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The Build Board 🪧

A daily leaderboard of build-in-public posts.

Leado Find your first users from Reddit conversations. 1

Google search is a mess and it is making Reddit lead gen insane right now

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MediaFast! Market your SaaS on Reddit without being suspended 2

Reddit's #1 spam signal isn't links, self-promotion, or new accounts. It's this.

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AVENIR An directory founders where idea lives before reality. 3

Why I replaced the navbar with a terminal

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Partner Up

Meet your co-founders, start something new, or lend a helping hand.

Seeking 1 stalled async decision 1d Looking for long-term partner(s) for exciting startup projects! 2d Seeking Collaboration - Network Eng. Agentic Dev. 3d Looking for mech-e cofounder in SoCal - innovative appliance startup 3d I am looking for a freelancing partner. 4d Looking for collaborator 4d Looking for a Technical Co-Founder to build Tyle 7d Need a Dev to Move Your Startup Forward? 11d Looking for Technical Cofounder for Heavy Civil SaaS 12d Looking for cofounder for AI + product growth 17d Looking to help find your first customers for free 17d Looking for technical co founder 17d Combo Fantasy Sports - Solo founder looking for a founding engineer 21d Looking for: SaaS founders launching for the first time 1m Looking for SaaS founders running a single VPS 1m Looking for a UI/UX Designer Co-Founder 1m Seeking Technical Cofounder for B2B SaaS Project 1m Seeking Technical Co-Founder/Partner for B2C Mobile Project 1m Looking for a Video Subscription Platform to Launch? 1m Looking for a Customizable Uber Clone App with Advanced Features? 1m Looking for partners who want to create shared wealth. 1m Looking for someone in need of UX/UI Product Design 2m Looking for co-founder in Ottawa/Gatineau 2m A Synthetic Data Engine for VLM/OCR Cases – Seeking Partners 2m Looking for partner for milliondollar day project 2m Looking for a fintech expert for partnering 2m Looking to Partner Up on an OnlyFans Clone (Creator Economy SaaS) 2m Looking for non-technical founders 2m Looking for Mobile Developer to Co-Create App 2m Looking for honest feedback on a new way to reduce tool overload 2m I study market patterns. Looking for a partner. 2m

Never hire an SEO Agency for your Saas Startup

khadinakbar
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The Build Board 🪧

A daily leaderboard of build-in-public posts.

Leado Find your first users from Reddit conversations. 1

Google search is a mess and it is making Reddit lead gen insane right now

 Product Icon 11
MediaFast! Market your SaaS on Reddit without being suspended 2

Reddit's #1 spam signal isn't links, self-promotion, or new accounts. It's this.

 Product Icon 8
AVENIR An directory founders where idea lives before reality. 3

Why I replaced the navbar with a terminal

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AVENIR: Product Hunt rewards marketing. Not products.

rahym_RN
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We automated our business vetting with OpenClaw

geojacobm6
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Leado: LinkedIn is for job hunters. Reddit is for buyers.

noparam
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A simple way to keep AI automations from making bad decisions

aytekin
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Growing a GEO tool to a mid-five-figure MRR within a year

Daniel Peris saw a trend and built for it. Less than a year later, it's bringing in a mid-five-figure MRR. Here's how.
IndieJames
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AskYourSite: Built something you might find useful

Ravitej
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I bootstrapped for 4 months. Monday I'm going back to a 9-to-5.

Carterr
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$2,398 in 48 hours without work life balance

mhasan_slashitapp
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From Zero to Published: Write, Optimize, and Launch Your First Blog with Ranklly

Ranklly
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Growing to an 8-figure ARR in three years with savings-based pricing

<section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><dl class="ssi-metadata"><dt>Company</dt><dd>Spendbase</dd><dt>Founder</dt><dd>Andrew Alex</dd><dt>Revenue</dt><dd>&gt;$800K a month</dd></dl><div class="ssi-actions-wrapper"></div></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><p><em>Andrew Alex noticed that businesses were hemorrhaging money due to unecessary SaaS licenses. So, he built a tool to monitor redundancies. Three years later, </em><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/"><em>Spendbase</em></a><em> has an eight-figure ARR.</em></p><p><em>Here's Alex, on how he did it.</em> 👇</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox"><nav class="ssi-table-of-contents"><h2>Contents</h2><ol><li><p><a href="#link-zbdbszfp26n">Getting started</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-namrn29u71c">Finding a painful problem</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-mhknhdhr1p9">Building the solution</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-6unkb3k8e52">Timing changes everything</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-g0jlv4q8sd">Savings-based pricing</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-mf4u61v9lc">Organic growth levers</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-ourdz6xxjma">Unfair advantages</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-og0npkt6pk">Relationships, discipline, and experiments</a></p></li><li><p><a href="#link-sjs7p3nzvlf">What's next?</a></p></li></ol></nav></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-zbdbszfp26n" id="link-zbdbszfp26n">Getting started</h2><p>My background is in marketing. I studied core marketing principles, business communication, and the broader business landscape at university. That foundation exposed me to advertising, product development, distribution, sponsorship, and shaped my thinking about customers and problems.</p><p>From there, I moved into product management in tech. I understood how products were built, how teams operated, and what it took to solve a problem people cared about. Eventually, I knew I wanted to build something of my own.</p><p>That became <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-brand-100 underline cursor-pointer" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a>, a spend management platform helping companies take full control of their SaaS, cloud, and corporate spending. The idea came from a painfully common problem: Businesses lacked real visibility into their software spending.</p><p>Today, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a> has grown into a full platform covering software and cloud discounts, license tracking, vendor negotiations, procurement workflows. Last year, we also launched digital banking and virtual corporate cards. We're a bootstrapped team of 200+ across the Americas and EMEA, backed by Google for Startups, Mastercard, and the EU's Seeds of Bravery program.</p><p>We don't share exact numbers publicly, but we have an eight-digit ARR and 300% YoY growth. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a> supports over 800 businesses worldwide - including Preply, Lemon.io, MacPaw, Happy Monday, and YouScan. The <em>Sifted 250</em>recognized us as one of Europe's most promising startups, and last month, Forbes placed us #20 among the Best Startup Employers of 2026.</p><p>I'm also the cofounder of KOLO, a charity fund from Ukraine's tech community supporting defenders on the front lines.</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-namrn29u71c" id="link-namrn29u71c">Finding a painful problem</h2><p>It all started with a relatable moment. A friend casually mentioned he still had access to a company-paid software license worth $3,000 two years after leaving that job. Nobody had noticed.</p><p>At another company I knew, they renewed ten licenses of a $10,000 product, but only one person actually used it. And in one particularly painful case, they canceled a marketer's subscription after she left, and four years of critical marketing data disappeared overnight.</p><p>Once I started looking, these weren't edge cases; they were everywhere. Most companies still managed their entire SaaS stack in spreadsheets, with no visibility into what they used, what they forgot, or what silently drained their budgets.</p><p>I couldn't stop thinking about how to fix that. We founded <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a> in early 2023 to give companies that clarity back.</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-mhknhdhr1p9" id="link-mhknhdhr1p9">Building the solution</h2><p>We started by solving the most painful, visible part of the problem: giving founders, finance, and operations teams a centralized place to see all their SaaS subscriptions and usage.</p><p>The MVP was a visibility and tracking tool, a much smarter replacement for the spreadsheet most finance teams relied on. From that foundation, the product grew quickly, adding renewal management, vendor benchmarking, procurement workflows, and eventually last year, digital banking for startups and corporate cards with spend limits.</p><p>For day-to-day operations, we have a typical startup suite: HubSpot, Slack, Google Workspace, etc. Recently, we’ve been promoting Claude for company-wide adoption. And of course, we eat our own dog food — we manage our own SaaS stack, procurement, and spending through <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a> itself.&nbsp;</p><p>Beyond the tooling, when we launched virtual banking and corporate cards, we built the financial layer directly into the platform. That convergence necessitated significant compliance work. We had to meet global PCI DSS, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 standards. This was our first time pursuing these certifications, and because our product was still in development, we moved fast on code changes. We passed PCI DSS in nine months.</p><img alt="Spendbase homepage" src="https://images.indiehackers.com/post-images/RQZkdT4qgvFZ5wAtNuLA/vOqaQ3DJwYRP8MNEjUOSMger71w1/spendbase-homepage.png?w=1400"></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-6unkb3k8e52" id="link-6unkb3k8e52">Timing changes everything</h2><p>We launched <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a> just three weeks before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.</p><p>We had just finished the MVP and assembled our first team, and overnight, everything changed. Team members had to relocate across Europe and North America, and we had to rebuild everything from scratch. That experience taught us the value of diversification, resilience, and proactive planning in a way no business school course ever could.</p><p>Today, we have relocation plans, distributed teams, and business continuity protocols built in by design.</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-g0jlv4q8sd" id="link-g0jlv4q8sd">Savings-based pricing</h2><p>Our model centers on a simple, bold promise: For every dollar a customer invests in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a>, we deliver two dollars in measurable savings — guaranteed. We call it savings-based pricing, and it's central to everything we do. Instead of charging a flat subscription fee, we tie our success directly to the outcomes our customers achieve.</p><p>This completely changes the sales conversation: We're not selling features, we're selling results. It immediately builds trust and lowers the barrier to adoption.</p><p>Supporting startups is also central to our mission. Our digital banking for startups is free because we know firsthand how vital every dollar is in the early stages. We were in that position not long ago, and that experience inspired us to build a financial ecosystem that helps startups save and scale smarter.</p><p>We also help startups access up to $100K in AWS credits through <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">Spendbase</a>. It’s not just about free infrastructure; it’s about giving teams the freedom to test, experiment, and innovate without worrying about the bill.</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-mf4u61v9lc" id="link-mf4u61v9lc">Organic growth levers</h2><p>As far as growth, the ROI story sells itself. Showing a company they can optimize their software costs by 39% makes the conversation easier. Our savings-based model means we only win when customers win, which builds word-of-mouth quickly.</p><p>The second lever is channel partnerships. We work with finance consultancies, VCs, and tech ecosystems to reach decision-makers faster.&nbsp;</p><p>And third is product-led growth. Free virtual cards and banking tools get teams into the platform. Once they experience the visibility and control, they naturally expand into the optimization layer.</p><p>Recognition also helped, and being backed by Google, Mastercard, and the EU's program gave us credibility in markets where we were still unknown.</p></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-ourdz6xxjma" id="link-ourdz6xxjma">Unfair advantages</h2><p>Beyond that, here are a few things that stand out as advantages:</p><ul><li><p><strong>Obsessing over the problem, not the solution.</strong> We didn't set out to build "another SaaS tool." We couldn't stop thinking about a specific problem — invisible software waste — and that obsession got us through every hard stretch.</p></li><li><p><strong>Capital discipline.</strong> Being bootstrapped forced us to stay efficient from day one. We didn't have the luxury of burning money on vanity metrics, and it made us a stronger company. Every decision had to tie back to real customer value.</p></li><li><p><strong>Building in public.</strong> Transparency with customers about what we're building, how pricing works, and what savings look like has built the kind of trust that's very hard to buy with advertising.</p></li></ul></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-og0npkt6pk" id="link-og0npkt6pk">Relationships, discipline, and experiments</h2><p>Here's my advice:</p><ol><li><p><strong>Build relationships before you need them.</strong> Investors, mentors, and partners help more when they already know you. Start those conversations early, with no agenda.</p></li><li><p><strong>Be disciplined with your resources.</strong> Most startups fail not from a bad idea, but from running out of time or focus. Stay lean, keep your priorities clear, and ensure every dollar and week creates real value for real customers.</p></li><li><p><strong>Build an experimental mindset into your culture from the start.</strong> Maintain a pipeline of hypotheses. Not all need to be big. Our AWS credits program started as a small, uncertain hypothesis. Today, it's one of our core revenue drivers.</p></li></ol></div></section><section class="ssi-section"><div class="ssi-sidebox ssi-sidebox--empty"><p></p></div><div class="ssi-textbox"><h2 data-id="link-sjs7p3nzvlf" id="link-sjs7p3nzvlf">What's next?</h2><p>The big vision is to become the financial operating system for modern companies: a single place where businesses manage every dollar they spend, from SaaS and cloud to payments and banking.&nbsp;</p><p>In the near term, we're expanding the product into treasury management, payables automation, and deeper accounting integrations. Geographically, we've built a strong base in Europe, and we're now actively pushing into North America, where the opportunity is significantly larger. We're also continuing to scale our partnerships with VCs, finance consultancies, and tech ecosystems to reach more companies faster.</p><p>The mission stays the same: Help companies stop wasting money they don't even know they're spending.</p><p>The best place to follow along is our website at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.spendbase.co/">spendbase.co</a>. You'll find product details, case studies, and the latest on what we're building. And you can connect with me on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-blue-500 underline cursor-pointer hover:text-blue-700 transition-colors duration-200" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexseyenko/">LinkedIn</a>.</p><div data-id="b9tds8n2vwp" class="ih-newsletter-cta"><header><h3>Indie Hackers Newsletter: Subscribe to get the latest stories, trends, and insights for indie hackers in your inbox 3x/week.</h3></header><div class="ih-newsletter-cta__component-wrapper"></div></div></div></section>
IndieJames
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Des Traynor on building and growing Intercom to $400M ARR
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Des Traynor and his team created a little company called Intercom — maybe you've heard of it. Then, they built Fin. The combined ARR is $500M. Here's how.
IndieJames
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Growing a blogging side hustle into a 7-figure media brand
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Harry Campbell built a side hustle of a side hustle — blogging about driving for Uber. The blog then grew into a full-blown media company. Here's how.
IndieJames
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Growing a fully-autonomus business to $500k/mo in 3 months
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Ben Broca built a tool to automate his businesses, then monetized it. Three months after launch, it's bringing in $500k/mo. Here's how.
IndieJames
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Competing on price to carve out an $18k MRR foothold
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When Abhishek Chakravarty saw demand for another product, he sold his side project, and built it. Now, Youform is making $18k MRR. Here's how.
IndieJames
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