Thread by @mynameis_davis

Just reached a major milestone: $50k MRR

We've been able to reach this level with only me and my co-founder Vishal - no employees.

The crazy thing is... Vishal and I have never met in person, even though we've been working together for 3 years.

He's in India and I'm in the US.

We had plans on meeting face-to-face a while back, but then COVID happened.

So for now we just continue to Zoom a couple times a week, wondering how tall the other person actually is.

Onward to the next big milestone: $83,333 MRR 🚀

Also, none of this would have ever happened without @IndieHackers

That's where Vishal and I found each other.

So a huge thanks to @csallen. You've literally changed my life!

Another crazy part of this journey:

We have an almost-2-year-old daughter, and my wife works out of the house.

So I have been juggling running a SaaS and watching my daughter at home for the past 2 years.

I love hanging out with her 😍

To do this, I've had to be super intentional about how I structure my days:

I basically never agree to calls and I don't do demos

If someone asks for a demo, I respectfully decline and direct them to video tutorials - or tell them to just sign up for a free trial to test it out

"But aren't you losing out on some potential revenue by not doing demos?"

Probably 🤷‍♂️

But I wouldn't really enjoy my life if I was constantly doing demos - and our ARPU doesn't really support it.

We've also worked really hard to make the software as intuitive as possible.

"How did you grow to $50k MRR? What acquisition channels?

I'm thinking about writing a short book to answer this question, with everything we've done to get to this point.

If you want to be notified when the book is out, feel free to fill out this form:

forms.gle/hFQyG2UGaWkjJS…

11 people signed up already

I guess this means I'll need to actually write this book 😅

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact we are 100% bootstrapped:

We have never raised a dime of VC money.

And we were also able to get traction without investing any of our own money.

And as fun as it's been operating as a 2-person team, we will need to hire a customer support rep at some point in the near future.

If you or someone you know is looking for a customer support position, you can apply here:

docs.google.com/document/d/1Lb…

Some people have asked me about the breakdown of work between me and Vishal:

Vishal is a developer, so he does all the coding.

I don’t know how to code at all, so I do all the marketing, customer support, and product manager stuff.

It’s the perfect complementary match.

I know my buddy @levelsio is very pro “you don’t need a co-founder”

If you can do it all yourself like Pieter does, that is absolutely amazing!

However, both Vishal and I would tell you that neither of us could’ve made it to this point without each other.

I've had a lot of people ask me to elaborate on how Vishal and I actually got connected:

I posted on the @IndieHackers forum to see if anyone was looking for a "marketing co-founder"

Vishal saw the post and sent me a DM, which led to a video call.

Vishal had already built an MVP version of OneUp, but was struggling to find users, and the product definitely needed some polish and bugs squashed

(Vishal would be the first to admit that marketing is not his strong suit)

He asked me to come on board as 50%-50% co-founder.

The way we structure it is that we would need to hit $1k MRR before I "vested" my 50%.

This was to protect against me coming in and taking half of the company, and then doing nothing.

If we never hit $1k MRR, then I would own nothing.

If I recall correctly, we were able to hit $1k MRR within 5 months of joining together.

Most of those early customers came from Product Hunt.

This was probably not the most official way to structure things, but we decided to give it a go anyway

In my mind, I was willing to put 12 months of hard work, and then see where things stood at the end of that year.

Worst case: no customers, move on

Best case: Hit $50k MRR 😎

"How confident were you that you'd be able to grow OneUp and find paying customers?"

Not confident at all.

I literally had no idea if we'd be able to get any paying customers.

But we had validation in the form of many profitable competitors already in the market.

"How did you know that you could trust each other?"

We didn't. It was entirely possible that one of us would screw over the other person.

But we slowly built our trust in each other early on, and are now at the point where we are great friends.

Someone DM'd me the question in the screenshot

Short answer: Content marketing (we don't pay for any ads, so our CAC is $0)

Long answer: I'm writing a short book that will go over every way we've acquired customers. You can get on the waitlist here: forms.gle/7kmsEwz59wUCe8…

One thing I haven't mentioned much is talking to your users.

The product has come such a long way over the last 3 years, and basically every feature we've added is based on direct feedback from our users.

When people say "talk to your users", I think there is some confusion on what they actually mean (did they do phone calls, video calls, or emails)

For us, "talking to users" is 100% via chat and email.

Sometimes we will ask users to take a screen recording using Loom.

"You probably have a fancy desk and computer setup though, right?"

Nope.

I usually work from the kitchen table on my 3-year-old MacBook Air.

And most of the time, there are bottles and sippy cups surrounding me 🙂

Another thing I thought important to add:

I have no idea what I am doing, and am mostly making it up as I go

You don't need to have it all figured out to find success