I've built a 2300$ a month SaaS out of a simple problem.

Back in 2021, I used to set up automation solutions for clients in the customer support space

Lots of them had the same problem:

Let's say you are the proud owner of an E-commerce shoe store, and you have a client named Chad.

Chad reached out to your support team because he got the wrong size of sneakers.

A member of your support team helps Chad return the shoes and get them in a different size.

A few hours passed, and the guy from your team successfully marked Chad's ticket in the CRM system as "closed."

Chad writes back: "Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate the help, and I just love your sneakers.

Chad doesn't know that he just created extra work for the brand. He just popped his message back up to their queue, and his gratitude might end up frustrating the team.

From this very problem, "Thank You GPT"(www.ty-gpt.com) was born.

I started to list every form of gratitude I saw people tend to send in those messages.

When my tool detected a form of "thank you" in the closed chat, it immediately replied back and marked the specific ticket as "solved" again.

For two years, this tool sat in the marketplace of a CRM platform (Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/470124/thank-you-gpt/ ).

It didn't generate any revenue for the simple reason that I didn't ask for any.

In 2023, ChatGPT was released publicly.

It was a blessing because Instead of my aging list of forms of gratitude, I could give my tool a functioning brain.

This was a game-changer in terms of its abilities.

And then, my girlfriend had this crazy idea:

"Why don't you send an email to current free users telling them that the tool will be available on a monthly subscription model starting next month?"

I had nothing to lose, and 24 hours later, I secured 1,000$ in monthly subscriptions from a tool I used to give for free.

With this pocket money in hand, I created a decent UI for the tool and an interface that communicates with the users more frequently.

We've built a freemium model, and now I help people who are just starting out with their small business to enjoy it for free.

Once it helps them to grow their business and the capacity of tickets in their CRM rises, they need to switch to the premium version.

But at that point, they are more than happy to do so.

And to be practical, this is what you can take from this story:

1. Find other problems your clients have further from why they hired you.

2. Spend a month developing the most basic version of what could be a solution.

3. See if people have the intent to pay for the solution.

4. If so, you just struck gold. Start building a more robust version of your MVP and plan ahead.

Good luck :)