Carving out a small niche in a big market and bringing in $10k+ MRR
Elie Steinbock built a tool to scratch his own itch that that — at the time — had no competitors. Now, competitors are everywhere, but he's carving out his niche and bringing in $10k+ MRR with Inbox Zero.
Here's Elie on how he's doing it. 👇
Scratching his own itch
When running a previous business, I spent way too much time on email, following up with clients, and staying on top of what mattered. I would have loved to have an assistant to help manage this, but assistants cost thousands of dollars per month.
Instead, I was like, "Why can't an AI do this for me?"
That's what originally motivated me to start working on Inbox Zero — to be my own human assistant for email, and help other people be more productive along the way..
Today, Inbox Zero is AI executive assistant that manages your email for you. It organizes your email, drafts replies, and helps you get to Inbox Zero — fast. We're currently at $10k+ MRR.
Building before AI was up to speed
It took a few months to build the initial version. When I was originally building it, the AI models weren't that strong, so it was difficult to get good results.
Today, it's much easier to get good results, and the models have improved tremendously. But there are still a lot of challenges that we face every day in areas of the product we want to improve.
Our tech stack is:
Next.js
TypeScript
React
Prisma
Neon
Vercel
PostHog
Sentry
Axiom
Upstash for Redis and queues
Shadcn
Tailwind
Focus on one use case
The biggest challenge has been creating a good UX that makes it easy for users to get value from the product, fast.
Initially, I tried a few different features because I wanted to see what would catch on, and there was some value to that. But I'd much rather do one thing really, really well than a lot of half-good features.
Also, users only have so much attention, so if you try and tell them we do ten things, it's too much. You really just need to make the value clear, and offering fewer features makes that easier to do.
There are a lot of products that get way too bloated. Many consumers go for less-powerful products which are just simpler to use — because they have focused on providing the value they need.
So, if I were to start over, I'd really focus on just one use case instead of spreading my efforts across multiple different features.
Open source as a growth lever
We get users from lots of different places.
Our product is open source, and we've been #1 on GitHub trending, which brought in a lot of users.
We've been number one on ProductHunt.
We initially had a lifetime deal, but we closed that off after a few months. It brought in some good early revenue to start the business up.
We rank first for the term "Inbox Zero" on Google.
We also get people inviting each other via referral.
Parting advice
I already touched on this, but my main advice is to focus on a specific problem. Adding more and more features isn't going to fix your product. Doing one thing and doing it well will provide you with a lot more value. And there's still plenty to do even if you're a one-feature product. You need to make sure your copy is good. You need to make sure your landing page is good. You need to make sure people can find you. You need to make sure you're providing real value to people, and that this is a validated market. And the list goes on.
But beyond that, you don't want to be reinventing the wheel. Inbox Zero was a new product category, but I wouldn't recommend doing that.
And make sure you know how you're going to charge your users. Understand that different pricing tiers mean that you can use different marketing channels to grow your business.
What's next?
My goals are to continue growing the business. There's a big opportunity in front of us right now, and the challenges are to onboard bigger customers and continue to provide value to our users so that they can benefit from managing their inboxes and their businesses as a whole.
You can follow along on X, YouTube, and GitHub. And check out Inbox Zero.
Leave a Comment
fantastic. why did you not build directly on AWS ....
niching down is so underrated!
This is so wonderful to get so high MRR by finding a suitable niche market!
This really hit home. I also built a small bottleneck checker for pc builds and learned the same lesson about focus. I tried adding guides, benchmarks, and all sorts of stuff, but people mainly loved the simple cpu/gpu balance check. Funny how doing one clear thing right matters most.
I wanted to share some lessons from my journey building Sports Clothing Apparel, a sportswear manufacturing brand based in Sialkot, Pakistan. We started as a small local supplier and today we’re manufacturing for clients in multiple countries — all bootstrapped.
Onboarding bigger customers needs a different playbook. A targeted outreach plan could work: find your ideal companies and the right person inside, then send personal emails that uses your tool on the long end. Happy to go for a partnership here :)
Love this. Going after a slice of a huge market instead of fighting the big guys is such a good move. Looks like the smaller the niche, the easier it is to actually connect with people. How long did it take before you started seeing some real traction coming in and how was your user growth curve?
riches in niches.
Everyone’s busy elbowing each other in the big market, meanwhile niches are just… waiting
I like how James focused on carving a niche instead of going broad.
I’m building a product in a similar space, but with a different approach that puts more emphasis on user ownership.
I believe entrepreneurs shouldn’t delegate ownership of their operations.
I think for anyone else it's fine, but entrepreneurs should fully own what they do.
I recently read that a salesperson said half of his 150 cold calls per day are now answered by a Google AI assistant.
Automation is tempting, but when tools for entrepreneurs replace their judgment instead of assisting it, they risk making the work less valuable and less creative.
Thanks for the article. It’s encouraging to see how much progress can come from refining one clear idea instead of chasing many, and that inspires me more to continue in this journey.
Love this. A perfect reminder that niching down isn’t a limitation — it’s leverage.
You solved your own pain first, stayed focused, and shipped before it was “easy.” That’s real execution.
Curious — what was the biggest insight after hitting $10k MRR? And how are you planning to scale without losing that tight focus?
Love this story, Elie 🙌 Building Inbox Zero out of a personal need really shows how strong “scratch your own itch” products can be. The focus on doing one use case really well instead of chasing feature bloat is a powerful reminder for indie founders. Also great to see open source working as a genuine growth channel — it builds both trust and visibility. Congrats on the $10k+ MRR milestone! 🚀
That's what determination looks. Great story btw...
This is such a great reminder that focus beats features every time. What really stood out to me is how Inbox Zero didn’t win by being the first or the only option—but by being the clearest about solving one painful, universal problem in a way people immediately understand.
Really inspiring journey, Elie. Seeing how you locked in one problem, built a sharp UX, and already scaled to $10K+ MRR shows real product discipline.
I actually work with founders building tools in similar productivity spaces, helping them with lead generation / investor visibility.
If you'd ever want to chat about growing your reach or connecting with relevant partners/investors, I’ve got some ideas.
This is a great idea, and through your efforts, you have developed your own SaaS product with additional monetization. It is a happy thing, and I believe the future will be even better. Keep up the good work.
Check out faceseek on google
Yea I have also came to the conclusion that doing one thing well, is infinitely better than doing a bunch of stuff OK.
And finding niches (even small ones) are so important
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