My SaaS crossed $100K/year. I've never been more anxious.

The thing nobody tells you about growth.

I hit the 100k/year milestone I dreamed about for so long.

That’s how much I made working for somebody else. The number that was supposed to mean “I’m good enough to earn my living by myself.” The number that would finally make me feel a sense of freedom.

I’ve never refreshed Stripe more in my life.

The lie we all believe

There’s this fantasy every founder carries around.

“Once I hit $X a year, I’ll feel secure.”

Then you hit it. And the voice changes. “Okay, but if you got to $100K, what stops you from hitting that juicy $200K? That’s when I can actually relax.”

You won’t.

I know because I’ve played this game with myself for years. Ever since I started my solopreneurship journey, my #1 goal has been to hit 100k/year (at times it was getting to $1,000,000 a year, but that was when I thought I could do it in my first year).

And now that I’ve finally hit it, it doesn’t feel like freedom. I don’t feel like I can just relax, take my time, release the pressure of the gas a little and enjoy the fruits.

Quite the opposite, I feel like I need to press harder to get to the $200k/year, because why not? I made it to here, I can probably make it to the 200k, which will give me A LOT more freedom. Right…?

I check Stripe 100 times a day

I wish that was an exaggeration.

On bad days, the flat days, the “why did nine people cancel” days, I check it every few minutes. I’ll be mid-sentence writing something and my fingers just automatically go: CMD+T → ‘dash’ → Return (Chrome auto completes to dashboard.stripe.com).

And in 2 seconds I see what I expect to see, but can’t resist the urge: Nothing changed. I check again 10-15 minutes later.

Here’s the thing I didn’t admit until I wrote these words: I’m not checking for data or to learn anything new. The data doesn’t change that fast and I get an email every time someone cancels, so I can contact them. I don’t need to refresh.

I’m checking for a hit.

Growth becomes a drug. Early on, every new subscriber is a rush. You screenshot it. You feel validated. Someone paid me. This is real. And when the growth becomes explosive, it becomes even more intoxicating.

Then the tolerance builds.

Four new subscribers? That’s just the baseline. We can do more than that. Give me seven. Ten. Heck, let’s break the freaking ceiling and get over 12 new subscribers.

As I’m writing these words. I feel like it might be more of a gambling issue (I’m ashamed to even write this). I open Stripe, hoping to see more subscribers who joined in the few minutes that I didn’t check.

Flat days make you feel empty. Like you’re failing.

$100K doesn’t feel like $100K

When I didn’t make any money, the fear was: ‘What if I’ll never make it?’ That fear had a simple answer (not an easy one, btw): Get more users. Prove the concept. Charge for the product.

At $100K/year, the fear is different.

It’s not “What if I’ll never make it?” anymore.

It’s “what if this was luck?”

What if I just happened to catch a wave? What if I’ve already reached everyone who will ever want this? What if the people who cancelled this week are the first of many, and by next month the chart bends the other way and never recovers?

The bigger the growth, the more you feel like you have to lose, which worsens the urge and the compulsive behaviour.

What I thought was that the anxiety would shrink as you grow. Well, it doesn’t. Some days it’s even worse.

You’re not broken. It’s just hard

If you’re reading this and you’re earlier in the journey, maybe grinding toward your first $1, you might think I’m complaining.

I’m not.

I'm just being honest about how it feels.

The solopreneurs who post their wins probably feel this too. The indie hackers who crossed $10K MRR and tweeted a screenshot checked Stripe four times while writing the tweet.

You’re not broken for feeling anxious about something that’s working. You’re not weak for checking your dashboard when you know nothing changed. This is just what it costs.

Building something that’s yours, something that could disappear tomorrow, something with your name on it, means you care. And when you care, you’re scared.

If the fear wasn’t there, it would mean this doesn’t matter to you.

But it does.

The point

I don’t have a 5-step framework to fix this.

I still check Stripe too much. I still feel the dread on flat days. I still catch myself running mental math on “what if the churn keeps up at this rate.”

But I stopped thinking I was the only one. And I stopped waiting for a number that would make the feeling go away.

It won’t.

Build anyway.