Eddy Vinck is a software developer in the Netherlands who builds side projects after his 32-hour-a-week consultancy job. In mid-June 2024 he launched his first ever SaaS, Blog Recorder, a tool that lets writers record blog posts with their voice and turns the audio into formatted articles. As a first-time founder, he learned the business side as he went, shipping the product before he had any of it figured out.

His first paying customer came from his own corner of the developer world. Kent C. Dodds, a well-known educator Eddy had followed for years, joined the early testing group and became the first official subscriber. The two met face to face at THAT Conference in Wisconsin in late July 2024, where Eddy also ran a sponsor booth. The booth almost certainly lost money once travel from Europe was counted, but it gave him direct conversations with potential users and a clearer read on their doubts.

Over the following months he focused heavily on the product, adding custom post statuses, new export formats, a richer editor with code blocks, and the feature he was proudest of: personalized AI models that study a writer's existing work and produce posts that sound more like them. By the end of December 2024, roughly six months in, Blog Recorder had 17 paying customers, more than 250 signups, over $250 in MRR, and had crossed $2,000 in total revenue.

The hard lesson was that product updates alone do not bring people in. When Eddy went heads-down building the personalized AI feature, signups visibly dropped, and his own MRR chart flattened after the launch bump. He tried a free standalone tool called OG Image Maker in December to pull in traffic, an early experiment in marketing through a useful side tool, and saw a small signup spike. Going into 2025 he set a goal of $1,000 MRR while being honest that the current growth rate would not get him there without a real shift toward consistent promotion.