shoot me a message. And yeah I was really excited to see the Stripe CTO sign up! He's used it to build a bunch of side project, including this one which is in use at his kid's school right now: https://bonjourmaclasse.com

I'm going to be adding a Tailwind option soon that gives you the basic config + no UI. Hopefully useful to people that want to roll their own or drop in components from tailwindui.com. Later this year will be building out my own Tailwind kit for Divjoy users.

Yes, for sure! A lot of people have been asking for Postgres and I want to get that in this year. For now some customers are using the "Other" DB option, which gives you a REST API where you can connect to your DB of choice.

Hey HN, Divjoy is a tool that allows you to generate a fully-functioning SaaS app. You get a React UI, auth, database, stripe payments, billing, and so on.

What makes it different from your average boilerplate is that you can customize your tech stack and UI before exporting your code. For example you can choose between Material UI, Bootstrap, or Bulma for your UI. Firebase or Auth0 for auth, and so on down the stack.

It then runs your app in our built-in editor where you can play with styles and drop in new components from the Divjoy library. The idea is to give you that "Aha! I'm building something and it works!" moment right away. That's a better experience than spending your first few hours sifting through docs.

You can try all this out without signing up or paying. Just head to the site, pick some options, then a template.

PS. You may remember my original Show HN from over a year ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044). The 2.0 version takes that concept and expands it from mostly static sites to full SaaS apps.