Honest Pitch

Hi, I'm Rohan, founder of Firelink.

Before this, I built a successful SaaS startup. We had the same problem every SaaS company has: integrations. At first, it seemed simple. "Just connect to Salesforce," a customer said. Easy, right? Wrong.

I spent weeks understanding their API documentation. Figuring out OAuth flows. Planning the data mapping. Building a separate page in our app just for this one integration. Writing the code. Testing edge cases. Deploying it. Then the real pain started: maintenance. Salesforce updated their API. Our integration broke. Customer complained. We scrambled to fix it. Finally got it working. Celebrated.

Next week, another customer: "Do you integrate with HubSpot?"
The cycle started again. Then Stripe. Then Slack. Then Google Sheets. Then QuickBooks. Then Shopify. The list never ended.

We were spending 40% of our engineering time building and maintaining integrations instead of building our actual product. But here's what really stung: even with all that work, customers still asked, "Why don't you have as many integrations as [competitor]?" We looked weak. Incomplete. Like we didn't care about their workflows. This problem kept me up at night. Not because it was hard—but because it was the same problem every SaaS company faces, and everyone's solving it from scratch. Then Sam Altman said something that clicked: "In the era of AI, SaaS is entering a fast fashion era."

Thousands of new SaaS products launching every month. Every single one needs integrations. Every single one is rebuilding the same Salesforce connector. The same Slack connector. The same Stripe connector. This is insane.

That's when Firelink was born. The vision: Solve the world's software integration problem. Build the ultimate integration infrastructure that every product needs—so founders can focus on building their product, not rebuilding the same integrations for the 10,000th time.

The Problem
With Current Solutions

We looked at existing options. None of them worked for growing SaaS companies.

Zapier, Make, n8n—The External Tools Problem

Issue #1: Expensive for end users
Zapier costs $20-500/month per user. Your customers have to pay separately. They don't want another subscription. They want integrations included in your product.

Issue #2: Perception problem
When you tell customers "We integrate via Zapier," they hear: "We didn't bother building real integrations." Even if Zapier works fine, it looks weak. Like you cut corners. Like you're not serious. Customers want native integrations—not external tools with separate logins.

Issue #3: Embedding costs a fortune
Think you can just embed Zapier/Workato/Make into your product?

Zapier Embedded: Not available for small companies
Workato Embedded: $10,000-50,000/month minimum
Tray.io Embedded: $20,000 platform fee + $7,000 per integration
Make Embedded: $10,000+/month

These are built for enterprise companies with millions in revenue. If you're a $500k ARR SaaS, you literally can't afford it.

The "Build It Ourselves" Problem

Okay, so you build integrations in-house. Here's what that actually costs:

$10,000+ per integration (2-6 months of dev time)
30% annual maintenance (APIs change, things break)
Ongoing support burden (customers report issues, you fix them)
Context switching hell (engineers constantly pulled away from core product)

Build 20 integrations? $200,000 first year. $60,000/year maintenance. And you still look weak compared to competitors who have 100+ integrations.

The Open Source Problem (n8n, Activepieces, etc.)

"Just use n8n! It's open source!" Sure, but:

You still have to build/maintain every connector yourself
Self-hosting means you manage infrastructure
No developer ecosystem building connectors for you
You're back to the same problem: spending engineering time on integrations

Every option sucks for a different reason.

How We're Solving This

We took a completely different approach.

1. Infrastructure, Not SaaS

Firelink isn't a tool your customers use. It's infrastructure you embed. Think of it like Stripe:

You don't send customers to Stripe.com
Stripe runs inside your app
Payments feel native to your product
You pay Stripe per transaction

Firelink works the same way:

Customers never leave your app
Integrations run on your server
Everything feels native to your product
You pay Firelink per active integration, not per execution

$1/month per integration. That's it.

2. Self-Hosted = Zero Infrastructure Costs

Here's the key insight: you already have servers running your SaaS. Why send data to Zapier's servers and pay them to process it? Firelink runs on your infrastructure:

Install our SDK (Docker container)
It runs on your existing servers
Uses your database
Uses your compute
Data never leaves your environment

We charge $1 for access to the connector marketplace—not for compute, not for executions, not for bandwidth. This is why we're 100x cheaper.

3. Developers Build & Maintain Connectors

Here's where it gets interesting. We're not a company with 200 engineers building every connector. That doesn't scale. That's why Zapier is expensive. We're a marketplace:

Developer builds a Salesforce connector (takes a few days)
Publishes it to Firelink marketplace (open source JSON format)
500 SaaS companies activate it ($1/month each)
Developer earns $375/month (75% revenue share)
Companies get maintained connector for $1/month

Everyone wins:

Developers earn passive income ($9,000/year from popular connectors)
SaaS companies get high-quality, maintained integrations for $1
We run the marketplace and ecosystem (keep 25%)

Developers are incentivized to maintain quality. If their connector breaks, they lose revenue. If they keep it working, they earn while they sleep. This is the only sustainable model at $1/integration.

4. Open Source Core

The workflow engine is 100% open source. You can:

Read the code
Self-host everything
Fork it
Modify it
Audit security

You pay $1/integration for:

Access to marketplace of 100+ pre-built connectors
Developer ecosystem maintaining them
New connectors added weekly
Community support

You don't pay for:

Workflow engine (open source)
Compute (your server)
Bandwidth (your network)
Storage (your database)

Like Linux: the OS is free, Red Hat provides ecosystem value.

5. What We're NOT

Let me be clear about what this isn't:

Not a Zapier replacement for end users
We're infrastructure for SaaS companies, not a tool for end users to automate their personal workflows.
Not a fully managed service
You need basic dev skills to integrate the SDK. If you want zero technical work, this isn't for you.
Not enterprise iPaaS
We don't have white-glove onboarding, dedicated CSMs, or 24/7 phone support. We're self-service.
Not trying to be a unicorn
We're not raising $50M to burn through. We're building a sustainable, profitable business. Slow growth. Customer-funded.

The Roadmap (Next 12 Months)

Being transparent about what's coming:

Q1 2026: 50+ connectors, more workflow logics
Q2 2026: 150+ connectors, better error handling
Q3 2026: 300+ connectors, performance improvement
Q4 2026: 500+ connectors, advanced security features

We're not promising features we haven't built. This could change based on feedback.

Final Word

I'm not going to oversell this. Firelink isn't perfect. It's early. There are bugs. Some features are missing. But it's the integration infrastructure I wish existed when I was building my last company. If that's what you need too, let's build it together.

— Rohan, Founder, Firelink

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