Made $63 MRR & got to ramen profitability but it wasn't that easy

Ramen Profitability is the goal for every startup founder.

In my case being from India & crashing at my parents', the target was as low as $63 MRR 😄

While $63 MRR may seem like a really small figure, it's quite special to me as this was my first SaaS venture as a solo founder

I had my first job as a software developer in the year 2020 but right from day one, I was restless 🤐

I hated every weekday when I had to commute to work & work on mundane tasks for a legacy enterprise product

Some of my friends would tell me switching jobs would work but I knew I wasn't really good at that. I didn't like the idea of renting out my time & I always wanted to start something of my own

So I started looking at side hustles while on my day job

Everything started in 2021, when as a naive 23-year-old, I started dabbling in consumer-based startups focused on the Indian market

Since I was exposed to problems in hiring, I thought I could work on the problem by building a talent-based hiring marketplace where engineers connected with startups 😄

I got with a cofounder friend of mine & we started working on the product, we called "Astramind" at that time

We did manage to make revenue of $300 in the beginning but after 3 pivots in the same year, the products ultimately failed due to a variety of reasons

Being dejected with multiple failures, my cofounder wanted to focus more on his career as a software developer rather than taking risky bets

While I found it difficult to bootstrap consumer businesses with no revenue at hand 🙄

So at the end of the year, we decided to part ways

Now I was all alone in January 2022.

After over a year of failures, the only thing I was left with were lessons I learned, a day job & a family who did not really approve of what I was doing 😅

But the burning desire of quitting my job & building a business was still strong.

I was back to square one & had to start everything from scratch this time as a solo founder

I always had an eye for SaaS products as they seemed perfect for me. The idea of building & marketing software seemed super exciting to me. And the recurring revenue aspect of SaaS products would help me focus full-time on the startup

I started reading a lot of books about how entrepreneurs built their businesses, listened to indie podcasts

I was fixated on following an audience-first approach by trying to build an audience & then solve a problem for them.

But at that time, I only had 200 followers on Twitter & most of my tweets went to the abyss. So I realized that building in public was the only way that I could build an audience even if the startup failed

I researched a lot of problems in the user onboarding space & that's when I started working on Famewall as the testimonial tools at the time were really clunky & did not have customization options

I began building Famewall in public on Twitter, nights after work & on weekends 😍

I seemed like a workaholic glued to the laptop with my girlfriend. My social life was constantly taking a hit 😂

I only had one goal in mind -> Get to $1k MRR and live the indie dream (Thought that was so easy)

I finally launched the MVP of Famewall in the month of March 2022 hoping to finally redeem the internet treasure I was promised 😂

To no one's surprise, nothing happened! Users were signing up after seeing my build in public updates on Twitter but I hardly got any paying users 🤐

Days were going by in the month of March when I was dealing with a lot of stress & anxiety. I had to work on my dreaded job even more 🙄

The end of March 2022 was nearing & I even thought of the easy way out by dumping my current project & jumping to a shiny new product

But I came to terms with the fact that if I wasn't able to monetize this product, I wouldn't be able to monetize any new products either.

This got me the energy and focus to continue with Famewall

I made up my mind to get at least one paying customer before I had any right to work on something else

In April 2022, things seem good when I started writing cold DMs to potential people whom I thought might use Famewall, posted about my product on popular subreddits

Finally my cold DM strategy worked and I got my first paying customer but the payment didn't fall through & they sent me this screenshot🤐

I woke up to see this message in utter delight & shock at the same time. I quickly wrote to stripe & they provided me with a prompt resolution on this issue & I applied for an export license as per the rules in my country

I reached out to the customer again & finally they made the payment 🤩

I got my first independent money on the internet as a solo founder after a year of toil & months of stress 😄

After that Famewall slowly started growing with subscribers purchasing the annual plan as well 😍

And then I finally quit my job in June 2022 by submitting a resignation in public to focus full time on Famewall

I've got a lot of plans to build & grow famewall to $1k MRR as per my initial dream along with a new product Mailboat (which stemmed from a frustration while working on famewall) in the coming months 😄

I actively write on Twitter & I summarized my entire journey in a thread on Twitter