Just wrapped up a challenge to build a SaaS as quickly as possible 🚀
The goal?
Create a working SaaS product that analyzes crypto content, solo from scratch, within the timespan of 2 days!
Here's how it went...
I spent the first 6 hours researching, planning and designing what to build and how to build it. With crypto being my focus area, I wanted something that could extract insights from videos and provide actionable data.
The frontend work consumed about 10 hours, building a responsive Next.js website with landing page and dashboard.
I was able to build a complete frontend containing:
• A pricing overview page
• Checkout flow
• Dark/light mode with persistence
• Full legal documentation
And much more, even dark/light mode. It's actually cool that it turned out this way with limited time!
The dashboard uses Chart.js for visualizations and lets users track price targets, follow event timelines, and filter through raw data, which can be exported as .csv and used for ones own purposes.
Backend development took roughly 6 hours, setting up FastAPI, YouTube caption extraction, and database integration. While I've built Flask and Django backends before, this was my first FastAPI project.
And that's where things got tricky. 😅
The FastAPI with background tasks became a nightmare, concurrent operations kept hanging. With only 4 hours left to debug, I couldn't solve the fundamental issues with the AI-generated boilerplate code.
Payment integration was another unexpected challenge. Cryptomus rejected my application twice, first for an incomplete offer (fair), then because "we do not work with this category of projects." Despite checking their guidelines thoroughly, I never found any mention of restrictions on crypto+AI projects.
The biggest lessons I'm taking away:
Don't experiment with new tech stacks during tight deadlines, especially AI-generated ones. Stick with what you know or learn new tools beforehand.
Payment integration needs more planning than I anticipated. Having a complete, polished product ready before applying to payment providers is crucial.
I spent too much time (again🫠) perfecting the frontend while the backend needed more attention, a classic mistake when racing against the clock.
Despite the challenges, I'm not abandoning CryptoGist. It's actually a tool I genuinely need myself! I'll keep developing it, try different payment processors like Coinbase Commerce, or maybe make it open source.
Checkout the website to see the final result: https://www.cryptogist.xyz
What's next?
This 48-hour sprint taught me what's possible with modern tools, and eventhough there where some pitfalls, I believe that challenges such as these will allow you to become better and better with each iteration, allowing you to slowly setup a framework for success and a structured approach to quickly get stuff off the ground.
I like to try out stuff and build cool things, give me a follow on x.com if you want to see more of my failed attempts (and successes)👋
