u/Doby89

I'm a software engineer, and I'm looking to learn more about the problems Shopify merchants actually deal with day to day.

So I'm offering \*\*up to 40 hours of development completely free for a month\*\* to 3 Shopify stores.

I'm specifically looking for merchants who have a \*\*repetitive, annoying, time-consuming problem\*\* involving their Shopify store.

The reason I'm doing this is simple: I want to understand the business problem before I build a Shopify app around it.

Qualified stores:

\- 1,000+ SKUs

\- Multiple vendors/brands/categories

\- 3+ installed apps

\- 5k+ monthly revenue

I'm a software engineer, and I'm looking to learn more about the problems Shopify merchants actually deal with day to day.

So I'm offering **up to 40 hours of development completely free for a month** to 3 Shopify stores.

I'm specifically looking for merchants who have a **repetitive, annoying, time-consuming problem** involving their Shopify store.

The reason I'm doing this is simple: I want to understand the business problem before I build a Shopify app around it.

Qualified stores:

- 1,000+ SKUs

- Multiple vendors/brands/categories

- 3+ installed apps

- 5k+ monthly revenue

I'm a software engineer and I'm looking to learn more about the problems Shopify merchants actually deal with day to day.

So I'm offering up to 40 hours of development completely free for a month to a 3 Shopify stores.

I'm specifically looking for merchants who have a repetitive, annoying, time-consuming problem involving their Shopify store.

The reason I'm doing this is simple: I want to understand the business problem before I build a Shopify app around it.

Qualified stores:

• 1,000+ SKUs
• Multiple vendors/brands/categories
• 3+ installed apps
• 5k+ monthly revenue

I am building a new SaaS, and I need help from marketing experts. As the title says, what would you use if you were me? I am on lean budget by the way.

My prev attempt lessons:

I have an experience from building a b2c saas earlier that pretty much dead now after months of trying everything but validating the idea with my targeted customers.

A promise to myself:

So I took a promise that I won't start building any product without validating it with my main targeted audience. So my question now how do I validate a product before building it? And how to find the channels where I can I find those audience?

My targeted audience:

I am targeting Shopify merchants.

About a year ago, I started building a SaaS for local merchants in Egypt.

The idea came from something I kept noticing.

Most technology companies here focus on medium and large merchants. Companies like InstaShop and Breadfast have built great businesses, but they typically work with merchants that meet certain operational and commercial requirements. On top of that, they often charge commissions that can reach 15–35% of every order.

That made me wonder:

What about the thousands of small neighborhood stores that don't fit those requirements?

In Egypt, small supermarkets are everywhere. They already have loyal customers, but most of them still rely on phone calls and WhatsApp for orders.

Instead of building another marketplace, I decided to build a subscription-based SaaS that lets these merchants have their own online ordering system without paying a commission on every order.

I've been coding it for about a year, but I only started talking to merchants and testing it in the real world around two months ago.

So far:

• 16 merchants have signed up (mostly supermarkets and pharmacies).
• 3 real customer orders have been placed.
• One customer has already come back and placed a second order.
• I also ran my first Meta (Facebook & Instagram) ad campaign, which brought both new merchants and the first customers.

These numbers aren't huge, and I'm not trying to pretend they are.

I'm simply trying to answer one question:

Is there enough validation here to keep going?

This is a completely bootstrapped project. I work on it after my full-time job, and it's entirely self-funded, so every month of development has a real cost.

I'm also thinking about the long-term business model.

If I eventually reach 200–300 active merchants, I could potentially build additional revenue streams by connecting wholesalers with those merchants. Another idea is replacing part (or all) of the merchant subscription with advertising revenue in the future.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on a few questions:

1. At what point would you personally consider this enough validation to keep investing time and money?
2. Would you keep the monthly subscription, or would you eventually move toward an advertising-based model?
3. Does building a wholesale network on top of a merchant SaaS sound like a natural expansion, or is it a distraction?

I'd really appreciate honest feedback, especially from founders who've gone through this stage before.