I have 8 users and Google Gemini is my Marketing Manager. Week 1 Reality.
Source: Dev.to
Hey Dev.to! 👋
I’m a developer, not a marketer. To be honest, I have no clue what I’m doing when it comes to selling software.
So, last Monday, when I decided to pull the trigger and release the public beta of my new tool NeoShiftBI, I hired the only marketing manager I could afford: Google Gemini. I’ve been following its daily posting plans for LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok blindly.
Week 1 Results
- Signups: 8 (mostly from spamming my friends on WhatsApp groups 😅).
- Marketing Strategy: “Do what the AI says.”
- Current Status: Gemini told me to write a #watercooler post on Dev.to today to “build community,” so here I am.
Why I Actually Built This (The Origin Story)
The previous company I worked at (an e‑groceries platform) went under. While we were alive, one of our biggest pain points was data fragmentation:
- App data lived in MongoDB.
- Warehouse management used PostgreSQL.
- Financial projections were in Excel/Google Sheets.
Even with a data team, the tech team was constantly building fragile ETL pipelines just to produce simple visualizations for investors. This cluttered our backlog and killed our velocity.
Now that I have a lot more free time, I decided to fix it.
What I Built
NeoShiftBI automates the “Tech Team” bottleneck:
- No ETL required: Connects directly to NoSQL, SQL, and Sheets.
- AI Schema Detection: Scans data and automatically understands relationships (no manual joins).
- Text‑to‑SQL: Describe the chart you want (e.g., “Show me AOV by city”) and the AI writes the query.
The Current Struggles
- Marketing: Clearly, 8 users isn’t “viral,” but it’s a start.
- Payments (The Pivot): I tried to get approved by Paddle, but they rejected me because I lack transaction history—the classic chicken‑and‑egg problem for new SaaS. I’m now pivoting to Lemon Squeezy and hoping their compliance team approves me soon. 🍋
I’m offering free upgrades to the Basic Plan for the beta cohort if anyone wants to roast my onboarding flow.
Beta Register:
Invite Code: BETA-C6423CDB
Wish me luck (and hopefully Lemon Squeezy approves me soon).