Building RedactID in Public

Founder note before publishing: Stripe/Upstash numbers below pulled live from the admin dashboard (snapshot generated 2026-05-21 03:12 UTC).

This is the first monthly update after Day 0. Per the commitments contract row 6: monthly, on the first week of the month, no vanity-only posts. This one is late by about two weeks — I missed the "mid-May" deadline I set myself in the Day 0 post. Noting it here so the slip is on the public record, not buried.

Where we are at Day 34

• Revenue: $0 real MRR. One active subscription in Stripe ($7/mo) is an internal test account, not a real customer. Three organic Mini Pack purchases ($2.99 each) landed in the visible billing window: one on launch day (4/16), one on 5/9, one today at 7:51 PM — the latest arrived while this post was being drafted. None converted to a subscription. One Business plan is comped to a prospect doing live testing.
• Accounts: 20 total (13 verified, +1 this week). 5 anonymous credit-cookie holders.
• Traffic: ~7 unique visitors/day, 7-day average (last measured 2026-05-16). 30-day uniques: 352, up from the April-16 baseline of 195 — but the conversion rate didn't move with the traffic.
• Redactions: 158 lifetime, 66 in the last 30 days, 21 in the last 7. Peak day in the trailing-30 window: 6 redactions. (The 20-redaction launch-day spike on 4/17 has rolled out of the window — there's no recurring spike replacing it yet.) Free-tier usage is the one number that's not asleep.
• Email list: 1 subscriber.
• SEO: still indexed but invisible. GSC: ~1 impression, 0 clicks, average position 12 over the last 28 days. New comparison pages (/vs/saferedact, /vs/redactable, /vs/adobe-acrobat-redact) shipped 2026-05-14 — too recent to have ranked.

The honest read: free product works, paid funnel is asleep, the distribution loop hasn't started.

What actually shipped this month

In rough order of impact:

Subscriptions, end-to-end. Pro ($7/mo, $59/yr) live in Stripe Checkout on Day 0. Business tier ($29/mo, $249/yr) shipped as a waitlist on Day 0, then upgraded to a real product on Day 30 — workspace data model, Stripe webhook provisioning, invite flow + email, workspace UI, watermark on exports. The Business "Milestone 1" plan budgeted 7 days; it closed in one because a real prospect asked to test mid-sprint.

First customer comp granted to an actively testing Business prospect on 2026-05-16. Comp script is now a real npm run grant:business command.

Operational visibility. Admin dashboard (/admin) + JSON snapshot endpoint (/api/admin/snapshot) + an autonomous ops agent that reads it daily. Built in response to a 3-week silent gap in late April where two paying customers arrived and I didn't notice until the second one.

Trust infrastructure. /verify (upload a "redacted" PDF, we tell you if PII is still extractable). /ssn-scanner (local PII finder). A CI test (no-upload-tripwire.spec.ts) that fails the build if any client-side path leaks bytes to a server. A "why we don't upload your files" post with the tripwire code embedded.

SEO content. Three competitor comparison pages, W-2/1099 + lease redaction guides, /redact-utility-bill-online, a redaction-myths post, IndexNow wired up. Net: about a dozen new pages live.

Distribution kits. Reddit launch playbook, B2B outbound playbook, customer-interview script, agent-authored outreach to two named prospects (Eric + Linda).

What didn't ship — and is past due

I'm naming these so future-me can't pretend they slipped quietly.

• Hacker News launch. The kit was ready 2026-04-19. After five weeks of carrying it as a 🟡 commitment, I killed it on 2026-05-15. The $X-MRR-journey HN post is gated at $500 MRR per Starter Story research; posting a "$0 MRR, 2 customers" story to HN is the wrong shot to take. Re-opens when MRR ≥ $500 or there's a hard-data "pick a fight" angle. Decision logged in WEEKLY_REVIEW.md.
• Reddit launch posts. Zero in 34 days. First post was planned for 2026-05-19. The Reddit kit exists; the warmup-and-post discipline doesn't.
• Customer interviews. Zero across five weeks. The script and the warmest lead I've ever had (the comped prospect) are both sitting there waiting.
• Short-form video. Zero filmed.
• B2B outbound emails. 25-broker batch was planned for the week of 2026-05-18. Tracker exists; sends are behind.

The Day-30 checkpoint verdict

On Saturday 2026-05-16 I ran the CHECKPOINTS.md Day-30 review. Two of three pass criteria hit: Pro + Business shipped, well over eight Month-1 tasks closed in GROWTH_PLAN.md. The third — ≥100 redactions or ≥100 visitors/day — failed cleanly. Combined with the < 30-hour effort floor for the period, that auto-triggered ADJUST.

The ADJUST decision: 14-day content + distribution blitz, Sun 2026-05-17 → Sun 2026-05-30. No paid ads, no new product features. The one rule for the window: every commit either ships content, closes a distribution loop, or fixes a customer-reported bug. As of this post (Day 34, 4 days into the blitz), I'm holding the no-features line — but the distribution side hasn't caught up either.

The honest framing for Month 2

Product velocity is no longer the bottleneck. The Business tier closing seven days of plan in one day is the proof. The bottleneck is exactly what every Starter Story founder said it would be: founder consistency on distribution.

The Day-60 checkpoint is 2026-06-15 — 26 days away. Pass criteria are MRR ≥ $100, ≥ 5 Business signups, ≥ 200 visitors/day, ≥ 1 top-10 ranking on a money keyword. I am currently $0 / 1 comp / ~7 visitors / 0 top-10s. No-go fires at "$0 paid customers AND < 100 visitors/day," which is the literal current state minus the 26-day buffer.

So the next 26 days are the real test. Not a code test. A "do I actually run the playbook I wrote" test.

What I'm doing about it

Three concrete commitments for the next two weeks (Weeks 6–7, 2026-05-18 → 2026-05-31):

First Reddit launch post live in r/personalfinance, followed by at least one more in r/realtors or r/renting within 10 days. Reply to every comment in the first hour.

25 B2B broker outbound emails sent across one work week, tracked in content/agent/outbound-tracker.csv. Target: 3 replies, 1 activated comp.

First customer interview booked and run with the comp'd Business prospect. 20 minutes. Notes filed in content/agent/interviews/.

If any of those three is still blank in the Day-60 post, that's not an execution miss — that's a signal about whether this is the right way to spend evenings.

Next update: first week of June 2026, on time.

This is the starting line. For the next 90 days, I'm running the growth plan in GROWTH_PLAN.md and posting an honest update here every month — MRR, visitors, subs, what worked, what didn't.

No cherry-picking. If the numbers are flat, the numbers are flat.

Where we are today

• Revenue: 2 one-time purchases ever, no subscriptions. No recurring revenue.
• Traffic: ~68 unique visitors over the last 30 days (Vercel Analytics). Zero paid.
• SEO: Indexed but invisible — impressions exist, clicks don't.
• Product: Redaction works, pricing page ships, Stripe + Upstash credit system runs.
• Distribution: None yet. No X presence, no content cadence, no outbound.

What I'm going to try

Ship a subscription tier. One-time credit packs alone can't compound. Pro ($9/mo) and Business ($29/mo) go live this month.

Write for a specific buyer. Landlords, real estate agents, and small legal ops — not "everyone with a document." One SEO post per week targeting those terms.

Show up publicly. Build-in-public on X + this log. Monthly check-ins here no matter what the numbers say.

The honesty rule

If at day 90 the numbers don't move (checkpoints in CHECKPOINTS.md), I stop. I'd rather know early than sink another year into something that isn't working.

Next update: mid-May 2026.