I bootstrapped my first SaaS business to $643K in ARR [AMA]

Discussions
#1

Hello everyone,

New to this community and happy to be here. Seems like some healthy discussions going on and happy to contribute and answer any questions about my journey.

I bootstrapped my first SaaS business to $643k in ARR (as of Sept, 2020) and it was a lot of hard work. Made lots of mistakes, but it paid off in the end.

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#2

Very enviable and inspiring :slight_smile:

I am actually kind of new here myself.
But welcome! And what is the SaaS ?

#3

Nice to meet you Ramin. What are you working on these days? My first SaaS is over at accelerlist[.]com; not in the B2B space, more B2C

#4

When did you start the business and what motivated you to solve that problem?

#5

Opened my Stripe account in April 2016. We have lots of competition now but back then we had only 2 competitors and we knew we could build a better product. :slight_smile:

#6

Congratulations on reaching this milestone.

How did you get your first 10 customers? and what were your strategies on growing?

#7

Congratulations on this success, @travisrr!
How big is your team now? All remote or do you have an office?

#8

Thanks! All remote, spread out over the world.

#9

Congrats! Stories like this are very motivating and keep many of us going.

  • What were the biggest mistakes you made pre-launch and in the first year?
  • Any (low cost) strategies you found useful to drive traffic to your site in the early days?
#10

any evidence that you did this? What is the business? naming it would not hurt?

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#11

We acquired our first 10 customers hanging out where our customers already were, Facebook Groups. I had no strategy for growth. I just built a tool i needed to use anyways and then found more people like me that had the same problem. :slight_smile:

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#12

Your homepage looks very nice, but it seems like it is not quite finished yet.

  • In the pricing table on each column the mouse pointer changes to the “hand”, but you can only click on the top and bottom buttons. If you click on the “Start your 14 days FREE trial” button nothing happens.
  • 2 out of 12 links in the footer actually works.
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#13

For more on the first year of Accelerlist see this interview with Travis Renn by Courtland Allen https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/making-2-4-mo-helping-customers-sell-on-amazon-66619c1c4b

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#14

Thanks for the headsup!! I do need to go back through and “audit” the new homepage!