I didn’t start with a SaaS idea.
I started with a problem.
I was building trading systems and kept hitting the same wall:
market data APIs suck (for developers).
Too slow.
Too expensive.
Too painful to integrate.
So I stopped searching.
I built my own.
<hr>
<h2>at first, it was just for me</h2>
No landing page.
No pricing.
No roadmap.
Just:
<ul>
<li>real-time data</li>
<li>simple API</li>
<li>low latency</li>
<li>it works</li>
</ul>
That’s it.
<hr>
<h2>then people asked for it</h2>
I showed it to a few friends.
They all said the same thing:
<blockquote>
“can I use this?”
</blockquote>
That’s when it clicked.
Maybe this isn’t just my problem.
<hr>
<h2>turning it into a SaaS</h2>
This part was different.
Building for yourself:
<blockquote>
good enough
</blockquote>
Building for others:
<blockquote>
it must not break
</blockquote>
Now I had to care about:
<ul>
<li>uptime</li>
<li>documentation</li>
<li>edge cases</li>
<li>billing</li>
<li>support</li>
</ul>
Less fun. More real.
<hr>
<h2>what I learned</h2>
<ul>
<li>solving your own problem is a cheat code</li>
<li>simple &gt; clever</li>
<li>people don’t care about your tech</li>
<li>they care that it works</li>
</ul>
<hr>
still building. still improving.
if you’re working on something similar, I’d love to hear it.
you can check it out here:
<a href="https://realmarketapi.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://realmarketapi.com/</a>

Pug The Pug

A developer built a market data API after being frustrated with existing solutions while working on trading systems. What started as a personal tool became a SaaS product after friends expressed interest. Key lessons shared: solving your own problem is an advantage, simplicity beats cleverness, and users care about reliability over technical sophistication. The transition from personal tool to SaaS introduced new concerns like uptime, documentation, billing, and support.

I built this for me, for you, and for everyone