Competing on price to carve out an $18k MRR foothold
While Abhishek Chakravarty was building a side project, he noticed an influx of users who weren't quite right for the product. So, he did some investigating, sold the product, and built a Youform specifically for those users. Now, it's bringing in $18k MRR.
Here's Abhishek on how he did it. 👇
Quitting corporate
I started working as a software developer in 2015. My first job was at Accenture. I hated that big corp, so I left after six months to work for a startup. Four years later, I left that startup to work as a freelancer. And I kept building projects on the side.
Some of them worked; some never got any users. Then, I made Botflow, a no-code chatbot builder.
While I was growing it, I realized most of my users were coming from Typeform — a price increase was leading users to search for alternatives. But I had built Botflow as a chatbot builder, not a form or survey builder, and that presented limitations. So, I sold it on Acquire.com for $10k and built Youform from scratch.
Youform is a form and survey builder that 80,000 users currently love. We're generating $18K MRR.
Building the product
I built the initial version in 3-4 days while freelancing for multiple clients.
Here's my stack:
Laravel
Vue.js
AWS
Laravel Envoyer for zero-downtime deployment
Stripe
I also use many AI models, including Claude, Grok AI, Codex, and Gemini, for tasks like writing code, code reviews, server monitoring, finding low-hanging SEO keywords, and reviewing help documentation to improve it for our users.
Going full-time
When you start a SaaS, the revenue is peanuts, and other appealing products or freelancing clients can easily distract you due to the promise of short-term income. Maintaining focus on the product is a challenge, but once you surpass $5k MRR, a SaaS business offers the best kind of work.
If I had to start over, I would save one or two years of financial runway from my job or freelancing work, then focus completely on the SaaS.
Pivoting from LTDs to subscriptions
Youform is a freemium SaaS. Almost all our features are free, so free users serve as our marketing channel — when they build forms and send them to others, the forms carry our branding and badge, so we gain many users this way.
As far as monetization, we initially started with a lifetime deal for $299. Then, we increased it to $399. We ran that lifetime deal for 40 days and made over $35,000. Since then, we have fully adopted a subscription model.
Our price is $29 per month, the cheapest in the market, offering many features that even existing incumbents do not currently provide. We primarily grow revenue by listening to users and shipping fast.
Growth via social listening
In the beginning, I searched for keywords like "Typeform" on Twitter and Reddit whenever I was taking a break from client work. Then, I'd send a direct message like: "Hey, you are using Typeform. Would you try my product, which is an affordable alternative, and give me some feedback?"
The replies were positive. I gained around 200 users this way.
Then, I met my cofounder, Davis, who runs a successful SASE called Oneup. He proposed a partnership and I agreed.
His Twitter profile provided a boost. He has over 20,000 followers there. When he posted about our partnership, we attracted many lifetime deal users.
From there, we expanded to multiple social media channels like LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube. When you're starting out, ranking in search engines is very difficult, so our SEO efforts have been minimal.
Look for competition
Never create something where there is no competition. Find a market gap existing players aren't filling, then position yourself there with simple messaging.
Youform started in a highly crowded market, but we found a market gap, and our messaging was simple from the start. We didn't start with "another form builder" tagline, but "an affordable Typeform alternative," and kept that messaging until we reached $200k ARR.
On that note, target a niche where users are already searching for solutions. For example, if a 'moderative keyword' receives over 3k searches per month, and you can find an alternative keyword for an existing player in the market, it will be much easier to acquire users.
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80k users at $29/month but only $18k MRR -- that's under 1% converting to paid. Are those free users actually driving new signups through form branding, or is that just the story you tell while the real acquisition still comes from social listening?
Really enjoyed reading this. It was very honest and relatable, especially the part about starting simple and figuring things along the way. It’s reassuring to see you don’t need everything perfect to start.
I was wondering, how did you come up with the initial idea? And did you face any doubts at the beginning?
Thanks for sharing your experience!
This really resonates. I'm building an invoicing SaaS from Argentina and the "affordable alternative" positioning is exactly what I'm going for — competing against FreshBooks the same way you're competing against Typeform. The social listening tip is gold. I just tried Google Ads for the US market and the CPCs in the invoicing space are $50+ per click, which is completely out of reach for a bootstrapped solo founder. Going to try the manual outreach approach you described — finding people frustrated with their current invoicing tool and just showing up with a solution. Congrats on the $18k MRR, that's inspiring.
The social listening play is so underrated. Searching for people complaining about a competitor and just reaching out directly sounds obvious but almost nobody does it consistently. 200 users from manual DMs is real signal because those people actually talked to you, not just clicked an ad.
I've tried something similar for my own apps - finding Reddit threads and tweets where people are frustrated with existing solutions and just showing up with something that works. It's tedious but the conversion quality is way higher than any paid channel.
The positioning clarity is what stands out most here though. "Affordable Typeform alternative" is so much more effective than trying to explain why your thing is unique. You're basically borrowing Typeform's brand recognition and just flipping it. Smart move to stick with that messaging all the way to $200k ARR before evolving it.
The pivot from Botflow to Youform is a great example of listening to what your users are actually telling you with their behavior instead of what you assumed they wanted. Most founders would have tried to force the chatbot positioning to work. Selling it and rebuilding from scratch for the audience that was already showing up takes a lot of discipline.
The social listening approach is underrated and honestly more founders should be doing it. Searching "Typeform" on Twitter and cold DMing people who are complaining about pricing is such a simple playbook but almost nobody actually does it consistently because it feels tedious. 200 users from manual DMs is real traction though, especially early on when every user teaches you something.
Two things stood out to me:
First, the LTD to subscription pivot. $35k in 40 days from lifetime deals is a great launchpad but I'm curious how much of that cohort actually stuck around as active users vs bought it and forgot about it. LTD buyers and subscription buyers tend to behave very differently so I'd imagine the product feedback shifted a lot once you made that switch.
Second, the "affordable Typeform alternative" positioning is textbook. You didn't try to invent a new category, you just attached yourself to an existing one with a clear differentiator (price). That's way easier to rank for, easier to explain, and easier to convert on. The advice about finding moderative keywords with 3k+ monthly searches is gold for anyone in the early stages of picking what to build.
Nice journey. Take a look at some of the product-led growth best practices out there for inspiration on pricing and monetization.
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Building a form builder from scratch after already building a chatbot tool is no small feat. What was the biggest technical hurdle you faced when scaling Youform to handle 80,000 users?
the Typeform price increase migration angle is something I keep seeing work. built a few tools myself and the ones that got early traction were usually because some incumbent raised prices or killed a free tier. it's a weird way to find product-market fit but it works -- you already know people want the thing, they're just pissed off about paying for it. curious how you're holding on retention once they settle in, do they stay price-conscious or start valuing the product itself?
This is a fantastic breakdown, Abhishek! It's super insightful to hear about the journey from Botflow to Youform, especially that pivot driven by closely observing user behavior and realizing Typeform's price increase was pushing people to alternatives – that's some serious market listening. It's also really encouraging to see how quickly you got the initial version of Youform out there, proving that speed and iteration can trump perfection when you're solving a clear user problem. What was the biggest challenge in shifting from LTDs to a pure subscription model after that initial rush of revenue?
"Never create something where there is no competition" is backwards advice that kills startups. Competition means validated demand. I'd rather fight in a crowded market than explain why anyone needs my product.
Cool, first human written post I found on this website.
Good job to Abhishek though - I can relate to his experience at Accenture, lol :)
I love the idea of this strategy. Instead of conforming the existing tool to new uses cases, just pivot and make a more targeted app. It is so simple, yet I am sure many of us are guilty of doing the opposite. It is easy to accidentally expand additional use cases into places they don't belong. I appreciate you sharing this and I will carry this learning into future projects.