Full Tutorial: Vibe Code a Real SaaS App in 40 Minutes | Colin Matthews
Step by step guide on how to convert an insecure vibe-coded prototype into a real SaaS app with authentication, payments, analytics, and more.
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Colin Matthews.
Colin has taught 1000s of students how to build SaaS apps with AI. In this episode, he showed me exactly why my vibe coded prototype was insecure and how to convert it into a real SaaS app with auth, payments, and more. If you want to learn to build SaaS apps in 40 minutes with Cursor and Claude Code, then this episode is for you.
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Colin and I talked about:
(00:00) The 7 components that every real SaaS app needs
(01:44) Client, server, database: What most prototypes miss
(08:57) Live demo: Adding Stripe, auth, and databases to my photo app
(16:45) Why starting with templates beats prompting from scratch
(20:30) The Supabase security flaw in most vibe coded apps
(25:35) Why AI shouldn’t touch your database directly
(35:00) 4-steps to ship a real SaaS app that people will pay for
(38:15) Why tech credentials no longer matter (and what does instead)
Colin is teaching his “Vibe Code Production Side Projects” course in January and offering $625 off for readers of this newsletter. See what the course covers.
This episode is brought to you by…Linear
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Top 10 takeaways I learned from this episode
Every real SaaS app needs 6 core integrations. Unlike prototypes, real apps are full stack and typically include authentication (Google, GitHub), payment (Stripe), email (SendGrid), file storage, analytics (PostHog), and error logging (Sentry). Without these, you can’t easily onboard users, collect money, or identify bugs.
Start with production-ready templates instead of building from scratch. SaaS templates (e.g., from Vercel) come with auth, payments, and databases already built-in. Starting your SaaS app with these templates is much easier than trying to get AI to build from scratch.
Vibe coded apps have obvious mistakes if you look closely. For example,