How long did it take you to go to $1,000 MRR?
Read this really interesting article by Baremetrics about the prediction of SaaS revenues in MRR and ARR. Check: https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr-milestones.
I was wondering... how long did it take you to hit $1,000 MRR? And what was your most valuable lesson in achieving it?
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I started charging in April. From my first dollar in April to now I have generated $15.5k.
$15.5k / 7 months = $2,214k per month
The first few months were slow. I made $180 from my first customer, because he signed up for the annual plan. Then I grinded my ass off to get the next few customers. I got up to about $100 MRR by July.
Then in August when I launched a lifetime deal at $197 and hit #1 on Product Hunt for the day I've since netted about $15k with about $500 of that recurring per month.
So the average since I started charging evens out to be about $2k.
Yesterday was my biggest day yet. I sold 7-lifetime deals and some monthly. I was able to net $900 in one day. It took me close to one year though.
SaaS requires patience. You won't make money at the start for a while, but when you do it starts to snowball and you can make the money without trading time.
That's amazing! Thanks for sharing your story. #1 on PH.. dreams do come true ;)
Hey, Glad to hear that you were able to hit the top of PH.
My question is, doesn't the lifetime deal affects the MRR in the long term?
Yes. Do think about all the possible options you have while starting a SaaS. Then do cost-benefit between them all. There is always a trade-off.
Taking capital means dilution, not always bad if the deal makes sense, run the numbers.
Doing freelance work, this dilutes your time and energy. This seems the most obvious, but I believe is a trap, be careful with taking on additional work. Ideally, you find clients and outsource the work or something clever that doesn't require your attention 5-7 days a week.
Then there are lifetime deals. The trade-off is you lose money on 100 people after the first year, some of those 100 may not even use the product, so this maybe 50-80 people you're losing money on. If your margins are high, then it's not a big deal. If your margins are low then it's not viable.
No matter what approach you take there are trade-offs you gotta run the numbers and see what makes sense. This made sense for me.
Absolutely right! IMO, if your numbers are right then lifetime deal should be enough to fuel your investment bank for MRR. The problem is that on which scale you run the lifetime deal on? If you are going way too aggressive with the lifetime deal then I think it would affect the brand and startups need to make a good first impression to make themselves relevant in industry. I am a bit confused that if I go very aggressive with Lifetime then I might onboard some B2B customers who should've been on my MRR.
It took about 6 months for me. The first $1k was hard, but now trying to 10x it to $10k. Seems easier.
3 months to be exact :)
6 months thereabouts from the first dollar received
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