Building a SaaS After Bedtime

Building a SaaS while working full-time is mostly about finding small pockets of time.

For me it’s nights. After the kids go to sleep and the house finally gets quiet. Usually around 9:30pm I open the laptop and get maybe an hour or two before my brain is done for the day.

Some nights I write real features. Other nights I just fix tests or clean up code.

Progress is slower than I’d like, but it adds up.

It’s starting to feel real

Months of small sessions later and ParkMyAWS is starting to feel like a real product.

Scheduling works. EC2 and RDS instances stop and start automatically. There’s even a savings dashboard showing how much you’d save compared to running everything 24/7.

The core loop is solid — connect your AWS account, set a schedule, and the tool handles the rest.

The coding isn’t the hardest thing

The funny part is the coding isn’t the hardest part of building a SaaS. It’s everything around it:

• Legal pages
• Billing integration
• Monitoring and error tracking
• Security reviews
• Terms of service

The unglamorous stuff every SaaS needs but nobody talks about. Each of these items sounds small on its own, but they all take real time — especially when you’re working in 90-minute windows.

The rhythm

What I’ve learned is that consistency matters more than intensity. One hour every night adds up faster than a random weekend marathon every few weeks. The context stays fresh, the momentum stays alive, and the product slowly takes shape.

If you’ve ever built something on the side, you probably know the feeling. The progress is invisible for a while, and then one day you look at what you’ve built and realize it’s actually becoming something.