My 2025: Building, Pausing, and Finally Finding a Product People Truly Need

If I had to summarize my 2025 in one sentence:

I built many SaaS products, shut most of them down, and ended the year with a $600 MRR business.

This is not a success story. It’s a record of patience, loss of momentum, honest demand discovery, and learning when not to push further.

I didn’t build just one product

In 2025, I wasn’t all‑in on a single idea. Instead, I explored several SaaS products in parallel — and let most of them go.

Each of them shaped how I think about products today.

SurelyForm: 20,000 users, 2 paying customers

SurelyForm was the product I spent the longest time on.

It had been live for two years. I did almost no intentional marketing. Most users came from communities around my open‑source projects.

The numbers were striking:

20,000+ registered users
2 paying customers

That contrast told the whole story.

Those users were willing to sign up, try features, and give feedback. But they were not the real target customers.

I knew what the “correct” next steps were:

reposition the product
find users outside my existing circles
re‑validate willingness to pay

I didn’t do it.

Not because I didn’t know how — but because I had lost patience and emotional energy.

Continuing felt like obligation, not creation.

So in 2025, I chose to shut SurelyForm down.

I may revisit it one day. But only if I’m willing to face a completely new audience with a fresh mindset.

Tour123: Elegant engineering, incompatible reality

Tour123 is a product I still believe was conceptually strong.

It targeted a real problem:

Product demo videos become expensive and outdated as products evolve.

The idea was to generate demo videos automatically from E2E test cases. If tests run, demos stay updated.

From an engineering perspective, it worked. I spent three months building a complete version.

But Tour123 was never launched.

When I talked to potential seed customers — all paying users of my other products — I couldn’t convince a single company to adopt it.

The feedback was consistent:

Engineers didn’t want to write or maintain E2E tests just for this.
Product managers told me users don’t read documentation — they rely on human support instead.

I realized something important:

Tour123 solved an engineering problem, but not an organizational behavior problem.

It assumed teams would invest in long‑term efficiency, had mature testing cultures, and believed users would consume demo content.

Most teams don’t work that way.

I didn’t abandon Tour123 because it was bad. I abandoned it because it required changing how people work — far beyond what a solo founder could realistically influence.

Morphon: When the market moves faster than you do

Morphon didn’t start as an experiment.

It originated from a real client project — a custom low‑code internal platform, similar to Retool or ToolJet.

From there, I tried to take one step forward:

What happens if AI becomes a native part of low‑code?

I gradually added AI capabilities and shaped Morphon around that idea.

But during this process, the market shifted rapidly.

“Vibe coding” products exploded almost overnight, quickly occupying both user attention and narrative space.

At the same time, I began questioning Morphon more critically:

Was it solving a fundamentally new problem?
Was AI providing structural value, or just better demos?
Could ongoing token costs be supported by a clear business model?

I didn’t have confident answers.

Continuing would have meant entering a crowded race with rising costs and unclear differentiation.

So I paused Morphon.

Not as a failure — but as a deliberate contraction.

It reinforced an important lesson:

When technological advantages commoditize quickly, judgment matters more than execution.

Mentorbook: The first product people truly relied on

After all of this, I built Mentorbook.

It’s not a flashy product.

Mentorbook turns files, YouTube videos, or any learning material into structured courses tailored to personal goals and learning styles.

No hype. No growth hacks.

By the end of 2025, it reached $600 MRR.

That number isn’t impressive. But for the first time, I felt something different:

Users weren’t paying because they trusted me. They were paying because the product genuinely helped them learn better.

That mattered more than revenue.

I also started taking content seriously

In 2025, I began creating content consistently.

The growth was modest but real:

Douyin: 6,000+ followers
Xiaohongshu: 2,000+ followers
Twitter / X: 9,000+ followers

More importantly, a feedback loop emerged:

Write → Be seen → Build trust → Get users → Earn revenue

I realized something simple:

For independent builders, expression is part of the product.

What 2025 taught me

If I had to leave a few notes for my future self:

Failed products aren’t waste — they’re filters Without SurelyForm, Tour123, and Morphon, Mentorbook wouldn’t exist.
“Can build” is not the same as “worth building” Technical completeness doesn’t equal commercial viability.
Familiar users are not target customers Signups and feedback don’t imply willingness to pay.
Small revenue with real dependency beats fake traction
Knowing when to stop is a core skill

Closing

2025 didn’t give me a breakout success. It didn’t give me financial freedom.

But it gave me clarity.

I’m closer to a direction worth pursuing for the long term.

If you’re building, failing, pausing, and questioning yourself — you’re not alone.

This path is slow. But it’s honest.