$4k MRR (Ramen Profitable)
by Ben LatzAs the inflow of word of mouth from some online options trading communities continues, MRR keeps climbing (at about 15% MoM). Half of the trials convert to paid subscriptions.
I've now been adding in some automation software to make things easier, such as Baremetrics (recover, cancellation insights, etc), upgraded Zapier to add on a trial expiration notice email, Honeybadger for error tracking/monitoring, and created a Slack group for subscribers for both social and customer support use.
And for the first time, I started working with a freelance developer to help improve the codebase and integrate a new solution that would improve the product - reinvesting a lot of the revenue at this point.
Up next is paying more attention to marketing, landing page, customer flow/journey, and distribution partners, etc.
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Awesome! So you started from scratch yourself? What was the biggest challenge? Where did you get your first client? =)
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Thanks, yeah started from scratch, didn't even know web development. Long story short, my friend (co-founder) helped me get started with Ruby on Rails and converting my logic/spreadsheet to a web app. That was end of 2017 - May 2018, and I continued learning RoR and building it.
Launched an early access list in April 2018 and got around 250 people from my Twitter account that I had built up over around 2 years to about 1,300 followers. Launched June 1, 2018, charging from Day 1 even though it was still very MVPish (because it solved the core problem and was the only software in existence to do so).
And ever since it's just been an insane amount of development/improvements, customer support everyday, and word of mouth. I rebuilt the app in June 2019 for a huge jump in usability and codebase quality. The biggest challenge was honestly just staying excited and motivated to work on it, because you put in so much work for basically no financial reward for a couple years and then if you've hit on the right problem/market maybe it starts to work out a little bit.
Fortunately I've gotten a lot of out of it other than money, so it's been a great positive experience regardless of what happened(s) with it. If I knew how hard SaaS was I wouldn't have done it, but I'm still very glad I did (lots of domino effect with general life/career path because of it).
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Great story. I especially like the bit about the domino effect on your general life / career. This is one of those benefits of indie hacking that often gets overlooked. Even if your first startups fail, the experience you get is invaluable.
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Thanks! Funny how it seems like the efforts someone can look back and say "it wasn't worth it in this one aspect" is the effort that made a lot more possible surrounding it - probably wouldn't have done it in the first place if you knew ahead of time.
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Congrats on your success, that is a tremendous feat! Your site looks great too, it feels inspired by https://panic.com/
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Thanks! Hadn't seen that site before
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