Ask HN: One-person startups/SaaS that are profitable?
56 comments
After 5 years and probably like a dozen failed attempts, I run a profitable one-person SaaS.
I initially thought "it was about the tech" and tried remaking levelsio's remoteok as a serverless app, and was surprised that no one cared what I built it in, and that traction/marketing was everything.
I wrote up an article each year about the journey:
- https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine...
- https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star...
- https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review
- https://maxrozen.com/2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook
- https://maxrozen.com/2022-just-keep-shipping
I initially thought "it was about the tech" and tried remaking levelsio's remoteok as a serverless app, and was surprised that no one cared what I built it in, and that traction/marketing was everything.
I wrote up an article each year about the journey:
- https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine...
- https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star...
- https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review
- https://maxrozen.com/2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook
- https://maxrozen.com/2022-just-keep-shipping
I run a "one-person" saas that is profitable. I have an offshore contractor that helps me run the service, and one offshore support person to help with tickets.
I do all of the marketing, product development, finances, sales & customer success.
Do I recommend it? Probably not. I am very tired of doing everything myself and am excited to grow it to the point of hiring more team members. I recommend that when starting a startup to plan to build it big enough that you can afford not to do everything solo. It's stressful and lonely, but also strangely rewarding.
A note on "offshore" team members: I hear a lot of people say offshore workers are low quality or don't care about the work yada yada. I have found the opposite to be true - offshore folks are the same as any other people you employ: pay your people well, treat them with respect and invest in their future and they will do great work. My support and ops team members have been with me for 3+ years.
I do all of the marketing, product development, finances, sales & customer success.
Do I recommend it? Probably not. I am very tired of doing everything myself and am excited to grow it to the point of hiring more team members. I recommend that when starting a startup to plan to build it big enough that you can afford not to do everything solo. It's stressful and lonely, but also strangely rewarding.
A note on "offshore" team members: I hear a lot of people say offshore workers are low quality or don't care about the work yada yada. I have found the opposite to be true - offshore folks are the same as any other people you employ: pay your people well, treat them with respect and invest in their future and they will do great work. My support and ops team members have been with me for 3+ years.
> I hear a lot of people say offshore workers are low quality or don't care about the work yada yada.
IME it's just like everything else - you get what you pay for. Bulk offshore TCS consultants will be as bad as you'd expect (again, in my direct experience), but that doesn't mean any/all offshore labor should be instantly discredited.
IME it's just like everything else - you get what you pay for. Bulk offshore TCS consultants will be as bad as you'd expect (again, in my direct experience), but that doesn't mean any/all offshore labor should be instantly discredited.
where did you find them, and what country are they in?
Im based in Indonesia and have built a few tech teams here over the years. Also know of a few dev houses based here with clients internationally, both in Europe & the US.
Can vouch for what the OP says, if you take care of people, pay a decent salary for their region, people will be loyal and quality is very good. You will need to learn a bit about the local region and culture though if your hiring directly.
This is especially true now as the local tech scene is loosing good senior folk through redundancies and forcing people back into the office.
Can vouch for what the OP says, if you take care of people, pay a decent salary for their region, people will be loyal and quality is very good. You will need to learn a bit about the local region and culture though if your hiring directly.
This is especially true now as the local tech scene is loosing good senior folk through redundancies and forcing people back into the office.
I'll chime in to share my experience, I was once looking for companies/startups looking to get offshore developer (I was offering my time) and remember I got direct link to the company through meetup app email distribution list for a python meetup in my city.
I'm doing roughly $20k/mo. with a physical monthly newsletter delivered to people's doorsteps. Here's the old-school salesletter for it: https://www.scottscheper.com/free-trial
Here's a picture of my Stripe account from last month: https://cloud.scottscheper.com/3k3Yry2V
Happy to share how this model works. There's a lot of subtleties to it.
Here's a picture of my Stripe account from last month: https://cloud.scottscheper.com/3k3Yry2V
Happy to share how this model works. There's a lot of subtleties to it.
Genuinely curious who your customers are and what the price point is. The market clearly isn’t me because I hated your landing page and copy within 20 seconds. Not a criticism, I have products where I wrote copy in a way that hits an audience that is very much not aligned with me or people I know. But curious.
Sales funnel and conversion funnel might be the right terms to understand what he is doing with that page. The audience to that page most likely already came across him through his work, for example, somebody receiving his physical newsletter that was passed around by someone else. That page is not for cold audience but more for person that is already moving along the conversion funnel.
I wouldn’t be surprised that he posted that page here to understand how he can create a page more appropriate for colder audience or someone very early in the conversion funnel.
I wouldn’t be surprised that he posted that page here to understand how he can create a page more appropriate for colder audience or someone very early in the conversion funnel.
Exactly. It's the page people are sent to shortly after purchasing this book: https://www.scottscheper.com/antinet
Which I actually break-even on and even lose money on (even though it took me a year and a half to write). I break-even on the front-end and monetize via the physical monthly newsletter on the backend.
Which I actually break-even on and even lose money on (even though it took me a year and a half to write). I break-even on the front-end and monetize via the physical monthly newsletter on the backend.
They're People interested in Zettelkasten and already know/like me.
They understand my use of old school font/letter. Otherwise to a cold audience (like yourself) it's definitely cringe.
They understand my use of old school font/letter. Otherwise to a cold audience (like yourself) it's definitely cringe.
I read the link, but couldn't quote figure out what the newsletter is about?
Knowledge Management, Writing, and Marketing.
Reading your free trial pitch reminded me of Jeffrey Gitomer and his book Sales Bible that I read 20+ years ago. Your pitch has similar vibe. As someone else commented, today’s audience may consider the style cringy but very effective once you have the target audience.
Exactly. It still works well if you're authentic. I'll be creating a more modern page soon for cold traffic (just features/direct).
The people who get that page have just purchased my book Antinet Zettelkasten. It's an upsell essentially.
People don't subscribe to the newsletter because they want the newsletter; they subscribe because they want the free gifts. And they stick around through another special mechanism I don't even advertise on the backend. Again, subtleties.
The people who get that page have just purchased my book Antinet Zettelkasten. It's an upsell essentially.
People don't subscribe to the newsletter because they want the newsletter; they subscribe because they want the free gifts. And they stick around through another special mechanism I don't even advertise on the backend. Again, subtleties.
Please do share! I'd love to know more about this business. Thank you.
Dude scams left and right. Pay "just" 11.86 but .. starting next month it is "only" 48.96.
His revenue is just rich people forgetting what they subscribed to. Yeah it makes you some money but this is providing no value. Zero. Zilch. Nada. And that means you're not growing this.
His revenue is just rich people forgetting what they subscribed to. Yeah it makes you some money but this is providing no value. Zero. Zilch. Nada. And that means you're not growing this.
I scrolled through the page and have no idea what he is actually giving/selling, but maybe I am not in the target audience. Also, I find this style of "YOU GET $1000 for $1" and letter writing sales to be very common with scam pages, that don't actually give anything of value away. I might be wrong, but the 10% refund rate also seems pretty high.
About 50% of those refunds are me testing the purchase process and refunding myself. I just moved to a new payment provider last month.
Are you doing this through ads or paying members? I'd love to learn a bit more if you are willing to share.
100% organic. YouTube is my primary traffic source.
Recently I hit 200k ARR with my SaaS for Microsoft Teams -> https://perfectwiki.com
Basically it's a knowledge-base fully integrated with Microsoft Teams.
- I'm working on it alone for the last 3 years
- I don’t raise any investments
- I achieved this number only by organic growth
To get more details on how I achieved it you could read my AMA on r/SaaS. https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/15tnt60/i_built_micro...
P.S Small self promotion -> I created a Telegram channel where I share tips & tricks on how to build SaaS for Microsoft Teams. Join me here -> https://t.me/teams_development
Basically it's a knowledge-base fully integrated with Microsoft Teams.
- I'm working on it alone for the last 3 years
- I don’t raise any investments
- I achieved this number only by organic growth
To get more details on how I achieved it you could read my AMA on r/SaaS. https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/15tnt60/i_built_micro...
P.S Small self promotion -> I created a Telegram channel where I share tips & tricks on how to build SaaS for Microsoft Teams. Join me here -> https://t.me/teams_development
Check out levelsio, a single guy pulling in ~200k MRR using pretty much outdated tech stacks
https://twitter.com/levelsio
Thanks, I especially liked the pinned tweet at the top of his account:
> Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew
> >95% of everything I ever did failed
> My hit rate is only about ~5%
> So...ship more
Great, great advice IMO!
> Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew
> >95% of everything I ever did failed
> My hit rate is only about ~5%
> So...ship more
Great, great advice IMO!
Not to detract from Pieter (he actually says this often) but his success is strongly tied to his persona and the brand and community he's built around it, starting from his "12 Startups in 12 Months" stint.
Without marketing/outreach, your hit rate will be much closer to 0%.
Without marketing/outreach, your hit rate will be much closer to 0%.
He even had an audience BEFORE he did the 12 startups in 12 months things: he had a succesful youtube electronic music channel
Which doesn't make its success less impressive though but people might want to know that
Which doesn't make its success less impressive though but people might want to know that
Nice, I didn't know that!
This guy is the legend. Many other so-called solopreneurs sell shovels to other solopreneurs (and most of those are valuable), but levelsio makes several impactful sites with PHP and plain JavaScript.
>jquery
Nice, I almost forgot about it, however for after a few months. Jquery always resulted in huge mess with one insanely long file
Nice, I almost forgot about it, however for after a few months. Jquery always resulted in huge mess with one insanely long file
All his projects are in 1 file. Like 14k lines. What impressed by isn't that he's successful but that he can work in a mess like that. That's a whole lot of scrolling
Unless you lean heavily on the project tree, it's surprisingly not too different than a project, if you have reasonable tooling (search, LSP, ctags, etc)
My personal preference is certainly using a reasonable folder structure.
My personal preference is certainly using a reasonable folder structure.
I think he commented ITT and said he had an epiphany of sorts where he realized the tech doesn't matter.
People love debating the merits of one JS framework over another, debating back end languages/frameworks, etc. and in the end, for most solo SaaS none of that makes a difference in success as defined by MRR. I think, myself included, so many side-projects with the intent of revenue get lost in the SeaOfShinyThings™ and never find a port.
People love debating the merits of one JS framework over another, debating back end languages/frameworks, etc. and in the end, for most solo SaaS none of that makes a difference in success as defined by MRR. I think, myself included, so many side-projects with the intent of revenue get lost in the SeaOfShinyThings™ and never find a port.
index.php is a bit of a meme at this point with his projects. It's not just one file anymore, but he does focus on radical simplicity with the tech.
Balancing marketing/sales with product development is one of my weaknesses, so I actually wrote a post about it on IndieHackers:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-product-has-been-launch...
That site also has a products page where you can search for solo founders making > $XXX revenue. There are tons of profitable solo SaaS.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-product-has-been-launch...
That site also has a products page where you can search for solo founders making > $XXX revenue. There are tons of profitable solo SaaS.
That's nice that you can succeed without social media, as I absolutely hate fb/x/whatever and that yo can do that without trying to pitch your every article in them.
I run one too. International, customers in Europe, us, south America.
It's been running for almost 8 years, so now it's practically 'finished' - basically does the job for the niche it's targeting.
But I'm tired of being solo, so I'm merging with other people that are more on the sales part. One of them also has a profitable company (not saaa - involves people transportation) and needs a tech to make everything smoother (insurances contacts etc)
We'll see how it goes because we come from VERY different perspectives and need to bend our habits to be able to work together
Having a profitable SaaS is awesome (I can work on it something like 2 days a month if I want to, just managing specific invoices) but you just get nuts working from home alone after a while. It was fun during COVID-19, can't say it is anymore
But I'm tired of being solo, so I'm merging with other people that are more on the sales part. One of them also has a profitable company (not saaa - involves people transportation) and needs a tech to make everything smoother (insurances contacts etc)
We'll see how it goes because we come from VERY different perspectives and need to bend our habits to be able to work together
Having a profitable SaaS is awesome (I can work on it something like 2 days a month if I want to, just managing specific invoices) but you just get nuts working from home alone after a while. It was fun during COVID-19, can't say it is anymore
I make about $10k a month with a one person saas. Self taught via YouTube and stackoverflow. Sales background career wise, although I was a Basic/VB nerd as a kid.
Php, jQuery, running as a SPA technically with php server side rending the html I have jquery squeeze into whatever div makes sense.
Runs on a $4 a month namecheap server, only because I ran into a stupid limitation on the $2 server.
Faster than most modern SPAs or websites you find on the internet.
Php, jQuery, running as a SPA technically with php server side rending the html I have jquery squeeze into whatever div makes sense.
Runs on a $4 a month namecheap server, only because I ran into a stupid limitation on the $2 server.
Faster than most modern SPAs or websites you find on the internet.
What service are you offering?
Some kind of project management/CRM type saas for a specific industry. Highly tailored to that industry from my dad's lifetime experience working in it.
Currently have 34 paying companies with about 300 employees total using it daily. I probably don't charge enough but then again I barely support it and barely on board people.
Currently have 34 paying companies with about 300 employees total using it daily. I probably don't charge enough but then again I barely support it and barely on board people.
Congrats on your success. I'd love to learn more. Please DM if you would entertain selling or just open to a conversation.
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If I recall correctly https://www.listennotes.com is a one-person operation. The owner has posted about it a few times: https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behin...
how does he monetize the site ?
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I am profitable with https://garnet.center
This Shopify app turns your e-commerce store into a marketplace. Happy to answer any question.
What's the difference between an e-commerce store vs. a marketplace?
A marketplace is an e-commerce store.
A marketplace aggregates the best possible products of an industry into one place. To do so, they have to find and attract the best vendors (individuals and/or businesses) to bring rarer products on their platform.
Another type of e-commerce store is drop-shipping, which instead bring value by finding a new market (or a new branding) to a product.
Traditionally, an e-commerce store is an online store of a brand managed by the maker(s) of that product.
Marketplace are now trendy because it's an efficient solution for customers that are looking to shop local and second-hand products.
A marketplace aggregates the best possible products of an industry into one place. To do so, they have to find and attract the best vendors (individuals and/or businesses) to bring rarer products on their platform.
Another type of e-commerce store is drop-shipping, which instead bring value by finding a new market (or a new branding) to a product.
Traditionally, an e-commerce store is an online store of a brand managed by the maker(s) of that product.
Marketplace are now trendy because it's an efficient solution for customers that are looking to shop local and second-hand products.
Presumably a store is somewhere you sell things and a marketplace is somewhere others can also sell things.
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Not an answer to your question but why are you offering sentimentscanner for free?
Checkout #buildinpublic on Twitter if you haven't already. Many profitable solo builders sharing what they learn.
builtwith.com
Edit: If anyone is wondering my MVP is: https://sentimentscanner.com/- google play analytics/statistics/reports of comments by chatgpt Edit2: I was inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072