My tool reached $300 MRR! Here's how I did it (no audience, no ads)
$300 MRR is actually surprisingly hard to reach if you don't have an existing distribution built. It took me 6 (quite difficult) months to get here.
Here's how I did it:
1) Your tool needs to solve a REAL, recurring problem.
I built many tools before that were "interesting". This one is the only that managed to go from "a couple of $ here and there" to consistent revenue because it solves a real, recurring problem people can easily measure ROI.
This single reason mattered more than any tech, UI or features.
Recurring problems also means recurring revenue. Unless you already have large distribution, it's REALLY hard to bootstrap without recurring revenue. So if there is only 1 thing you take away from this post it's this: build a recurring painkiller, not a nice-to-have.
2) You MUST have a customer acquisition strategy
Launching on Product Hunt is not an acquisition strategy. You must know where your target audience hangs out and how you'll consistently reach them. Before you build anything, you must test this strategy.
For me my main acquisition channels are Reddit and X, and before I shipped my tool I had a landing page with a waitlist. I was sending cold DMs to my target audience to see if I could get signups to my waitlist. If this could work (which it did) it meant I can continue doing the same once I launch to get customers.
3) TALK to users (especially the ones who leave)
It's really hard to get PMF on your first launch. So I've talked to users as much as possible so I can iterate like crazy and reach a stage where I have steady growth.
I talked to users that:
signed up but never paid
paid but churned quickly
stayed for 2+ months
I used these conversations to:
improve onboarding
improve my core offer
get testimonials
These are the 3 core reasons why I managed to get to this stage.
My Timeline (for context)
3 months → ~$100 MRR
Churn hit
Big iteration phase
Another 3 months → ~$300 MRR
For anyone wondering, here's proof.
If you've got questions happy to go deep so you can apply what I learned to your SaaS!
Replies
Great insights! Thank you for sharing.
For the waitlist itself, what tool would you recommend for someone starting out? I want to keep it simple but effective for capturing emails.
There are tools like waitship.com that make it very easy to get started, but for my tool I created the landing page myself and used Kit (free plan) to capture and send emails.
@filippanoski Got it, thank you. Wish you hit $1000 soon.
That's my next goal!
minimalist phone: creating folders
This would deserve continuing :) Nice article :)
Thanks, Nika! :)
minimalist phone: creating folders
@filippanoski You're welcome :)
congrats and good luck.
I also struggle a bit with PMF for @actordo however step by step we can get there.
Rooting for you man! Keep iterating and improving bottlenecks
This is a really solid breakdown, especially the point about recurring problems vs “interesting” tools.
I’m still early in my journey and the $300 MRR mark feels deceptively far away without distribution, so seeing the timeline and the churn/iteration phase is super helpful.
Quick question: during that big iteration phase, how did you decide what to change first?
Was it more driven by churned users, active users, or usage data?
Thanks, I felt the same way too and I still feel that way when aiming for my next milestone.
I looked at where my biggest bottleneck is and I focused on that. For me that was signup → paid and reducing churn.
I knew that even if I scaled my distribution, my high churn rate (3 out of 4 customers churn within 2 months) and low conversion rate will just make me churn through the market, so I focused on improving my offer so more people convert and stay.
Here are the metrics you should track:
• Visitor → sign up (compare to average in your industry)
• Signup → trial or paid (depends whether you offer trials or no, compare it to average in your industry)
• Paid → cancel (also compare to average)
If you're struggling to grow, it probably means there's a bottleneck somewhere in this funnel. Depending on where your bottleneck is, you need to improve different things (landing page, offer, onboarding, activation, value, etc.)
Once your numbers look good (you're average or above average) then your funnel is healthy and now it's just a matter of volume and scaling your distribution.
Thanks for this post. I'm at the point of my product where it's time to get busy with acquisition.
Pleasure! Same here, my funnel finally looks healthy now, so I'm doubling down on acquisition.