Paidly

Drawing on my experiences with invoicing, I looked into what was available in the market for iOS and Android. While many industry leaders had comprehensive invoicing in their mobile apps, I was surprised to find Stripe's app ecosystem lacking even the most basic features.

Based upon this discovery and knowing how integral Stripe was to payments on the web, I started diving into hundreds of reviews, uncovering what people liked and disliked about existing applications. I discovered users preferred non-subscription-based access and the ability for all the core functions found on the web version of Stripe. To further validate, I surveyed over 300 users and found that 90% were open to switching invoicing apps. That gave me the confidence to move forward.

For the MVP, I focused on what would satisfy 90%+ of users: core Stripe invoice basics like sending, viewing status, changing amounts, and adding items. I deliberately deprioritized niche features to ship faster and validate demand.

Using a prototype in Figma and testing it in Maze, I was ready to take things to development and build an MVP. Realizing my development knowledge was not deep enough for the technical challenges ahead, I screened and hired a capable team of mobile developers.

Our collaboration happened primarily through Slack for daily communication. I broke the product into a Kanban board, giving developers clear scope and priorities while keeping momentum toward launch. They were provided with all the tools and documentation needed, including access to Figma and an extensively user-tested high-fidelity prototype.

Paidly was my first attempt at building a startup. After having the platform up for around 6 months, and having 2,000 SMBs trust the product enough to run $500K+ in invoices through it, I decided to end the project earlier than planned after a security issue with a contractor I hired introduced technical issues that became a constant headache.

It taught me that technical vetting is a founder responsibility, not something you can outsource to reputation or references. I now treat security review and code audits as non-negotiable before shipping anything financial or high stakes, even at the MVP stage.