I Built a SaaS in 3 Days as a Student — Here's Everything I Learned

On March 9th, 2026, I sat down and started writing code. By March 11th, Kreevo was entirely live and processing real user data. Here is everything that happened in those intense 72 hours, building a solo SaaS as a student developer from India.

The Problem I Wanted to Solve

I kept watching brilliant creators waste dozens of hours every single week uploading and posting manually across platforms. It felt like an obvious problem that nobody had fully or elegantly solved for free. So, I decided to build the solution myself.

The Decision to Build in 3 Days

When you build in public, momentum is everything. I deliberately skipped the long, traditional planning phase. I wrote zero design documents. I just opened VS Code and started building immediately. I committed to shipping something functional before I had the chance to start overthinking it.

The Tech Stack I Chose and Why

As an indie maker, speed and cost are my only advantages. I chose Next.js 14 because it seamlessly handles both my frontend UI and backend API routes in one repository. I used MongoDB Atlas for a robust, free database tier. I integrated Groq AI because their Llama3 inference is insanely fast and completely free for developers. I utilized standard OAuth 2.0 to securely connect to Google, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and deployed everything seamlessly onto Vercel for free hosting.

The Hardest Problems I Solved

It wasn't easy. I spent hours wrestling with a nasty Google OAuth token refresh bug that kept silently failing. Building a native cron execution engine without relying on expensive tools like Make.com took intense architectural thinking. Encrypting precious API keys with AES-256 to ensure my users' security was stressful but absolutely necessary. And honestly, getting the notoriously difficult Instagram Graph API to accept automated uploads almost broke me.

What 31 Commits in 3 Days Looks Like

The pace of development was relentless. I didn't get much sleep some nights. I remember debugging a database connection error at 2:00 AM fueled entirely by coffee. But the satisfaction of seeing that first automated YouTube video successfully upload completely via API made every agonizing hour worth it.

5 Lessons Every Student Developer Should Know

1. Ship before you are entirely ready. You will never feel fully ready.
2. Done is infinitely better than perfect.
3. Use the free tools available to you — they are incredibly powerful today.
4. Realize that the hardest part is starting the project, not finishing it.
5. Always build something that you yourself would actually use.

This NextJS SaaS is proudly made in India. Kreevo is live right now at kreevo.vercel.app. I invite you to try it, break it, and give me your honest feedback. Keep building!