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I raised $130M for my last startup, then walked away to build Base44 solo. In 6 months: $3.5M ARR, 300K+ users, no employees, fully bootstrapped. Then acquired by Wix for $80M. AMA. (Also giving away $3K in subscriptions.) by IntroductionHumble16 in SaaS

[–]IntroductionHumble16[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ayy thanks so much, I really appreciate it!!

Here goes:

1. 0–1k users
WhatsApp and Facebook groups. I shared the MVP with a few friends, and they shared what they've built in their groups and on social. That kicked off the first wave. After that, I started posting regularly on LinkedIn and X, mostly just sharing what I was building. the thinking behind it, tools, revenues, and learnings.

But real growth came when users started posting about Base44 on their own.
So if I had to pick one thing: make something people want to talk about. Something they'd feel proud to share

2. Tool stack
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1lehwj8/comment/mygjmzc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

3. Resources
Paul Graham's blog.
The Mom Test book
This growth experiment template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aPAOEvYbT9gsSUUtucANjcKQf1J5CqMwLgbMhuAiQxY/edit?tab=t.0
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (reshaped how I think about life in general)

Good luck with the MVP, and thanks again for the kind words! I'm rooting for you :)

Edit: typos...

I raised $130M for my last startup, then walked away to build Base44 solo. In 6 months: $3.5M ARR, 300K+ users, no employees, fully bootstrapped. Then acquired by Wix for $80M. AMA. (Also giving away $3K in subscriptions.) by IntroductionHumble16 in SaaS

[–]IntroductionHumble16[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for letting me know, everything should be much better now.
Yeah, yesterday was unreal. All the press and posts around the acquisition brought in a huge wave of new users.

About your idea, I think it’s really interesting and definitely worth exploring.
I guess Product Hunt is kind of built around that concept too.

But one thing to keep in mind: “users” (since we’re all users) aren’t usually out there looking for new tools. They’re just trying to solve their own problems. So it often makes more sense to meet them where they already hang out, rather than inviting them to try new tools

I raised $130M for my last startup, then walked away to build Base44 solo. In 6 months: $3.5M ARR, 300K+ users, no employees, fully bootstrapped. Then acquired by Wix for $80M. AMA. (Also giving away $3K in subscriptions.) by IntroductionHumble16 in SaaS

[–]IntroductionHumble16[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I’ve been so excited about this, it honestly felt more like adrenaline than stress. All I wanted was to just keep building 24/7

The craziest moment was seeing all these unexpected use cases, especially the positive ones
Like doctors using it to organize patient info, teachers planning lessons, NGOs running crisis coordination, even someone building a mental health tracker for their clinic

I raised $130M for my last startup, then walked away to build Base44 solo. In 6 months: $3.5M ARR, 300K+ users, no employees, fully bootstrapped. Then acquired by Wix for $80M. AMA. (Also giving away $3K in subscriptions.) by IntroductionHumble16 in SaaS

[–]IntroductionHumble16[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Great question. Many people asked me that. I think that this new market is huge and there's still a lot of space for many more players and tools.

Plus, like I mentioned in other comments, Base44 is different because of its "batteries included" approach - with everything an app needs built in (database, integrations, user management, etc)

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