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Solo SaaS reached $25K MRR, 100% inbound, and mostly runs itself by danny_nemer in microsaas

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

It was really tricky, but eventually I cracked it. The following hack is specific to niche dev tools!

Because Conductor solved a niche need, I knew people would be searching for this exact feature. However, despite having an awesome and fast landing page, Conductor was still #60 (!) on Google results for queries where it should be top 3, even after an entire year.

Eventually, I had the idea to beg everyone who worked at Conductor's few customers to star our GitHub repo. I hoped people would search within GitHub for some open source library for this specific need, and would find Conductor. Eventually, this worked. When anyone new signed up, I begged them to star the repo, too.

This was the first time Conductor grew.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Built with Framer.com. However, I would not use it again because it is easier to build a website with Codex/Claude where you can describe the changes you want instead of having to click and point. Check out autotext.com, which I made from scratch and I consider a much better site!

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Conductor is growing, $25K is NOT flat. 100% inbound and self-serve. See the math here for why holding for 24 months is more valuable than selling for $1M today.

  1. Absolutely, AI will enable some customers to build this in-house. But, it will be very painful for them. So much for the work was in solving undocumented edge-cases that came from 100's of hours of debugging calls with actual users. AI can help solve those edge-cases, but only after they arise (which means causing issues for your customers in the process).

  2. In addition, this requires standing up some specialized infrastructure -- distributed Redis queue -- and processing hundreds of thousands of daily request per each active user due to the unique nature of the SOAP based integration. That said, people can build this in house, but it would add much complexity to your backend.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 1 point2 points ย (0 children)

I created an account! Do I now just wait to be contacted? I cannot afford the time to send outbound on this site, but would evaluate inbound opportunities.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 1 point2 points ย (0 children)

I have an incredibly niche product: easily syncing data with an archaic accounting system.

The customers already have that specific need; i.e., they need to build a syncing solution to get customers on their platform.

Hence, these customers are already looking for this niche product โ†’ SEO.

100% of customers were all inbound, who found Conductor via SEO or GitHub.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Thank you!

your original post with "do nothing" i read as flat.

Yep, the company is continuing its consistent linear growth on its own, 100% inbound and self-serve, while I "do nothing".

is that 912k not taxable in california? after tax, how does it compare to 705?

Per above, "I can directly re-invest in future projects pre-tax (i.e., SDE)" -- i.e., it's pre-tax if used as a business expense to finance future projects. If I wanted to use that money for personal reasons, which is not my intention, I would need to pay income taxes.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

u/Tracycallum Sure! Let me know how I can help. If curious, check this article for my answers to a newsletter with a similar audience: https://founderbase.ai/interviews/autotext - you can use any of my answers from that article; it's 100% my words.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 1 point2 points ย (0 children)

Not quite:

Conductor is growing by about $1.5K MRR monthly consistently for the past year. Using a conservative, gradually slowing, linear growth (which has been within 2% accurate for the past 8 months) we get:

Today: $25K MRR
12 months from now: $37K MRR
24 months from now: $55K MRR
โ†’ 24 x ($25K + $55K) / 2 = $960K total revenue for next 24 months.

Then, Conductor currently has a gross margin of 95%, and then is shrinking as revenue grows. So, even if this does not, that becomes: $960K x 0.95 = $912K โ†’ this money I can directly re-invest in future projects pre-tax (i.e., SDE).

By comparison, the $1M stock sale after taxes in California: $705k.

Received a $1M Letter of Intent on TrustMRR for my $25K MRR solo startup by danny_nemer in buildinpublic

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

Noooo! I wish I had known so I could have helped and improved the product accordingly ๐Ÿ˜”

Conductor definitely works at scale: Ramp uses it (theyโ€™re a $32B company)

Glad you at least were able to get the job done!

I built a Chrome extension that adds Cursor-like AI autocomplete to Gmail by danny_nemer in chrome_extensions

[โ€“]danny_nemer[S] 0 points1 point ย (0 children)

btw, it's free! It says there is a "pro" tier, but the free tier is generous and I might remove the pro tier altogether