PaceCount
Business Fundamentals. Modern and Simple.
I’m a rookie platform engineer focused on collaboration stacks—both legacy and modern—with 10+ years in enterprise tech. I love talking to people and solving real problems. I’m married with two very small kids—a toddler and a newborn—so life is equal parts joyful and intense.
How it started
I know a lot of people running small businesses or side hustles — these days almost everyone seems to have one. At some point every owner asks themselves: can I keep running things on Venmo and text messages forever? I started asking that question out loud, talking to business owners in person and digging into the tools they actually use, and what I found was a clear split: either they’re fully baked into a major platform (Jobber, Housecall Pro, etc.) or they’re limping along with Word docs, paper contracts, and sticky notes.
What I learned
Software is overwhelming. SMBs want modern self‑service intake. They need a simple way for customers to submit requests and for owners to manage them. Inline broadcasting is rare. Few tools let owners re-market to their own clients without compliance headaches.
A technical advisor is worth a subscription fee. Owners will pay for someone who can guide them through basics and keep things running.
My first experiment
I treated the problem like a basic navigation step: measure your pace count before you hike. It’s simple, but it matters. I figured many owners just needed fundamentals plus a little coaching. I offered to build a dead‑simple system for an acquaintance. It worked — he plugged it into his normal operations and, over six months, the prototype helped him generate over $70k by letting the tool handle the basics. There were bugs and rough edges, but the core idea landed: owners will pay for a tool that reliably covers fundamentals.
I went all in
I turned that prototype into a proper B2B SaaS: multitenant, zero‑trust, full‑stack. I poured my spare hours into it for 8+ months while juggling a family — sometimes only 15 minutes at a time. I aimed high and iterated fast, even when progress felt painfully slow. Some days I felt like I would never get the platform above the clouds.
Where we are now
Today I have one paying client and two design partners on the Pro plan in exchange for feedback. Those early customers have accelerated my closed‑beta progress and validated the product in real use. I also have a few technical folks from the service industry lined up to support and advise new clients if things were to start growing.
What PaceCount does
PaceCount is a dead‑simple business management tool for 1–5 person teams and solopreneurs who want a lightweight, modern workflow. Pricing is straightforward: $29 Essentials and $59 Pro. The product focuses on:
Modern self‑service intake (basic branding and color setup plus configurable steps so the same intake can be tweaked for different businesses)
Request processing and e‑signatures
Invoicing
Inline broadcasting so owners can remarket to their own clients with compliance built in (available in pro)
The value is in removing friction and letting owners run the basics without wrestling with complex software.
Looking forward
All the features I set out to build are complete and I’m ready to grow. I’m feeling anxious about the launch — unsure whether to run a broader ad campaign or to pursue 10–15 clients through targeted outreach. How do you handle the pressure and decision making at this stage?
As a solo, bootstrapped founder building this in spare time, I’m open to feedback on positioning and early marketing channels that work for service‑based solopreneurs and small teams. I can also share more on the technical side for anyone interested. I'm also hoping to reach some people with a few free pro plan slots for some honest feedback.
Thank you!
5 Comments
I like that you're optimizing for the stage before businesses feel ready for heavyweight field-service software.
A lot of SMB tools compete by adding more features. There's room for products that instead reduce the point at which owners feel they need to adopt a real operating system for their business. That positioning feels more distinctive than trying to be a lighter version of the incumbents.
Yes - I believe many SMB established tools are under-utilized. I would like to position the product as a real player, but market as a simpler alternative. In the meantime, do you think it makes sense to keep building and testing features to try to match pound for pound against the main players? What would be some examples of things these tools do that would keep a mid-sized business from trying PaceCount? One that comes to mind for me is GPS tracking, I support advanced calendaring (job start timers, dynamic staff availability etc) - but have not gone to GPS ; however, in 2026, we're talking a much shorter period to get it into staging environment and test than 5 years ago.
That's a good question.
I don't think I'd answer it by making a feature checklist, because I think the more important decision is which customer you're deliberately not trying to win yet. That changes which missing features actually matter.
I'd rather explain how I'd think through that with PaceCount as the context than reduce it to a generic product strategy discussion.
If you're open to it, what's the best email to reach you on?
Yes I would definitely be open to a discussion, please reach out to support@pacecount. net - I appreciate your time.
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.