I turned down $8,000 for my domain, and built TWO Docs instead

I've been writing more than usual lately, but today's post is different. It's not something I planned (again). It's something I needed to get down and publish.

Most of the time you see products come out of nowhere. Hockey stick growth, a Reddit post about going from zero to 500K ARR, dressed up as advice but really just an ad.

I'm the opposite on this blog, and this journal is an open book. I've torched my own ass more times than I can count, documenting every decision, doubt and struggle from day one. Not from somewhere in the middle once things were polished. From absolute zero.

Read also: Progress, a brand doubt, and where I lost focus: update #9

These past months I've talked a lot about my flagship SaaS, and where I'm struggling, or the realizations I wake up with about building a native Mac app. All of that has been accurate, journal entry by journal entry.

This time I wanted to go further: one long post, in the same open-book spirit, mapping out my reasoning, my business plan (such as it is), and the long-term idea behind why I built this thing.

Other people might read this as a lesson. For me it's mostly that writing it down, having a public reference, helps me think clearer about what I'm doing, and gives me something to point back to once I've actually gotten where I'm trying to go.

Context

A few years ago I bought the domain two.so on a whim. That's basically how everything about this started: by accident. Just like my stupid website I built not so long ago, i just stumbled upon it.

There aren't many three-letter domains left in the popular extensions, let alone one that's also a top 100 word in the English dictionary. It's not a .com, but Notion made .so an acceptable extension the moment they built their brand on notion.so.

I held onto two.so for years without a real plan for it. I thought about it now and then, because the name carries weight. If you're ever going to build a SaaS or a startup, a name like that isn't something to take lightly from a marketing angle.

On April 29 this year, someone offered me $8,000 for the domain. I checked the broker, they were legitimate, so the offer was real. I turned it down.

(had to crop a bit because I don't know if I can post other details)

What's strange is how that timing lined up with the start of my career as a content creator and builder. I didn't start committing to GitHub until May 9th, but I was already doing prep work before that, without knowing how to use Claude Code, and barely able to spell "vibe coding."

The oddest part of all: back in December, I'd already thought about building a note-taking app for language learners. I tried it in Google AI Studio and it didn't work. Here we are, full circle.

Right after I turned down the offer, I wanted to build something real. This post picks up from there: how I started building a docs editor, went from zero to one with vibe coding, and shipped a beta of my flagship SaaS.

Read also: I built a doc writing app that’s tailored to my vision. (now in BETA)

The core reason behind it was personal. I write 80 percent of my blog posts and content on my iPad Pro, and I never found a docs editor that was lightweight, didn't come loaded with features I didn't want, and offered a proper split-view screen.

I'd always wanted that: a split-view docs editor built for iPad users.

That's the point where two.so stopped being just a domain sitting idle and started carrying real value.

What I wanted to build

I went into this ambitious, because I'd just started my vibe-coding journey. Maybe even a little too ambitious. After messing around for a bit, I landed on something boring on purpose: a docs editor.

That came with plenty of frustration. My first month and a half was just me yelling at Claude through the GitHub web editor, pasting code in one file at a time.

I had fuck all knowledge of IDEs, let alone how Cursor and Claude Code worked together. That changed eventually, but it was a real learning curve.

Read also: I build software like a toddler learning to walk

The idea itself was straightforward:

Build a docs editor with a split-view feature, aimed at iPad users as the final target market. Keep it boring, low maintenance, and free of feature creep. No AI.

Those last two parts mattered more than anything else. I don't know how to fucking estimate AI usage costs, and starting out with barely any coding knowledge, piling AI features onto an app that could hand me a bill I can't predict felt like a good way to end up fucking cooked.

So I decided early that the plan didn't need AI, not yet. What I wanted was a polished MVP, and that's what I built, without extra features tacked on that would fuck up the aesthetic or the core product.

I have 31 repos right now, and a lot of what I've built has been deliberately set aside so I could focus on TWO Docs. Staying disciplined about that is what's kept it boring, in the good sense.

I look at products like Migadu, Nuclino (even though they've added AI now too), and Bear note app, and what stands out is that their core product still just works. There's a market for people who want a product to do exactly what it says as advertised , and that's the end of it.

Branding and product

Because of the domain name, I can keep myself honest and let the app do exactly what it advertises.

Two docs, one screen. That's the DNA of the product. You could probably build the same feature somewhere else, under a different name, but tying the domain two.so to a SaaS that does exactly what it says puts me ahead of the pile of indie apps built on domains and prefixes nobody remembers.

I've built my SaaS around my domain, and now I also have the leverage to build my domain around my SaaS.

I wanted brand, product and domain to become genuinely hard to separate. Because if that buyer from April comes back and asks again, my answer is simple: the domain doesn't go without the product, or the other way around.

That's five to ten year thinking, in case I ever decide to exit, or end up with enough ARR that parting with it makes sense.

If I'd picked a name like Gemini or Claude as a brand, I think I'd have fallen into the same trap plenty of builders do, the same mistakes I've watched happen with Notion clones and indie hackers chasing something too big too fast.

Right now I've leveled myself, in a good way, to stay absolutely fucking strict, boring, and with no room for error.

If I ever add AI to the product, and it might be inevitable eventually, it'll be closer to smart search across docs and folders, something that pulls summaries from what's already written.

Not another stupid AI writing assistant pretending to replace your ability to write. There's a real difference.

My version of AI would sit quieter, less in your face, more of a line of defense for people who've written hundreds of articles and buried them in dozens of folders. That's roughly the direction Dropbox Dash has taken, and it's the one I'd want to follow.

But the SaaS itself doesn't depend on AI, and it never fucking will. It stays optional. I think building more apps where AI is either absent or genuinely optional, without forcing it on people, is the right direction right now.

The business plan

I thought about writing an entire thesis here, but I'm not going to. The plan for TWO Docs was simple on the surface:

• Build the MVP.

• Figure out the final feature set for the roadmap on the website.

• Work on a content marketing plan alongside organic growth.

• Build the native Mac app, which still gets a sigh out of me every time I think about it.

• Reach ten posts before opening up BETA invites.

• Publish two posts a week until the end of the year, which puts me at 44 well-written posts.

• Launch the Mac app.

• Start with Pinterest in January 2027, once those 44 posts exist.

• Then build the iPad app.

Somewhere in there, maybe paying users. Or not.

Most business plans hinge on paying customers early, chasing CAC or revenue from day one. I'm doing the opposite.

I don't give a fuck about revenue this early. It would be nice, but I can wait three years for it. The web MVP is finished, but my real concerns are the Mac app and the iPad app after it, which I've written about elsewhere.

Read also: How do you vibe code a Mac app? Fuck I don’t know.

I made an early call to go slow before chasing revenue, because right now I care more about understanding how vibe coding works, how the app holds up in public, and strengthening my position and my brand in a space that's genuinely hard to win.

I still believe real growth comes once there's an iPad app, and that's realistically six months out. App store optimization is its own weakness of mine, so that's a separate fight, which I don't look fucking forward to tackle.

I've watched enough solo builders go all in on aggressive sales with no real plan, or complain about marketing without ever starting it, or start too late.

I'm not making that mistake. My marketing and SEO work started in August, the moment the web MVP was done.

Starting early makes the brand harder to separate from the domain, and I want a higher perceived valuation even without MRR to back it up yet. I also think it's more sustainable.

The SaaS is built on an economic model that can absorb hype, highs and lows, because it's a boring product by design. Taking my time here is a strategic decision, not a delay.

Room for error

I'm aware I'm not a developer. I don't want to get pushed into a corner by hype, or by people on Reddit sharing overnight successes with a ship-fast, kill-fast approach.

I built this by design, not just because I'm the primary user, but because I know my limits. I can't build fancy apps right now. Even if I wanted to, I'm not fucking touching that.

Most builders don't account for variance or room for error.

I currently built what I wanted for a streamlined MVP.

And my estimates on the public roadmap have held up reasonably well so far, based on everything I've documented, but I stay mentally prepared for it to slip.

If it takes another year, or another six months on top of that, so be it. It's a hedge.

I don't need to build a unicorn, and I don't want to. The real reason I'm focused on this app is that it's a hedge against my riskier ideas and ventures.

Anyone can land a win or a moonshot once in a while. What I'm after here is a hedge with zero debt, zero team overhead, and close to zero maintenance, something that quietly pays me every month.

My numbers aren't dramatic either. I want TWO Docs to reach $3,000 to $4,000 MRR over a two to three year timeline.

I don't think that's delusional. It's achievable precisely because the scope is narrow and the positioning stays consistent, so I don't have to keep re-educating a new audience with every new push.

Long-term, this is the most viable path I see for this domain, and it's where the whole thing started.

That's the reasoning, as honestly as I can lay it out right now. No hockey stick, no moonshot, just a domain I almost sold, a product I'm building slowly, and a plan I'm willing to be wrong about by a year or two. I'll come back to this post once I know how much of it held up.