Post-Mortem: Lessons from a 1.5 year SaaS Journey
Failing to reach product market fit sucks.
We thought we were solving a big problem. Turns out, we weren’t solving it big enough—or for enough people. Juttu—a B2B SaaS to automate recruiting and scheduling for Product Teams—was supposed to make it easy to talk to customers. In some ways, it did. But as we shut it down, we’re left with lessons worth sharing. This is the story of what went right, what didn’t, and what I’ll do differently next time.
1. Overview
Juttu wasn’t a rocket ship. It was a self-funded project. That meant we had to work on the side to extend our runway, which slowed us down. Still, by May 2023, we were interviewing product managers and finding real pain: teams weren’t talking to users enough. By June, we felt confident we had problem validation. We quit our jobs and committed to building an MVP.
By April 2024, we had our first paying client. By May, we had our second. It felt like progress. But by September, we had only two paying clients—far from the 10 we needed to keep going. Conversations with those clients confirmed our suspicion: we hadn’t solved the problem well enough to scale. We decided to shut it down in November 2024.
2. What Went Right
The Product Worked
For the right people, Juttu did what it promised. Our two paying clients loved it and used it regularly. That felt good.
We Made It Happen
Building a fully remote SaaS company from scratch, across three countries, was no joke. Incorporating the company? Figuring out international tax laws? Navigating time zones? Harder than expected, but we made it work.
The Team
We were scrappy and resilient. Founding (and I guess first time founding) is such an emotional journey. Your self-worth (at least mine) is very much wrapped up in the products success. Shutting down was tough, but we stayed kind towards each other and made the decision together.
3. What Went Wrong
Product-Market Fit
Rob Snyder’s PMF levels nail it:
Level 1: Don’t have a customer case study that’s worth replicating.
Level 2: Have a customer case study but can’t consistently replicate it.
Level 3: Can replicate a customer case study, but it’s not a “hell yes” every time.
Level 4: Can replicate a “hell yes” customer case study but need a growth lever.
Level 5: “Hell yes” case study + growth lever, holding on for dear life.
We never made it past Level 2. Our two clients loved the product, but we couldn’t replicate their enthusiasm with anyone else. No PMF, no scale.
Calendly integration
We wanted to be clever and not rebuilt the whole scheduling part of the product. But start as a Calendly integration. After building an API integration for months, we got shut down by a change in Calendly’s open api usage terms of service. Building our own scheduling and login increased the scope of our initial product.
Sales, Sales, Sales
We didn’t realize early enough that this was a sales-heavy product. Juttu wasn’t plug-and-play; it had to integrate deeply into workflows. That meant long conversations, customizations, and hand-holding. We weren’t ready for that level of effort.
Pricing
To make the numbers work, we needed to charge $200 per product team. That’s $1,000 a month for a typical product org. The problem? For most teams, talking to users wasn’t painful enough to justify that cost. They liked the idea but didn’t need it.
Market Dynamics
We had three more clients almost ready to sign. After weeks of demos and negotiations, they dropped out—internal restructuring, layoffs, budget freezes. Things outside our control, but a reminder of how precarious the market was.
4. Lessons Learned
Separate Problem Validation from Solution Validation
Teams not talking to users? Real problem. Automating interviews? Not the solution. We validated the problem but jumped to a solution that didn’t stick. Internal problems (such as access to users) and a lack of accountability for teams to actually do Discovery were the real problems.
Winning Isn’t Binary
PMF isn’t “you have it or you don’t.” It’s a spectrum. Some of our competitors also had slow growth and challenges, but maybe just enough to keep going. The decision to stop is harder when you’re not failing outright—just not growing fast enough.
Don’t Build a Vitamin
We built a nice-to-have (a vitamin) instead of a must-have (a painkiller). Teams liked the idea of Juttu, but when it came time to buy or put in work to make it fit their workflows, they hesitated.
Market Maturity Matters
The market wasn’t ready. Product discovery tooling is still immature. Some teams care deeply about talking to users, but the broader market hasn’t fully grasped the value yet. Until they do, adoption will be slow.
You Have to Live It
A lot of these lessons sound obvious in hindsight. But no blog post, book, or mentor could’ve taught us what we learned by doing. Founding is personal. You have to go through it yourself.
5. Gratitude and Closure
The past 1.5 years have been a crash course in starting and running a company. Founding isn’t just about building a product—it’s about working with co-founders, navigating tax laws, staying motivated, and dealing with failure. It’s about all the messy, human stuff.
I’m grateful to my co-founders and our clients for coming along for the ride. Shutting down stings, but it left me with one clear thought: this is just the beginning.
I asked myself, how would I regret starting Juttu? The answer was simple: by stopping the entrepreneurial journey. If I keep going and apply these lessons, this experience will have been worth it. The mistakes we made? I’ll avoid those next time. And I’ll make new ones. That’s the game.
Building something people want—enough to pay for—is hard. It’s also the best job in the world. Onwards.
Step one of your journey completed. Good work, keep going!
Thanks for sharing. Next one is gonna work!