An appointment scheduling app A project we built just to scratch that "let's make a CRUD app" itch back when we had literally zero customers and thought if we ship this, they'll totally use

Birth Year: 2012, Lifespan: 12, Story by: @anonymous

Project Description

Two friends built a calendar and booking tool for venues like wedding halls and restaurants. My friend wrote the code, and I tried to turn interest into invoices.

We went hard on outreach: small ads, flyers, cold calls, and in-person visits. I even hired a salesperson on a fixed salary plus commission. He visited a few venues, then started asking us to cover dinners. The numbers were terrible: one customer would bring in about 10 units per year, while we were spending close to 100 units just to get a lead.

After three months, no sales and no promised “portfolio.” I was still spending money entertaining prospects.

On the tech side, we had one developer with a full-time day job. In 3–4 months we landed maybe 4–5 demo meetings. Every demo went badly: either the site crashed, or prospects said:

I thought this would be like Excel.

Once, a middleman tried to resell our product to a company—by chance the same company where our developer worked. Nothing came of it.

After a year, hosting costs were higher than revenue. We shut it down.

Where the idea came from?

From our brilliantly overclocked brains. (We saw venues managing bookings on paper and assumed a digital tool would be an easy win. We never validated this with real customers before building.)

What was the tech & stack?

It was the PHP era, and we followed the trend. A simple web app, but unreliable in demos.

What went right?

We shipped, showed it to the market, and learned fast. We realized that sales and marketing often cost more than development. Timing matters too; even a good idea can fail if the market isn’t ready.

Why did it fail? What went wrong?

We had no confirmed customers or clear demand.
The cost to win one customer was higher than the money we could make from them.
Demos failed and destroyed trust.
Wrong sales hire, with no process or experience.
Development was part-time and progress was too slow.

Key lessons & advice

Don’t build a SaaS product before you have customers ready to use it.
If the market has no competitors, it may mean no demand. Copy a working model first.
Keep the product simple and close to what customers already understand.
Make sure demos are reliable—first impressions matter.
Always compare how much a customer will pay with how much it costs to get them.