5 years, 30+ failed projects… and finally one that’s growing
I could have stopped in 2021 or 2022 after many failures, but I kept building.
I know indie makers who managed to become successful very quickly, but in 90% of cases it does not happen fast.
From my experience (and from talking to many other indie makers) I’ve learned that 3 years is about the time it takes for most indie makers to start earning enough to work on their projects full time.
I’m still building new products despite already having profitable ones.
My latest project, Refgrow, is the simplest way for SaaS founders to add an affiliate/referral program inside their app in minutes. I launched it because I saw how powerful referrals can be for growth and I wanted to make it effortless for other founders.
It has already brought in thousands in revenue and is growing faster than I expected. But none of this would have happened if I hadn’t started building and launching projects one after another back in 2021.
The main lesson: Consistency beats luck. Keep shipping, keep learning.
After so many attempts, patterns usually start to show. Most of the time it’s not the build itself but how decisions are made early on. Did you change how you approach planning before starting now?
Totally agree - most people give up way too early. That 5 year timeline feels real. Refgrow sounds super useful, referrals really are underrated, should have seen this post before I built my own referral system though :( . Did you get most of your early users through outreach or more organic?
“The rich can afford to fail; the poor can’t.”
Thanks to indie hacking even poor can try as that many times haha
No offense, but I think billionaires would not be here on IH
your journey is proof that consistency compounds — 30+ projects over 5 years leading to a winner is exactly how great SaaS stories are written. 💡
➡ SaaS Coaching Tip #1: Treat every launch as a stepping stone — each iteration sharpens your path to Product-Market Fit.
➡ SaaS Coaching Tip #2: Bake scalable growth levers (like referrals) into your Go-to-Market Strategy from day one.
➡ SaaS Coaching Tip #3: Focus on consistent execution — in SaaS Scaling, momentum is more valuable than any single “lucky break.”
As a Scaling Expert and PMF Advisor, I’ve seen that staying in the game long enough is often the single biggest predictor of success.