La pire période de ma vie d'entrepreneur.

The speaker recounts a period in Spain where they celebrated sales for their SaaS product, Mponsors, by ringing a bell, much to their roommate's annoyance, as sales occurred two to three times a week. This contrasts sharply with the present, where the bell is packed away and the speaker is in Vietnam, struggling to make any sales at all. Mponsors is a platform designed to connect YouTubers and their agents with suitable sponsors. Creators sign up, provide information, and a recommendation algorithm suggests potential sponsors with details on their history, past collaborations, and expected rates. Initially, for the first two years, Mponsors operated with a paywall immediately after registration, offering a "mysterious" experience. This generated some sales, but wasn't exceptional, especially given the €79 per month subscription cost. After two years, the speaker decided to introduce a freemium model, allowing users to try the platform before subscribing. This change significantly accelerated sales, leading to two to three sales per week, a period the speaker describes as a high point, with 14,000 registered (non-paying) users and around 30 daily visitors, suggesting a bright future. However, at this peak, the speaker decided to "improve what was working," marking the beginning of a challenging period. This downturn coincided with the difficult process of opening a business in Vietnam. For six months, the speaker has faced significant hurdles, including exorbitant lawyer fees and a four-month struggle to prove sufficient funds in European banks to transfer capital to the Vietnamese company. The complexities of Vietnamese and French bureaucracy, combined with relying solely on digital banks, made the process incredibly difficult, especially without local guidance. The speaker then introduces Indie, a partner for the video, as a solution for entrepreneurs in France. Indie offers an all-in-one app for freelancers, covering business creation, professional accounts, electronic invoicing, and declarations. Users can sync their bank or open a professional account with Indie, and the app automatically categorizes transactions and generates declarations, eliminating the need for manual input or accounting knowledge. Indie also provides a support team of specialists who respond within an average of four minutes. Business creation through Indie is free (beyond unavoidable legal fees), and activity management and invoicing are also free and compliant with new electronic invoicing regulations in France. Declarations cost €12 per month, with no commitment or hidden fees. Over 250,000 freelancers already use Indie, and the speaker recommends it, offering two links in the description: one for free business creation and another for two free months of Indie Premium for those with an existing business to generate tax declarations. Returning to their own struggles, the speaker admits to deep frustration and a difficult period. The "descent into hell" began when, after launching the freemium model, they started receiving feedback from numerous professionals suggesting UX fixes to improve the product. Believing that addressing these issues would dramatically increase sales, the speaker eagerly implemented the suggested changes. They embarked on a month-long UX mission with a consultant, conducting workshops, discussing vision, and developing Figma screens and new designs, all of which the speaker found legitimate and implemented over two months. The recommendation algorithm was also completely revamped. After two and a half months of intense work, the speaker was excited to launch the updated platform, based on the input of a competent UX designer. However, since that launch, sales have completely stopped. The initial thought was that it might be a quiet week, but after weeks without sales, it became clear something was wrong. This led to an "infernal spiral" over the past two months, coinciding with the speaker's arrival in Vietnam. In this cycle, the speaker constantly analyzes analytics, identifies perceived problems, and implements fixes. However, each fix, though seemingly obvious and responsible for the issues, fails to bring back sales, leading to more wasted time and effort. The speaker attributes this partly to "vibe coding," where the perceived low cost in time, energy, and skill for these features leads to continuous development without sufficient reflection or detachment. Within one month, the speaker completely redid the onboarding process, changed the recommendation algorithm three times (believing the new version was flawed), and spent weeks fine-tuning it. They also experimented with different ways of presenting recommendations, moving from a grid to a list, then a Tinder-like swipe interface, before returning to earlier designs, realizing that the swiping discouraged platform exploration. Despite all these adjustments, which individually are well-executed and even better than previous work, sales have not returned. The speaker highlights a seldom-discussed aspect of entrepreneurship: the psychological impact of having something that works, making changes, and then breaking it. This creates a "traumatic, horrible" feeling of self-blame and urgency. Unlike when a product hasn't yet found its footing and there's no real urgency, breaking something that was working creates immense pressure to fix "the mistakes you've made." This leads to self-reproach, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy as an entrepreneur and developer, even leading to self-hatred during this period. This emotional toll is exacerbated by being on the other side of the world, navigating business setup, and dealing with family issues. The speaker admits they didn't expect a business to impact their morale so deeply, noting a direct correlation between their mood and the SaaS product's performance. While successful periods bring immense pride, current struggles affect them more than they'd like to admit. To prevent this in the future, the speaker suggests diversifying projects and making iterative, smaller changes rather than drastic ones, allowing for easier course correction and reducing feelings of failure. The video was filmed during a trip to Osaka, Japan, where the speaker sought to escape the "infernal spiral" in Vietnam, feeling too close to the problem to see the bigger picture. They refrained from coding but engaged in discussions with AI, particularly "Rodin," their "frank" AI companion. The speaker is eager to return and implement the insights gained, confident they will find a solution. They shared this experience to prepare other entrepreneurs for similar "arid" or "desert-like" periods, emphasizing the importance of stepping back rather than succumbing to frustration and self-doubt. The goal is to reactivate the business, bring back the bell, and resume sales, promising updates.