Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?
10 comments
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Not a contribution but a question - how do one-person SaaS founders find customers in 2025?
It feels like between most subreddits banning self promotion and LinkedIn being flooded by AI post and inboxes by AI cold calls, it should be harder to make yourself stand out to a stranger.
Do you have be a content creator to grow an audience, make it work and get your first clients?
It feels like between most subreddits banning self promotion and LinkedIn being flooded by AI post and inboxes by AI cold calls, it should be harder to make yourself stand out to a stranger.
Do you have be a content creator to grow an audience, make it work and get your first clients?
The common recommendation I've seen is to use your network. If it's something you're building then ideally you know what problem you're solving and who has that problem. Then getting those early users you know with that problem involved to test and give feedback, you can then optimize further for that audience and need. From there those users will likely share with those that they know within their own network having the same issue. There's a few books on it like Tribes by Godin (though not everyone agrees of course).
Other than that there are a few places that highlight product launches like product hunt, etc. to gain initial usage. Probably check for niche groups having the issue and reach out organically - no one likes spam.
This is just what I've gathered from others, I'm in the beginning phase of this myself :-)
Other than that there are a few places that highlight product launches like product hunt, etc. to gain initial usage. Probably check for niche groups having the issue and reach out organically - no one likes spam.
This is just what I've gathered from others, I'm in the beginning phase of this myself :-)
Often solo-founders build very niche apps/SaaS which they already have a personal network for or can target smaller platforms and business networks for marketing/distribution. You can stay small and do very well.
The larger platforms are usually too saturated to be effective. In my experience, generally not a good return on $/time.
The larger platforms are usually too saturated to be effective. In my experience, generally not a good return on $/time.
For us a its a mix of word of mouth, cold emailing, AdWords and Reddit. At the beginning I also did cold calling. Some of the cold calling clients are still with us after 6 years! We are B2B so TAM is quite small.
Does a 2 person SaaS count?
We launched Cronitor.io here on HN over 11 years ago and we’re thriving.
The first 6 years were part time, nights and weekends, while we both had kids and full time jobs. In 2020 we quit our jobs (and took a huge pay cut for a while) to go full time on it. Eleven years later I still love building dev tools.
We launched Cronitor.io here on HN over 11 years ago and we’re thriving.
The first 6 years were part time, nights and weekends, while we both had kids and full time jobs. In 2020 we quit our jobs (and took a huge pay cut for a while) to go full time on it. Eleven years later I still love building dev tools.
This looks great, thanks for sharing! I run a 1-person SaaS on the side and this would help me a lot with keeping it running. Glad to hear that you are able to full time on it.
Thank you!! Yes we use Cronitor extensively ourselves (dogfooding!) and it’s saved us many many times.
If you have any product feedback please let me know: [email protected]
If you have any product feedback please let me know: [email protected]
I run readlang.com as one person. I started it back in 2012 and it currently makes about 14K euros / month, with expenses of about 1.5K, so it's mostly profit.
photopea.com stands out to me as an amazing solo effort. I imagine it’s been featured before.
If you see this Ivan, Well done!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photopea
If you see this Ivan, Well done!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photopea
Editions:
2019 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701783
2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009