Breaking Rules to Ship Products: A Beginner's Rails Journey

After a long career in marketing, this is my personal story of learning Ruby and Rails with the goal of building SaaS businesses, and the lessons I had to learn along the way.

Transcript

1. Onur Ozer RubyConf Thailand, Jan 2026 Breaking Rules to Ship Products A Beginner's Rails Journey
2. 20 years in marketing Agency Small agencies
 R/GA Startup Digital studio
 E-commerce startup Corporate American Express
 Mastercard
5. I'm going to build a SaaS* *How di ff i cult could that be?
7. Advice I'd give Build
 as little as possible Commit
 for the long term Talk
 to customers
9. What stack do I use?
10. (›°□°）›︵ ᵲᴸᵲ
12. Full Stack SaaS
13. Going all in
14. Initial Challenges • Ruby vs. Rails? • What is a background job? • What do I test? • What on earth is a service object?
15. Tutorial Galore
16. ✨ The "Rails" Way
17. Postgreqsl Enums # migrate up create_enum :kind, ["like", "bookmark"] # model enum :kind, {like: "like", bookmark: "bookmark"}, default: “like" # migrate down execute <<-SQL DROP TYPE visibility; SQL
18. Building too much # user.rb after_validation :set_username, on: :create # place.rb has_many :interactions, dependent: :destroy has_many :users, through: :interactions has_many :likers, -> {where interactions: {kind: "like"}}, through: :interactions, source: :user
19. ActiveStorage with CDN
21. 🦗 The "Launch"
22. Content Management Bridgetown Custom Builder Rails Custom CMS Rake Task Import Retrieve
23. Lessons Learned • Content before community • Right tool for the right job • Features as procrastination in disguise
24. OpenAI announces GPT-3.5*
25. *Can I replace myself as a marketer? OpenAI announces GPT-3.5*
28. "STI is bad" • Database bloat • Messy queries • Hard to refactor
29. STI is fine # chat.rb class Chat < ApplicationRecord acts_as_chat end # persona.rb class Persona < Chat store_accessor :metadata, :target_audience, :country end
30. "Marketing site must be separate" Separate repo, separate subdomain Jekyll Marketing Site www. Rails Application app. JS request JSON response CORS Request/Response Contract Validation / Error Handling Analytics Writing Javascript
31. Marketing site can live in a Rails app Single repo, root domain Rails Application # pages_controller.rb class PagesController < ApplicationController layout "marketing" def free_persona_generator end end
32. "Self hosting is the way" +
33. Self hosting can be a distraction +
34. Douglas Adams “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
35. $500 bet, 2 weeks
37. Bonus: Embracing text enums STATUSES = %w[pending completed failed].freeze enum :status, STATUSES.index_by(&:itself), default: :pending
38. Lars Launches meetlars.com
39. First Customer
40. Early days
41. Doing Keyword Research
42. Talking to people
43. Long slog of SEO
44. Lessons Learned • Shipping is the only way to learn • Vitamins vs. painkillers • Start marketing on day one
47. Build your own authentication
48. Service Objects • Code organization tool • Additional layer on Rails conventions • Background jobs are service objects
49. Leaner Stack
50. Craft Tattoo Launches craft.tattoo
51. Growing, slowly
52. Lessons Learned • Find a partner • Pursue a genuine interest • Commit for the long haul
53. A Perfect Circle Build
 as little as possible Commit
 for the long term Talk
 to customers Code is liability Vitamins vs. Painkillers Marathon, not sprint
54. Competitive intelligence for SaaS teams • Research companies • Build comparison tables • Track product & pricing updates Sign up at cogrid.com
55. Thank You Find me at
 onurozer.me