r/SaaSSolopreneurs

Back in June I got my first paying customer after months of $0 MRR.

$9.99. $10.49 with VAT.

I know that's not a lot, but that "Woohoo! You made a sale!" email after staring at $0 for months felt insane. Still one of the best feelings I've had building this.

I've been trying to make SaaS work for almost a year. Cloakly is a 1-click screen hider. You hit a hotkey and it hides your windows and desktop icons so you don't share something private on a Zoom call. Simple idea, but I overbuilt it for months.

Windows version, blur modes, selective hiding. I kept telling myself "one more feature then I'll market it" while analytics showed barely anyone visiting. Way too much time building, not enough talking to people.

At some point I realized I was hiding behind dev work, because coding is easier than asking people to use your stuff.

So I started posting on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and TikTok about screen-share fails. No product pitch, just relatable pain. That's how people found it.

One person signed up for free, actually used it, and gave me feedback on what was broken for his setup. I fixed it. Then I asked him directly if he'd pay once I fixed it. He said yes.

June 12th: first payment - Lemon Squeezy "wooooooo! You been paid!"
Today, Aug 19th: $420.58 total from June 1 to Aug 19

No huge launch. No viral tweet. Just one person with a real problem, talking to him, fixing what he needed.

Biggest lesson: I spent months worrying about SEO, landing pages, pricing. Getting one person to care taught me more than all of that.

Still very early. $420 doesn't mean I figured out SaaS. But it's a start after $0. Now I just need to do it again. And again.

If you're stuck at signups but no pays, talk to those people before building another feature. I wish I did earlier.

How did the rest of you get your first paying users? Was it one conversation like this or something completely different?

Proof: Theres a website where you can upload a read only stripe key, heres mine

The build for this was actually a ton of fun - its an all in one cold email outreach tool. You use AI to filter my hundreds of thousands of leads and then AI generates and starts sending a cold email sequence.

For the lead gen im basically basically mapping LLC filings to contact information I find on the internet, trying to find websites, getting domain registration information etc. At the end the leads are pretty solid and so mapping someones ICP to a few thousand leads becomes pretty easy. It's not cheap to run at this scale but i'm fortunate to have a pretty high paying tech job to fund it for a while.

Im building this solo so it gets lonely sometimes. Basically building and talking to customers every waking hour I have of free time but the $1000 threshold is a little more fuel on the fire.

I love building but dont have a ton of people to share my wins with so posting here to share instead :)

Let me know if any builders out there want to connect I love chatting about SaaS startups and respect the hell out of people seriously trying to create and build.

Ok so, I can’t retire just yet 😅 but getting a business off the ground and attracting customers is the hardest part in my opinion.

There’s still a long way to go but considering it’s only been 4 months since launching ZenMode, I’m pretty happy with the results so far.

I get asked a lot about how I get customers, so thought I’d give more info on how I do distribution, in case you might find it useful.

1. Make sure your website is set up for success

Before sending people to your site, make sure you’re confident it has good CRO potential. Your mission statement and objective needs to be very clear, along with clear incentives for people to try the product out.

2. Offer free trials, but only behind a payment info gate

Now this is just my personal opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree, but the proof is in the numbers. I get fewer free trial signups, but significantly higher conversion rates into paying users from people who provide payment info at the start.

Yes, a few of them are people who simply forget to cancel, but mostly I get people who are more engaged in the free trial and actually using the product.

I actually did an AB experiment where I did offer completely free trials to people (no payment info needed), but the overwhelming result was that people barely even tried out the product and were mostly tire kickers that never came back. I did convert some but not a meaningful number.

3. Create a waitlist before launching

Try to generate interest in your product before it launches - build in public and try to ensure that you’re not scrambling to get customers through the door on day 1 when you launch.

I had 3 customers on day 1 from this, who took higher paid tiers as well.

4. Post and comment everywhere

Social media is free, so there’s no excuse not to leverage it. Post about your product and what you’re building on Reddit, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook etc.

I posted a simple screenshot on LinkedIn recently, of someone using a low quality LinkedIn automation tool message to contact me, and me offering my own much better tool in response, and that post generated 90,000 views and led to several signups and demo calls.

I’ve also had some posts on Reddit go into hundreds of thousands of views, mostly just posting about what/why/how I built my automation tool.

5. If you have competitors, make “alternative to” inner pages

If done in the right way, this type of inner page can be useful for SEO. It won’t be picked up automatically but usually if you work in a competitive industry, this will sometimes attract customers who had a bad experience elsewhere.

6. I actually use my own LinkedIn automation tool (dogfooding) to do LinkedIn outreach

So it’s always important to practice what you preach - I use ZenMode to actually promote ZenMode.

It’s a great way to get buy-in for booking demos, as when someone replies, I simply tell them I used my tool to get a response from them, so it works.

Anyway hope you enjoyed reading the above, and good luck on your journey if you’re building anything, or growing your business 🙌

Hey guys!

This community has been great!! I would watch people making money from SaaS from the side lines until end of last year then I decided to do something about it.

Since I watched Social network I wanted to build a massive startup of my own. A unicorn.

I would fail everytime as I would focus on things like market size, moat, trends etc, but would not account for the most impressive thing - which is solving a real problem and building something people want.

I was accepted into an accelerator program beginning of this year ( similar to YC ) but ended up leaving because it felt more like I am back in school trying to impress my teachers ( VCs in this scenario ) than actually building something worth while. - but that’s on me, smarter people than me navigated that environment better, raised money and now are doing bigger things.

Anyways, I launched my SaaS ( built it for a hackathon to win open AI credits and maybe a job too ), didn’t even make top 10.

Launched the platform a month after the hackathon anyway with the prototype and to my surprise someone bought a subscription.

Put in more time - used claude for SEO, posted on X, reddit and made videos on Instagram and now 4 months later the platform is at $500 MRR and $1.7k in gross revenue.

I work full time, work on my project after work and on weekends!

VC’s said no
Lost 2 hackathons with this idea

And I can see the platform grow every day.

Don’t listen to anyone else but your customers, keep your head down and work! Something will happen.

Major thing that has worked for me is - not quitting too early, I tried building a SaaS over 6 times before this and would quit too early, sometimes even before launching it.
Shiny object syndrome was a real problem for me.
I still go through it time to time, but have learned to manage it.

Wishing everyone here massive success!! 🚀🚀

PS: My SaaS is shipnative - it’s a no code mobile app builder for iOS and Android

I'm building VibeHarbor — a community for builders to share what they've actually shipped and connect with collaborators, backers, and early users. The one rule: every product is posted by the person who built it. Real products, real makers.

It's early, and I'm looking for the first cohort of builders to post their work. If you've shipped something — a SaaS, an app, a tool, even a weekend project — I'd love to have it on there.

What you get as an early builder:

• Early visibility to other builders

• Feedback and your first followers

• Founding-member status as the community grows

Post your product 👉 vibeharbor.dev — or reply with a link and I'll help you get set up.

I got tired of managing company assets in spreadsheets, so I built my own mobile asset management app.

Most tools I found were either:

Too expensive

Too complex

Enterprise-focused

Not mobile friendly

So I created Comodo — a simple asset management app focused on: ✅ Asset tracking

✅ Inventory management

✅ Employee assignment

✅ QR/barcode support

✅ Fast mobile access

It’s mainly designed for small businesses, technicians, warehouses, and teams that just want a clean and easy system without heavy enterprise setup.

Still improving it actively and adding features based on feedback from users.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback from IT admins, storekeepers, technicians, or anyone managing equipment daily.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.comodo

I've been building Hoops GM — a free basketball franchise manager that runs entirely in your browser (desktop + mobile, no sign-up).



You run the front office: trades, the draft lottery, free agency, the salary cap — then coach live games on a real possession-by-possession engine, with an owner who tracks your record and can fire you.



Extras: pick a "franchise idol" to build around, blitz games at up to MAX speed, chase a Hall-of-Fame dynasty across seasons.



Play (free): https://hoops-gm-chi.vercel.app

Would love any feedback on the first 5 minutes.

Quick background: I'm a solo founder , no dev team, just me figuring this out as I go.

The idea started from a pretty dumb personal observation — I had four different fitness apps on my phone at one point. Each one had a plan, a streak, a dashboard. I opened every single one for about two weeks, then never again. Not because the plans were bad. Because none of them noticed when I stopped.

So I built Coach F.I.T. as the opposite bet: no app at all. You just text a number, like you're texting a person, and you get real coaching back — fitness, nutrition, wellness, mindset. No login, no dashboard to abandon. The whole thesis is that the habit people already have (texting) is more durable than any habit an app can ask them to build from scratch.
It's live now, $19.99/mo or $199/yr, built solo from LLC formation through Stripe setup through the actual product.

Where I'm genuinely stuck: paid acquisition. I've got Meta ads running with proper Pixel/conversion tracking, and organic content that's actually gaining some traction, but I have no idea yet if Meta is going to out-perform TikTok for something this personal/text-based, or if I should just be pouring everything into organic until I have more signal. If any of you have gotten a text-based or coaching-adjacent product to real paid-traffic profitability, I'd genuinely like to hear what actually worked vs. what you expected to work.

https://coachfit.health

TaskLoco is a sticky-note storyboard workspace for tasks, events, notes, projects, files, reminders, and anything you can stick in or attach to a digital sticky note.

Freemium version now includes 100 taggable sticky notes no strings attached

Website: https://www.taskloco.com

So built something, that's gonna help you leave your bed as soon as you would wake up, help you to go office/lecture, then go for gym, then take as many steps as you set, then limit your phone usage for the day.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.akountbl.app

Try out and give review 🫡

Wanted to see my whole day as one shape instead of scrolling a column. So it's a clock. Full 24h ring, blocks are wedges. You draw a sleep block and it paints an energy curve over the next day (built from your sleep + circadian rhythm), so you can actually see your morning fog and afternoon crash before you plan into them.

if anyone wanna try it check reassign.ai

Question since you all live in planners: does a circular day read better to you than a vertical one, or does the column just win?