My 1st SAAS made no money but changed everything.

Hey hackers, it’s Eric 👋

I wanted to share a personal update about Founder Odyssey, my very first SaaS project.

When I launched it on Product Hunt, I was blown away, 300+ users joined in just 3 days. Then Superhuman featured it in their newsletter, visibility went through the roof, and it completely changed my trajectory.

Founder Odyssey was built to help founders validate their startup ideas before wasting time or money, by gathering real evidence of market demand through tools like the Market Size Analyzer, Reddit Researcher, and Persona/Interview Generator.

The goal was simple:
→ Follow a structured validation pattern
→ Collect real-world signals of interest
→ Be challenged and guided by an AI validation companion

In just a few minutes, anyone could get clarity on whether their product idea was heading in the right direction.

But in the end, it was too complicated to monetize such product without aggressive marketing, especially when you have to face products big LLMs that can also do the job with good prompt engineering (had the “no way 😵‍💫” moment when Open AI released project management combined with deep searches).

But here’s what it brought me even if it wasn’t directly monetizable:

• A freelance mission worth €80K in 2025, directly thanks to the exposure (the client was so impressed by the SAAS 😎)

• The ability to launch my next SaaS (BuzzClip) 10x faster, using the same structure.

• Massive visibility across networks, Twitter, LinkedIn, real credibility as a solo founder.

Founder Odyssey didn’t make me rich, but it gave me everything I needed to go faster.

If you’re thinking of building your first SaaS, stop overthinking and LAUNCH IT.
You’ll learn more in 3 days of real users than in 6 months of planning.

So yeah, over the past months, my energy and curiosity have naturally shifted toward BuzzClip, my new SaaS dedicated to AI avatar branding, helping creators and brands generate hyper-realistic talking avatars, hold products, and build entire video campaigns automatically, and even clone yourself. 😨

I’ve decided to stop working on Founder Odyssey. Still, I do believe deeply in a more community vision, like helping founders validate business idea and even find a cofounder, but I no longer have the bandwidth to maintain it properly.

I’d love to make the project open source and community-driven, allowing anyone to host it themselves and plug in their own API keys to use it.

If this sounds like something you’d like to revive, contribute to, or even take over, feel free to:
→ reply to this email
→ book a call with me

I’d be happy to chat and pass the torch.

Thank you, really 🙏

Thank you to everyone who supported, tested, and shared the project.
If you want to know more about the story of this SAAS and go to market strategy, here you go

Founder Odyssey was my first SaaS, and even if it’s the end of this chapter, it’s far from the end of the story.

Cheers & stay awesome ✌️
Eric Djavid

PS: I know I haven’t been very active for this newsletter these last months.. I’ll try to publish once every two weeks I promise 😳

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