Growing Agile Docs to 10k MRR Before Being Acquired and Working For the Acquirer for 3 Years. Now Back In The Wild

It's been a while since I last wrote a post. In 2019, I quit my job to build a software business, and I shared some of my journey building Agile Docs (now called Hierarchy for Jira) on the Atlassian Marketplace via IndieHackers.

By the end of 2021, I had grown Agile Docs to $10k MRR when it was acquired by a larger company specializing in Atlassian Marketplace apps. The acquisition was life-changing—not enough to retire forever, but enough to buy a home outright with some savings left over. I then worked for the acquiring company for three years.

Now, six years later, with a young daughter and a fresh perspective, I'm figuring out my next move. Working for someone else was a refreshing break. People don't often talk about the stress of running a successful SaaS product—the constant fear that it could collapse, with all the responsibility on you. It was nice to step away from that for a while.

I'm ready to dive back into building my own products. To warm up, I've already launched three new apps on the Atlassian Marketplace: AI Issue Summariser, AI Acceptance Criteria, and Release Notes AI. These are small apps, but my goal is to test whether their value propositions resonate and attract users who request more features. To be honest, I don't think the Atlassian Marketplace is as lucrative as it once was due to increasing competition, but my expertise in this space makes it a logical starting point.

I've also experimented with SEO, creating a blog with posts about AI-powered issue summaries in Jira and creating release notes with AI.

I'm open to exploring markets beyond Atlassian. Since the acquisition, I've had extra funds to invest and developed a strong interest in analyzing stock fundamentals. I'd love to build something in this space but am still refining my ideas. For now, I'm prioritizing marketing—focusing on generating traffic to an opt-in page for my next project to gauge interest.