Shut down my SaaS after 3 years and almost $500k raised

After 3 years of building and almost $500k in funding from some big name VCs, and $50k of my own cash, I’ve officially shut down my SaaS startup. It hurts like none other — but it was time.

We set out to build an AI teleprompter and testimonial video platform to help small businesses and brands capture better video content from their real customers.

Think: browser-based recording, a built-in script assistant powered by AI, auto-embeds for reviews on your site, and a slick interface built for non-technical users.

We launched, iterated fast, got real (free) users, had strong design, and solved a real pain point. But despite dozens of conversations, cold outreach, landing pages, and a polished MVP, we struggled to find true traction. No channel gave us repeatable, scalable growth.

It felt like we were selling a vitamin people would take free, but not a painkiller they'd pay for.

Under the hood, a bigger problem was brewing: my technical co-founder was slowly checking out. He stopped communicating (would go on vacation without updating me), taking forever to fix bugs, and most problematic — building features completely different than customers asked for, or the wireframes I'd created based on those discovery calls.

I later would find out he had been vibe coding almost the majority of our time working together, and given it was relatively unheard of in the time of hiring him, he was able to fool the rest of the team that he was a cracked developer — showing us wild crazy builds during the interviews.

Turns out, he'd actually used Cursor to build those, and actually lacked many of the skills to build what we needed, and hence features got built wildly different than requested.

Given I'd already invested in him (both a six-figure salary + equity), I tried to coach him, reason with him, structure the workflow, but nothing stuck. I talked with our investors, and they concluded we had no choice but to terminate him.

Our original contractors (who were great, and built our proprietary auto-editing back-end) had also moved on to full-time jobs that paid 5x more than we could afford, so hiring them wasn't an option.

I kept going solo for several months pitching customers, redesigning things, exploring B2B licensing, even learning to vibe code myself — but eventually realized I was pouring time and money into something with no realistic escape velocity.

We’re now trying to sell the tech (or license the IP) — but, as many of you know, a no-revenue SaaS without a technical team doesn’t get much attention. If anyone’s interested in a headless video recording platform with automatic editing & testimonial embeds, feel free to DM me.

I’ve learned more in the last 3 years than I ever did in school — about product, co-founder dynamics, psychology, customer discovery, vibe coding, and the emotional cost of waiting too long to quit.