Our story
Built for people with
a Sheet — not a free year to code.
Row.so exists because founders, teams, and agencies kept getting stuck in the same place: valuable data in Google Sheets, a clear niche, and months of glue code before they could charge a dollar.
Hey — I'm Richard. I've spent years shipping products, and I kept hitting the same wall: I was great at finding niches and curating lists, but terrible at getting them live and charging money without sinking weeks into code.
The pattern never changed. I'd fill a spreadsheet with tools, agencies, or local spots worth sharing. Then reality hit: I still needed a website, filters, SEO, submissions, a paywall, a domain — and something that didn't look like a template from 2019.
That wasn't a tooling problem. It was a time-to-money problem. Every week spent wiring Webflow to Airtable to Stripe was a week the niche sat empty — while someone with a worse list and a live site started collecting listing fees.
That gap — between "I have the data" and "I'm making money" — is where most directory ideas die. Not because the niche was wrong. Because the build never ended.
The old way
The pain wasn't the niche.
It was everything after the Sheet.
The list was ready. The revenue wasn't — because shipping a real directory still meant becoming a part-time engineer, designer, and DevOps person overnight.
- Your Google Sheet is the product — but nobody will pay to open a spreadsheet
- You know the niche. You have the list. Revenue is still zero because the site isn’t live
- Webflow + Airtable + Zapier + custom Stripe — five tools, three broken handoffs, zero weekend left
- Filters, custom fields, and SEO pages that take weeks to wire — then break when the schema changes
- Checkout that takes a platform cut, or never ships because “we’ll add payments later”
- Hosting, SSL, domains, and “is the site down?” becoming a second job for whoever cares most
- By the time it looks good enough to charge, someone else owns the niche — or the team has moved on
Who this is for
Same spreadsheet. Different pressure.
Founders feel it as opportunity cost. Teams feel it as handoff friction. Agencies feel it as scope creep. The outcome is identical: a list that should be earning — still locked in a Sheet.
Founders & solo builders
You can spot a niche and fill a Sheet in a weekend. Turning that into a branded directory with filters, SEO, and paid listings still feels like a full product build — so the idea dies in Drafts.
Small teams
Ops lives in Sheets. Marketing wants a real site. Engineering doesn’t want another side project. Everyone agrees the directory should exist — nobody can afford months of glue code before the first listing fee.
Agencies & freelancers
Clients ask for “a simple directory.” It never is. Scope creeps into CMS, payments, maps, and SEO. You either undercharge and drown, or overbuild and miss the launch window they needed last month.
Anyone sitting on a valuable list
Tools, agencies, local spots, SaaS alternatives — the data is already curated. The gap isn’t research. It’s shipping something people will browse, submit to, and pay to be listed on — this week, not next quarter.
The breaking point
Curation shouldn't require an engineering team.
I didn't want another generic site builder. I wanted one place where a founder, a small team, or an agency could connect a Sheet (or describe a niche), get a directory that looks intentional, and start charging — without assembling five tools and praying the checkout works.
The insight was simple: directories aren't "websites with a list." They're businesses. They need filters that match the niche, fields that aren't bolted on later, payments that don't take a cut of your revenue, and SEO that doesn't need a consultant.
Most of all, they need to go from spreadsheet → live → paid listings while the niche window is still open.
Why Row.so exists
From Google Sheet to directory business — in minutes, not months.
So I built Row.so: AI to generate the first draft, Google Sheets when you want to stay in a spreadsheet, a visual editor when you care how it looks, and Stripe · Lemon Squeezy · Polar · Creem when you're ready to charge — with 0% platform fees on your revenue.
You keep the niche knowledge. We handle the product surface: hosting, SSL, custom domains, analytics, auth, comments, and the boring infrastructure that used to steal weekends from founders and billable hours from agencies.
If you've ever abandoned a directory halfway through a Webflow + Airtable + custom checkout stack — or sat on a Sheet you knew could make money — this product is for you.
Make money
Your Sheet is waiting.
Stop building forever.
Turn the list you've been sitting on into a live, monetizable directory — before the niche window closes.