Acquiring an AI micro-SaaS and building it to $58k MRR within two years

Ryan Darani grew his SEO consultancy to $65k MRR, then closed up shop and joined forces with a friend who had recently acquired an AI micro-SaaS.

Less than two years later, Cuppa is at $45k MRR, and a spinoff service company that launched two months ago is at $13.5k MRR.

Here's Ryan on how he did it. 👇

Leaving a $65k MRR business

I’ve been building some kind of business on the Internet for the last 6 years. In my previous life, I worked as an SEO (in-house and agency) before launching an SEO consultancy — my first ‘big’ success. At its peak, my consultancy reached $65K/MRR. But then I transitioned away from building solo businesses and into SaaS and AI products.

I’m currently working on three (jeesh) separate businesses in the SaaS space. My main focus is Cuppa.

Cuppa is an AI writing tool designed to create SEO-ready articles in minutes with no middleman costs. We have over 1,000 members, and MRR fluctuates between $41K and $45K (depending on the time of year).

As a spin-off from Cuppa, we launched a done-for-you service for agencies. We developed an AI automation and ‘agent’ that replaces the entire content operations of an agency (writer, proofreader, editor) it’s all done through this framework we’ve developed.

We launched the service in November 2024 and signed our first ten clients by the end of December. It’s currently at $13.5K/MRR.

Jumping on the bandwagon

I didn’t actually come up with the idea for Cuppa. Someone much smarter than me did — Chris Riley. Chris purchased Cuppa in 2023 from an indie developer when he saw the opportunity to service an area of the market (SEO) that would find utility in AI content.

Then, Chris brought me in thanks to my 10+ years of experience in the SEO space. Which meant we could put the tool in the hands of more people at a much faster rate. And because I’d done SEO for so long, I could put myself in the user’s shoes to think of new features, help with pricing, and push on pain points I know I’d had with AI tools in the past.

This opportunity worked brilliantly because I’d just closed down my consultancy. I had a big enough safety net to figure out what I wanted to do next, and thankfully, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Jumpstarting a newly acquire micro-SaaS

Phase 0

Time, money, and a lot of brain power went into figuring out how to run a SaaS business on the fly. Throw in some sweat and tears as well.

Thankfully, the first weekend after acquisition, we did a lifetime deal and were able to pull in nearly the entire amount of money we spent on acquiring the free tool. That was extremely helpful in setting us up for success for two reasons:

1. It proved there was a demand.

2. Cash in the door was helpful to begin to put the framework together to scale the product.

Without that initial success, I doubt we would be where we are today. A lot of credit is due to the original builder of the free tool — he was able to really create a strong following with the tool before we acquired it. 

Phase 1

The initial phase after the acquisition was the most hectic. This lasted approximately four to six months. We had to put together a team in real time to make sure we could handle all the customer load and support ticket items coming through. This, I would say, was Phase 1 of Cuppa.sh. The entire process of this newly minted SaaS business (ops, development, sales, marketing) was completely new to every single one of us.

From there, we continued to build and grow the feature set directly from the initial customers (the life-time customers) feedback. Tapping into this feedback was critical for building the initial foundation and future roadmap for Cuppa.

Phase 2

Phase 2 was most of 2024. We continue to scale with customers, build new features and improve old ones, and just generally find our “business stride”.

As with any newly-marketed SaaS product, there were ups and downs on a daily basis. It was learning and implementing in real time, but we were soon about handle and process the learnings in a much more efficient manner.

Phase 3

In the Summer of 2024, we started to plan out our next phase of Cuppa, transitioning from Cuppa.Sh to Cuppa.Ai. It was time for a complete product uplift, new brand, new website, etc — but all on the same Cuppa.sh foundation. Pretty much everything needed a level up to move the app from a micro-SaaS to a more professional and trustworthy SaaS brand. 

And that is where we currently find ourselves — executing the next level of growth for Cuppa.AI.

It's funny, even during planned roadmap executions, there are so many things that come along that throw a wrench into executing this roadmap. For example, we’ve actually added a new service-lite product into our new Cuppa AI (this was not planned), and we saw pretty much immediate traction and enough demand that we had to go back to the strategy drawing board to make sure we started executing a vision and plan for that as well.

And this is what I think is the critical element to finding success with building a SaaS product. Moving quickly is important, sure, but so is making sure you are pointed in the right direction and executing on it with a team that is as confident in the direction as you are.

Growth happens in the small wins

I’m a strong believer in momentum being the most important thing about business. I’ve often fallen victim to, "Well, I had a good week, so I can slow down next week", which is the dumbest thing you can do in business. 

Building a business to six or seven figures isn’t easy. I don’t care how it’s portrayed on X. You’re looking at 10-hour days doing repetitive, mundane tasks that move the needle bit-by-bit. Every so often you’ll do something that’s hockey-stick growth but, in reality, the small daily wins are where growth happens.

You have to be a self-motivator. It’s not like working a 9-5. You have to wake up, commit to a to-do list (which is a non-negotiable IMO) and get things done without anybody telling you what to do.

Influencer marketing

There are only a few ways to attract users into your ecosystem. But the best (by far) is either building an audience over time through a personal brand or borrowing somebody else’s audience (BOPA).

When Cuppa launched, we made our initial investment back in a single weekend. Purely because of the combined network of everybody involved. Since then, we’ve continued to leverage the networks of other people in return for either revenue splits or equity within the business.

The pros of doing this are:

1. You can quickly accelerate how many people pay for your product.

2. The audience is likely to stick around for longer if someone they trust recommends it.

3. You accelerate your word of mouth marketing (if the product is good enough).

The cons:

1. Not every influencer/distributor is the right fit for your business.

2. You’re losing a percentage of every sale which eats into your margins.

3. It can be difficult to source affiliates.

Coupled with this, we cross-promote services between the businesses. Our email lists have thousands of subscribers which we’ve accumulated over the last 18 months. An easy way to increase revenue is to offer deals within the ecosystem. For example, Cuppa customers may also be DFY customers. 

Thinking ahead, we’re now testing:

• Cold email outreach

• Inbound-led outbound

• Paid acquisition (a very small budget allocation).

We’re always looking for ways to develop a ‘playbook’. We test a channel, see if it returns anything and, if not, we move on or develop new offers/strategies based on the data.

Fighting churn

We have such a mix of businesses that our revenue models are kind of crazy. But in a good way, of course.

Cuppa is a subscription-based offering that starts from $20/mo. This entry point is great for all customers which reduces the friction during the signup process.

The issue this presents is churn. Why? Because your value proposition becomes price, rather than the features or value of the product itself. When customers go to market for an alternative, they’re looking for something cheaper – even if it means a reduction in features.

SaaS products take time to develop, iterate, refine and improve. During which time churn becomes the biggest obstacle to contend with. 

We’re at $460K/ARR with Cuppa right now and we’d love for this to be closer to $1M/ARR by the end of this year. If we had 0% churn, we’d likely be there by the middle of 2024 which is why making our offering as ‘sticky’ as possible is our goal.

Mistakes were made

I’m hesitant to say the word mistake here, because ultimately these mistakes or failed experiments have led us to where we currently are. But, let’s just throw out that entrepreneurial mindset for the moment and just say there were constant ‘mistakes’, bad decisions, missed opportunities along the way. 

Is there anything specifically I would’ve done differently in hindsight? Sure. Definitely. 100%. I wouldn’t have done a lifetime deal, I wouldn’t have partnered and hired in the manner I did, I would’ve tried to raise small funds from my network in the beginning, and I would’ve likely changed the pricing structure way, way earlier.

But ultimately, I do think this is all about learning the process.

The biggest challenge was getting the right people and team in place — which is still a work in progress. It's no easy task, especially being a fully remote, global team. We must have had 15-20 developers come through the product in 2023 and 2024. For one reason or another, they didn’t work out for us. And when that happens, everything shifts — roadmaps, strategy, improvements, everything. The same can be said for the ops side, the marketing side. Many tests, many trials. 

Follow this playbook

My best advice: Don’t look at what anybody else is doing and try to copy it. It doesn’t work.

There are a lot of great, intelligent people out there who can build products much better and faster than I can. My big advantage over them is I understand marketing and distribution, which is where 99% of indie hackers fall short.

Your product is only as good as your marketing. Spend time learning about different distribution channels and, more importantly, whether your customers are in these channels. If not, don’t waste your time.

Here’s what you should do:

1. Build an MVP (don’t overengineer it)

2. Manually reach out to 100 people who you want to test your product

3. Collect feedback

4. See if you have product-market fit. If any of those 100 people would willingly pay for your product, you have validation that it solves a problem.

5. From there, iterate and launch to the masses!

What's next?

Our goal is to ride the AI bubble over the next 3-5 years and build products people genuinely love – especially in the B2B space. If we can help our partners make (and save) money, then we’re doing the right thing. 

From a revenue perspective, we want to achieve consistent $100K/MRR months with our Cuppa offerings; both the SaaS and DFY agency.

We’re also looking to partner with growth maniacs who can take and distribute a product to the masses. We have a number of acquisitions in the pipeline this year which I can’t say much about yet but, it’ll bring us one step closer to our $100K/MRR months at a much faster rate.

As a stretch goal (because, why not?) we want to achieve $250K/MRR with each product within our holdco. I think that’s 18 months away at a minimum, but it keeps us locked in and focused to only do the most important things on the to-do list.

You can follow along on X, and check out Cuppa.