From idea to $24k exit in 30 days: How Josh Pigford speedran his SaaS like a video game

Indie hackers love a good “launched fast, cashed out” story. Josh Pigford’s (Baremetrics founder) is a gem — he speedran his SaaS business, launched it, and flipped it for $24,381.04 in less than a month.

It started on January 6th with a simple Twitter poll: “Optic or Spyglass?” By January 13th, the app was live. Optic is a competitive monitoring app — real-time tracking your competitors' pricing, offerings, and messaging through via AI-powered chat.

From day one, Josh built in public — constantly sharing updates, shipping new features (six major updates in two weeks!), and even open-sourcing parts of his code.

He kept engaging with early users, personally emailed 50 people for feedback, and celebrated when his very first paying customer dropped $99. Despite the hype, growth was... slow. A handful of early adopters, and a few sign-ups, but no real momentum.

By February 1, Josh admitted Optic wasn’t making real money, so he pivoted, pitching a revenue-sharing deal.

On February 4, after dozens of messages from interested buyers, he decided to take the “sell it” route. He listed Optic for $15,000.

But instead of waiting around, he launched a 7-day Dutch auction, starting at $25,000. The price dropped every second until someone grabbed it. Within 24 hours it sold for $24,381.04 — with 278 people watching the auction play out.

Why would anyone buy a month-old SaaS for $25K? Ian Nuttall explained it beautifully on X:

I think there is a market for spinning up killer apps like this as a starter project for somebody

essentially boilerplates but for an actual built saas and handful of users

I could pay a dev for an MVP and they would take ages and lots of iteration which I don’t want

just let me buy a solid product I can start marketing on day 1

After that, Josh open-sourced the entire auction platform.

Josh isn’t new to this game — far from it. The guy’s a hardcore serial entrepreneur. Just look at this list of his projects. In 2024 alone, he sold five side projects for $46K (now $70K including Optic).

For him, Optic was just another fun experiment — and a reminder that sometimes, building fast and flipping smart is the real indie hacker game.

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