What nobody tells you about traction. Reaching 1,5k users changed my day-to-day life completely

I’ve been building apps for 3 years little to no success. Recently, I launched my first successful startup –Yadaphone. It lets people and teams make cheap international calls from the browser. In under 3 months, it reached 1500 users, 7 enterprise customers, and brought in $15,000 in revenue.

Before that, I thought I had a clear idea of how indie hacking works: you build something, launch it, get users, and continue doing the same stuff as at the start, but on a larger scale (and get $$$). That couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are the top problems I wish someone had warned me about.

1. A lot of eyeballs are good, but be prepared, the sharks will come

I posted about my app several times on Reddit and X. A few posts blew up, and it got featured on Product Hunt. Over a million people saw it. 50,000 visited the website. We got tons of sign-ups and sales. But along with the good users came fraudsters and hackers.

I spent several nights fighting them off live. Some were successful and we lost a bit of money to fraud. Others were dumb and we blocked them instantly. Lesson: if you’re even mildly successful, malicious users will show up. From day 1, implement email quality checks, suspicious activity monitoring, and an easy way to ban malicious users.

2. 90% of my time is taken by support

If you think computers are deterministic, you’re in for a surprise. Before hitting 1500 users, I had no idea how many things could go wrong for different people in completely different ways.

I used to spend 3 to 4 hours a day answering support requests. Now I timebox it to no more than one hour. Support has become a permanent part of my daily routine. I built my own ticket system with Cursor. Every day I open my admin dashboard and go through pending tickets. When I reply, it saves the response in a thread. Once in a while, I spot a repeating issue and add a tip in the app to prevent it. That helps reduce, but never fully stops the related requests.

3. Give refunds early

Sometimes a customer is pissed, and no amount of support will fix it. If you can afford it, offer a no-questions-asked refund. It’s cheaper than dealing with disputes. First, disputes are expensive. Second, you’ll probably lose. Third, an angry customer costs more than a refund. They leave bad reviews and scare off others.

If your product didn’t work for them, it’s not a good fit. Say goodbye and move on.

By the way, 90% of support requests come from customers who spend under $5. People who spend $20+ make barely any requests, and I hardly ever hear from the enterprise folks – they just use the app and chill.

4. Planning my time is the biggest pain now

When I was just a developer, I didn’t care how long things took. I got paid either way and didn’t feel any responsibility for the outcome. Running your own business is the exact opposite. If you don’t plan your time, you miss bug reports, support tickets pile up, and features go unbuilt. You lose money.

Now I start every day by planning. I split all tasks into three areas: routine, product, and personal. I don’t allow more than 3 or 4 tasks per area and track time spent on each. If I forget something, I don’t just add it to the list. I write it at the bottom to remind myself that I messed up and need to plan better tomorrow.

5. Talk to your users

I send an email to every paying customer within an hour after purchase. It helps with three things. First, if something went wrong, I catch it early and fix it before they give up or write to support. Second, if it went well, I ask for a review. This skews reviews massively toward the positive. That’s how my app hit a 4.7 Trustpilot rating in under 3 months. Third, once in a while, these emails turn into real conversations. I get to know my users, learn about their background, and sometimes, I get crazy stories from their lives. As a bonus point of being a founder who talks to users, you get to know people of all walks of life and burst your X/Reddit bubble.

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So this is my take on how getting traction changes your life as a founder. This was a dump of thoughts I have on the topic. Let me know what you struggled with at this point and how you solved those problems