Million Dollar Exits Ep.11 with Mac Martine: The Most Important Task Of A SaaS Founder

Hello everybody. I'm KP and welcome to Million Dollar Exits, a special segment on my main show, the Build in Public podcast. In this interview series, I sit down with founders who went from an idea to building a business and then eventually selling it for over $1 million. Hence the name Million Dollar Exits. This is something I'm very passionate about and curious about at this point in my career. I wanna learn and share all the insights, mindset shifts, lessons, and non-obvious tips that are part of this unique journey journey with the next wave of founders who wanna take this path as well. So buckle up and get ready to be inspired and informed. Here's a special shout out to our episode sponsor, paralect.com. Billion-dollar ideas come from every possible niche. If you're a busy domain expert in marketing, sales, finances, or healthcare, and don't wanna spend 6 months just to build an MVP, you'll find Paralect super valuable. Paralect is a venture studio built to design, build, and launch a product for you that is ready to sell in under 2 months. Start with no-code or go full-stack right away. Simply focus on growing your early adopter community and build in public, and they'll take care of the rest. Build your million-dollar startup with paralect.com. P-A-R-A-L-E-C-T.com. In today's episode, you'll meet Mac Martine. Mac's a prolific founder who recently had a life-changing exit for his business that he grew from $0 to $58K MRR in just about 30 months. Now post-exit, he's happily traveling the world with his family and sharing lessons and advice through a newsletter called The SaaS Bootstrapper. On this episode, we talk about Mac's takeaways from his business exit, Notes from both his successes and failed startup ideas, and the art of asking great questions. I had a lot of fun in this open and authentic chat and hope you find value in it too. With that said, I bring you Mac. Enjoy. All right, here we go. Welcome to the show, Mac. Thanks for being here. Thanks, KP. It's nice to be here. I wanted to kick it off by complimenting on your incredibly profound quotes at the back of, you know, of your— of the room. But you just reminded me that you're in an Airbnb and it's it's designed by the host and not really your personal quotes. But I think—

I haven't read them yet and I'm looking at the camera and they're backwards, so I still don't know what they say.

Yeah, I'll read one for you. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything, which is great, you know? I think on the theme of authenticity, right, something I deeply believe in, and I try to like encourage people to just be as authentic as you are real life online as well. I think that hits home. And, but I'm just smiling because you reminded me that, KP, these are not my personal quotes, that some host put it there. But anyway, tell us a little bit about The latest exit, I mean, the biggest exit that, you know, we wanted to kind of unpack on this call. Kind of, if you don't mind, give a quick 30-second or 60-second intro to yourself and the product you built and the exit to how much ever detail you want to go.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, the story goes back a long time, but basically ever since about 2001 when I graduated college, I was tinkering like, I don't know, I think SaaS existed, but it was Not a household term, but I just kept tinkering and over time tried a bunch of different things. And we'll— I'm going to skip over a lot for this intro, but many years later, after trying many and many, many things, in 2018, I finally just got off my butt and started talking to people. They always say, talk to people, talk to them. So I did. And that was, you know, I think the key to finding something valuable. And, you know, once I did that, It was literally from the first day of coding to exit, 2.5 years. I say 30 months just because it's 2.5 years and I grew it from 0 to about $58K MRR in that time and then sold that in February of 2021.

Brilliant. How did it feel? Take us to the moment of— actually, I want 2 points in time. One, like the day you saw the chart go up to $58K MRR. Like, or like the day we do it, day of the week, like, how did it feel to sit as the founder of a business that was making significant revenue? What were your sort of reflections? You know, were you just in the frenzy of trying to get to the next customer?

It's a great question because we think we start out at pretty much any stage in the journey. We look ahead and we're like, oh, if I can just— it's in everything in life is that way. If I can just get here, everything will be awesome. Like, I will be just like, I mean, how can I have anything to complain about if I have $58K MRR coming in? Life will be amazing. Well, I mean, it is. I'm not going to like, I don't want to downplay it, but there's also like other problems, other hurdles. We still have complications in our life and a whole new set of problems that come up when you have— that's a lot of pressure for one. Like, it's beautiful having something like this that you created out of thin air that you own 100% of, but it's a lot of pressure too, right? And I see some people out in the creator community that seem to have done it in a really like smooth— Peter Levels, for example, it looks like things are just automated and he's working because he wants to and all these things, but that's not how it was for me. And, you know, so I guess it's all to say like, it's not always exactly how you picture it or how you would think it would. And again, it's great. It's different, all the great things that come with it, but it's so much pressure and especially when there's no one else that can do— so it's something that's almost more enjoyable to look back upon than like in the heat of the moment.

Than to be in it, in the thick of it. You know what's fascinating That you say that the word pressure, because that's exactly the word Arvid Kahl used on the podcast. And he was also similarly, I think, at $55K MRR at their peak. What is about 50s that's causing you— causing you guys a lot of pressure? But I'm just joking. And he was saying the same thing. He was saying, KP, I think I was like pent up, like there was so much pressure, like a pressure cooker. And I was so worried that maybe I will fall sick or maybe my partner will fall sick. And, you know, that's at the time there were only 2 people in the company and it would really materially impact our churn or customer success and things like that. So I had the challenge of the pressure of sort of being able to deliver that kind of thing, which I feel like a lot of people don't think about, you know, in the early stages. Right.

You don't think about it. No. And, you know, I look back on it and I feel like it was this case where half of my time— I'm just making up a number, but say 50% of my time, I didn't have much to do because I wasn't doing the feature race thing. I was like, it would take a lot for me at this point to add new features. And so I would have plenty of time where I didn't have anything I felt like I needed to do. There's always stuff I could do. But I didn't feel like there was that. I was trying to go for a lifestyle business. And so a bunch of my time would be great and free and I could be with my kids and I could do these things. And then the other time, like when shit hit the fan, it was really intense, like really bad. As in, I'm not always terrible, but it was scary. I didn't know how long it was gonna take me to fix it or if I could fix it or what problems it created and if I could undo those things and all that stuff. And over time it got to the point where I had this like terrible anxiety anytime I would just hear my email sound because I couldn't go on vacation and put my email away. I couldn't do it. I mean, I literally couldn't. I mean, unless I was going to risk the business falling apart or something. Right. So over time, it got to the point where it's just like anytime I heard that email sound or anything, like I couldn't relax even when I should be able to relax because I never knew when something terrible could fall apart or a bug or anything. And I had to just drop it all. And so, you know, with that sort of freedom that I had, it like it could be taken away from me at any moment, no matter where I was or what I was doing. And so, you know, it adds a lot of stress.

And you were also the chief, like the developer. All right. You were like both the developer and the salesperson.

Yeah. Yes. And I think, you know, I mean, a lot of what I'm kind of referring to is like code issues and bugs and things that could go wrong. And, you know, I always knew, I mean, that would, like, if I had had someone to take care of that, I could have handled the rest. It was, it was the pressure of the code and bugs and things. And, and I always just felt like the learning curve to get someone caught up for what I needed was like, I never got to that point of like, yeah, it was high. And

so, yeah. Because you built it from scratch. You were there from early days. You built it from scratch.

So it's like, yeah, yeah.

So let's play, I mean, let's do a scenario where if you had to go back to that month where you just hit $58K MRR, you get a second chance to sort of relive it or talk to that younger self. What would your advice be? You know, what would you go say to that Mac?

I mean, I guess, you know, everything's gonna be okay. Everything will be all right. It's all right. I don't really—

Any other business advice you would give? I think that is almost sort of the standard answer. We would all go back and tell our younger self that it's going to be okay. Right. But from a business point of view, would you like— is there any other business advice you would give or founder advice?

I would give myself advice, you know, further back than that, which is like, get help. You know, I mean, you hear this, but like, it's always been really— I don't know, it's probably just a combination of me being stingy or feeling like I can do things better on my own or, you know, all these things that I think a lot of, you know, solo founders might feel. But, you know, getting help sooner, I mean, I definitely could have afforded to get development help earlier. I think I just kind of always felt like, oh, I'll get there. I'll get it. I'll get it there at some point. And I never did. And it just piled up. And then I didn't realize it until maybe it was too late. I mean, it wasn't too late, but yeah. I mean, I think by the time I decided to sell, I was just like, no, this is what I need to do. I'd rather kind of take what I've learned and try again. But yeah. So, I mean, I guess to answer your question specifically, it's like, don't be afraid to get help, especially if you get to that, like whatever it is for you, everyone's expenses and things are different, but like $15K, $20K a month, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get And

peace

of mind, like peace of mind. Like we start off doing this for a certain reason, like we want freedom. I want to run my business. I want whatever it is for us. But it can be easy to lose sight of like what it's doing to our mental state and our relationships and our families and things. And I remember going to a microconf early on and people talking about the health, you know, watch out for your mental health of a solo founder. I was like, no, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. And then fast forward a few years later, I'm like, oh shit, this is crazy.

You know, I actually love— I love the fact that you touched on peace of mind. I actually, I don't think I actively think about it as much. I feel like on Twitter, on podcasts, indiehackers.com, a lot of the places people— we all over-index on freedom, right? But that's coming from the baseline, not having any freedom in a 9 to 5 and shitty jobs and like not being in control of your destiny, which is fair, right? But once you're in the boat of being a bootstrap founder, indie hacker, I'm in the same boat. This year I had 2 bootstrap startups that kind of had a little bit of takeoff and didn't really feel like they were going anywhere. So I just shut them down. But I'm in the place where I'm talking about to you that I would love to be at Mac, you know, within a year or 2 years or 3 years, whatever that is, the Mac of $58K MRR. But you're giving us a great reminder that it's great to optimize for freedom. You already have freedom. I already have freedom actually right now. But make sure that you also optimize for peace of mind. You know, and I'm a dad, I have a 2-year-old boy, and I think there's no price I can put on peace of mind.

No.

And it's a very important reminder, I think, for all of us. How are you factoring that in as you do the next thing after the exit?

Yeah, it's funny because I've been thinking a lot about what it is about our mindset, certain people's mindset. I think mindset is massive in determining if people are successful in this or not. And also wondering if people can hack the mindset or if you're not— is it just like you're born with it kind of thing or not? And I've been thinking a lot about Certain things that I do around sort of like creating scarcity, like creating scarcity in money and creating scarcity in time to be efficient or to like scarcity in money as in like I put all my money to where somewhere I can't access it too easily so I can look at my bank account and be like, I've got $5,000, I better make some shit happen pretty fast. Right. But know that I'm okay. And same with time. It's like, how do I really like strategize and prioritize and do The right smart things. And so I think now, I mean, I guess the downside of like having an exit and having a cushion and having these things is like there's not as much of a fire under my ass to like get it done right now. Right.

Right.

But the good news is I don't have to have it done right now. So those are sort of the struggles I'm looking at now. It's like, how do I, how do I keep things moving forward and stay healthy and have this time with my family and enjoy it? My kids are out of school. We're traveling Europe all summer while they're out of school. I'm trying to keep things moving forward, but I'm also trying to like take care of myself and kind of reset and like just, you know, so those are the challenges and I'm erring on mind and body first. Now I'm getting a little like, but it, but like, I feel like if mind and body are not in good shape, the rest is all going to go to shit. Yeah. And so I would rather like fuck business if like it's not worth it if I'm not going to be healthy or a terrible parent. Right. Yeah.

So I'm so glad you, you know, can I just sort of make a comment on that? I feel like you're doing, going about it. Regardless of how smart it feels to you, it sounds to me like you're going about it the way that 100% I would want to go about too. It's like taking care of family. This is the love of life, right? It's like the point of life, I think, is people, loved ones. So number one, and then right there you put body, which is amazing, right? Like working out or eating healthy and all that. And then of course, business, whatever you do in that, you've already proven, yeah, to yourself and to the world, to podcasters like me and other founders that you've won in a way, you've won the game in a way. Yeah. one way. And so whatever you do now from here is just kind of like extending that legacy, what you already did. So I'm so glad you're going about it the right way.

Yeah. I mean, and then also trying to enjoy this time I do have so I can look back and not be like, oh yeah, we took that time to— I haven't mentioned this really yet on here, but we're nomading. We've been traveling, left the US over a year ago and cruising around. So I'm just trying to enjoy that and not be like, oh yeah, we did that thing, but I was too in my head trying to figure out how to make the next thing. No, I want to be able to enjoy this and at least be able to look back and, you know, and felt like I was like present with my kids and not like— so, so yeah. And also I was sorry, one more thing. I was walking with my wife yesterday. I was like, you know what I'm really trying to do right now, which is really, really hard, but like, what if I could wake up in the day and not put pressure on myself to feel like I need to check these things off the list, not feel like I need to like do any particular thing to get to this goal sort of like business and financial. But like, what if I just like do what I want to do? Of course, like knowing in a sense that I need to move things forward in a certain way, but just like without the pressure and just like, what happens if I just do it and see what happens? So, trying to just approach things in sort of healthier ways because I don't necessarily think that like just the hard 24-hour grind of—

Yeah.

Is actually good or the best way.

Yeah. Especially after you pass like I think mark of like, you know, 30 years old and you have kids. And my younger self in 20s used to do that a lot. I used to like really worship and adore, you know, hustle and like grind and the grindset and all this. And now I look back and I'm like, oh, how naive were you, man? You know? And I love my time with my son, right? And I'm not grinding. I don't give a shit. Like there's a million people out there in Bali who are outgrinding me while I'm spending like my time in the yard with my son. But I couldn't give any more shits on that because This is coming from a self-secure place. I think that's something you were referring to earlier where this is the best thing I could do in this one short life we've been given and I'm sharing it with my son. And so I think the security of, I think getting older sometimes helps, not giving a shit about other people's feelings. From there it becomes more of an agency thing. What do you want to do? What energizes you and how do you parlay that into something that helps people so that you can make money and all that? I actually want to go back to the early days, Mac, because I feel like what I'm learning is the first lap in the journey of, let's say, $0 to $58K or whatever, like the journey from zero to the finish line in this case is that I feel like the first lap or the first round, $0 to $1K and zero to whatever the first lap you would consider is almost hardest. And I feel like a lot of our mental beliefs get in our own way. You know, I've noticed and I'm wondering what was it like for you, the first lap of being, you know, building this particular SaaS and how did you— I guess, like, how did you navigate that and get to the second lab?

And when you say first lab, are you just talking about like any, any app I made in the past?

Yeah. Any app you made in the past, getting it past the $1,000 mark MRR or $2,000 mark MRR.

I mean, this is kind of where I have spent time, touched on this, but like thinking about like, what is it about those of us that don't stop doing this and they keep going? And I think for me, I don't know all where it comes from, but as far as like looking back at it and all the things that I've tried, It wasn't— I mean, it was hard, but I don't— you know, I see some people talk like, should I quit? Is it all worth it? And my answer to that is, for you, probably not if you're asking that, because I feel like for me it was just like, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep doing this until I die or until I do it right.

Until I figured it out. Yeah,

until I figured it out. And I just love all the challenges and the puzzles of it. So I don't know, it was all kind of the same. It was as far as like first lap, second lap, it was just like, how far can I get this one until I either get shiny object syndrome or like I decide for whatever reason I don't have energy for it? or I have something else that I feel more confidence in. And it's all just, I think there's, it's an art. I think it's more of an art than anything to like navigate how much do I put into this one? How much time do I put in it? How many people do I talk to before I move on? Or do I pivot or do I do this thing? And I just love the challenge of it. I love, and part of why I decided to sell was because I realized like, as much as like there's a piece of us all that we're doing this for money, but like, I think the most, those of us that are doing it as long as I have that keep trying this long, it's not about the money as much as just like the love of it. Yeah. And so I realized that like, I loved the early stages of it. But at least, sure, if you want to grow a big company and hire a bunch of teams and do all this, there's a whole bunch of new challenges. But that wasn't— I always knew that wasn't for me. And so I wanted to kind of go back to the earlier stages of it. So I don't know if that exactly answers your question.

You love the 0 to 1 phase. You love the 0 to 1 stages of this.

I do. It's what drives me. I mean, it's so hard because of course I'm always like, I need to get to some other goal to pay my bills and things like that.

But the reason I say that is because often you notice generally, like, you know, if you go to indiehackers.com or, you know, anywhere, like, you know, I feel I feel like 0 to 1 is the hardest thing to crack.

It is. Yeah.

And like, I can give you a $10K MRR company, or maybe like I can think of 7 people in my circle who can run a $10K MRR company up to $100K, you know? But I can't think of like, I don't know if I have a lot of friends who can reliably say I can build anything from $0 to $10K and not hate their life or something, you know, because it's the most nebulous thing from $0 to $10K. I feel, you know, we're seeing this with a bunch of people like this. One of my friends, his name's Senja. I mean, his name's Ali. He's building something called Senja. You may have seen him on Twitter. And he's so talented. And it's kind of like a segment market that he's after is testimonials as a service, you know, kind of tool. And there's 3 or 4 players, you know, so it's an established enough market, not a net new thing, but he's just crossed $9K MRR and you can tell us how hard it is, $0 to $9K. You would think given his background and experience of being a founder, it would be easier or it would be like less painful, but it's insanely nebulous, I think maybe is the word.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know I have a friend who sold a business for 8 figures or something ridiculous. And, you know, he— I talked to him a little while after he sold it and he was trying something else and he was like, I mean, man, I'm kind of— I don't know if I can do it again. I did it once and I thought I was— I mean, he didn't say this, but it was a little bit like, I thought I was badass and I could do it again, but I don't know if I can. And I feel the same way. It's like, we— I think we have— I think our chances are probably higher to be able to do it again. And we know more of what to look for and what not to, but I don't think there's any like magic formula.

Yeah.

I mean, there's certain people that can have a tendency to be able to do it over and over. More so, but sometimes that's just because they have a— or I'm not going to say just because, but having a big audience, for example, helps, or having a big brand or something definitely will help you with the next thing. But I think, I mean, a lot of what I tell people now is like, where do you start? Well, I just, instead of having— I think I always had this grand vision. I need to get to like $10K or whatever it is. But I wish I had just said, how do I just make a buck? Give me $1, $10, $100. But I think even And what it really is, is like, how do you just see some momentum or hope? I use the words momentum and hope a lot. I find like, I got something came in the other day and I

told my wife— Why do those words mean to you?

Because I think it keeps me engaged and excited about the thing and continue feeling there's a reason to keep going with

it,

right? Because if we spend 6 months just like coding and haven't done anything and there's no like Like real— I mean, sure, maybe there's coding or feature momentum, but that's not real momentum,

right?

If we have momentum, like, or hope, reason to think that something is progressing in the direction where we want and need it to go, that makes it easier to stick with it. And so even if it's like, like if I get an email that's like, maybe I have zero customers and I get someone who's like, hey, I want to get on a call to maybe use your tool, or just like something like that that really isn't moving the needle. But like, yes, like even if they don't Even if they don't buy, I don't care what anything that's just any sort of hope or some buyer that's like, hey, I'm interested in talking to you about potentially acquiring your thing or whatever it is. It's like that, that pull. It's just, just enough to keep you pulling back in. Because I think if you don't get those, it's just too easy to be like, this is going nowhere. I'm either going to do something else or I'm just going to quit. Right. So that's what I need is just like any sense of hope and momentum that things are getting

Right.

Where I want them to go.

I love that because it's less of an outcome-focused mindset, I mean, approach than more of a— it's less of an outcome-obsessed approach and more of a journey-focused approach.

Journey and process.

Because sometimes I feel like a lot of people over-index on, okay, I need to see the, I don't know, $1K MRR quick enough so that I can decide yes or no. But if you have shit momentum and if you have $1K MRR, it's useless. But if you have great momentum and you have $80 MRR. It's amazing, right? So it's like so much of this is subjective, you know? So let's go back to once again, go back to the early days and trying to think of like, what do you think that you did differently with this particular SaaS idea compared to many of your previous attempts, if you can recall?

Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing was talking to people, going out and starting with talking to people as opposed to either never talking to people or building something and then trying to talk to people.

How did you do that? How did that manifest? Like, as in, like, specifically?

Yeah. So I got on, I think my criteria was like, I had no industry in mind or anything, but my criteria were basically like people that, well, it was mainly people that are higher up in a company or own a company or own an agency or someone, people who can like make decisions and like know processes and things.

Right.

And also ideally, like The type of business that will spend money, have business, have money and spend money. Yeah. As simple as that. And so I just hit up, starting with people I knew, people, friends, or people that like would know who I am if I reached out to them and, you know, hit people up locally. I was in Portland, Oregon, and I would hit people up and go get coffee. Say, can I have 20 minutes of your time or 30 minutes and buy you coffee? And I would just go and I would just ask them questions. And actually I started reading The Mom Test recently because I kept hearing people mention it. And I'm not very far through it, but like that, I wish I'd had that book at the time because it's like, I was sort of doing that. I was doing enough of it that it worked. So I'll vouch for that book and say like, I did like 20% of what that book says and it worked. But yeah, I would just ask them about their processes and what takes— what I didn't have a product in mind at this point at all. So I couldn't even talk about the product, but it was, you know, what takes up your time? What part of your day do you hate? What do you outsource? What do you wish? All these things. And I would just get pieces. You know, some people, some people definitely had more valuable, like, direct insights. Like, I wish I had a tool that did this, but most of them don't. Most of them are just like, oh, they're just kind of—

They're describing the roadblocks and pain points they have. That's all, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I would just take, take those things home and kind of look for patterns and go do it again and sometimes hit the same people up, sometimes hit new people up and over time start with like little bits of code and like maybe just like to see if I can even do this one thing or maybe, maybe take that and show it To someone who kind of mentioned it.

Wait, what's the pattern that stood out though? I'm curious. When you talk to all of these people, was there anything like one or two pattern points that stood out?

Yeah. The kind of big, bigger pictures were, and this could have just been who I reached out to intentionally, but like sales teams were, I was like, okay, sales teams are awesome because they like, they have money and they're not afraid to spend money on tools that they're going to make money on. So that's cool. Okay. So now I'm going to salespeople and then lead generation. I mean, this was 2008 lead But 2018, it was lead gen was and is still big. So I could tell like there's a lot of money there and people are willing to spend money there. And so I was kind of starting to like, now I'm like basically any industry to sales teams to lead gen. And it just kept going closer, you know? Um, and I just tried, was trying different things. I was experimenting with little like browser extensions. I don't even really remember what they were doing, but, you know, some stuff like getting people's information, email addresses and things. There's all kinds of tools that do this now. And one of the things that I did along the way was there was a company that wanted a very specific type of leads. And, you know, it was something along the lines of like, we want bed and breakfasts of this size. I'm totally making this up, but like, they use Google hosted email, whatever. Can you get us leads, like email addresses? I was like, I don't know, let me see. So I went home and I wrote some scripts that did all these things and I sold them like something like 10,000 leads for $4,500 or something. And the idea here was like, yeah. And it was a really easy sell. Like that was, that was a big thing for me. Shocked. Yeah. I was like, so now I have to go home and figure out how to do this. But if I can do it, like I've sold it and maybe there's a product here. So that was part like that didn't turn into the product, but that was sort of the process is like, how do I try these things? Let me see. I still think there's a product around that probably. But, you know, and just kind of continuing to go down, down that road and trying things and being open to whatever and knowing that like, I don't want to sit here and write. I wasn't wanting to write a bunch of custom scripts for custom leads, but I was like, maybe this is really valuable. Maybe this is— so yeah, it just kept going. And then And, you know, I don't think you can truly validate anything without swiping that first card. And I know some people swipe cards before they build anything. That wasn't me. But so I just had to kind of go with my gut on when, like, how much time to put into something that I was getting positive feedback on. So I tried a couple of things and I remember taking them back and then it, you know, the people that had said that they wanted this thing, it turned out they didn't want it. They thought it was cool. Like, this is another big thing is like, Oh yeah. Well, yeah, they were never promising me, but it turns out like I've been thinking about this a lot too, especially when people were request features. Like, if someone says, you know, what's a cool feature? Like, no, I want to know what the valuable feature is. I can come up with the cool features all day long. And it was similar with that, right? It's like, you know what would be cool?

It's like dark mode, right? It's cool. Do they really want to do it? Yeah.

People don't pay for cool, at least here. So, you know, I hadn't spent a bunch of time on them, but I was kind of like experimenting with things and I would take it back and they, you know, they didn't want it.

So look, let me just interject. Like, I think most people at that intersection or that juncture would just be crushed or disappointed or be pissed about the process and be like, all right, screw this. I'm just going to Build what I want. I'm just going to go into my cave and build the thing that I want, write code, have fun, and then lose interest in talking to customers. And I feel like you pushed on, you know, despite the—

Yeah. No, I mean, I think, I don't know, I feel like I knew that there was enough opportunity there and that, I mean, I just kind of turned that into fuel. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm going to watch this, you know? So

it seems like a Kobe thing. It's like, you know, yeah, that's it. All right. But then tell me what happened after though. So they said that they don't want to pay for it. Or maybe there was not enough. Yeah. Like hair on fire kind of problem for them. Then what did you do? You—

I just kept going, kept having more conversations, and I can't remember the full timeline, but I want to say it was probably somewhere like April of 2018 or so. I don't know.

Was that the first time you had a real customer swipe their card and pay, like, for a real problem?

So I'm trying to think of, like, when I actually started these conversations to when I got to, like, the idea that turned into the product. And I'm going to guess it was like somewhere in the like 5-month range, just ballpark. And then, you know, I was at a coffee with somebody who, you know, after talking over these ideas and different things, they were like, you know, I think we're onto something. If you had this right now, I would give you my card and have you swipe it for $800 a month. Like boom, like that. Like that. I was just like, okay. So, you know, again, it's not really validated until they do, but there was enough there. And after all the other conversations I had that I was like, all right. All right. Like, I gotta try this. So I went home, basically stopped. I don't think I had too many more conversations for the next 4 weeks. I just built the thing, you know, and it was scrappy, but it did enough to like prove, you know, solve the problem.

So tell me, you built a product and what did that product do? What did that MVP do as a feature or a benefit?

So, yeah, so it was, so the person that I'd been talking with was running a services agency and they were doing a lot of basically generating leads for companies. And so they were doing a lot of it on LinkedIn and going out and connecting with people and sending invitation requests and messages. And now there are a bunch of tools out there that do this, but at the time there weren't. But you could create campaigns to put in the types of people you want to target on LinkedIn, and it would reach out and connect with them and send messages and things like that. And so the very first version was like, I don't, it was just so minimal and probably really unstable, but it was like proof that I could do it and proof that it would work. And, you know, so I took it back within 4 weeks of code, of starting the first line of code, I swiped my first card and they didn't pay $800, but I did look recently and it was a couple hundred bucks a month. And I had other people within the first few days paying a couple hundred bucks a month. And so, you know, that was enough.

It must have definitely meant a lot for them, right? Because some of these service agencies, you know, I think their annual like contract value or LTV for customers is, you know, probably in thousands. And so for them, they were like, okay, we have a pain here. We don't want to do this manual process. You bring along a tool Like this, they're like, okay, no-brainer.

Yeah, it's a big time saver. And that's kind of one of these lessons of like so many of the other things I tried to build. I can just kind of look at it and be like, did that solve a pain point or not? Or is that a nice to have? And this definitely solves— I mean, it solves people hours a day.

You know, the thing about pain, Mac, is I found it fascinating because I feel like as indie hackers and bootstrappers, we talk to users, we talk to customers, and unless we hear them tell us that this is a huge pain and this is really a pain point, it's very, very tricky to sort of assume because I think that's a temptation we all have. I mean, I have that too where I'm like, this kind of sounds like it. Some things sound like pain. When you look at somebody doing something manual and you're like, this sounds like pain or feels like pain, but—

Yeah.

They have to feel that pain or tell you to your face that, damn, this is so painful. I wish you could fix it for me, right? Right? Unless that happens, you gotta be very careful there. It's very, very easy to fall in the trap. I've done this a couple times.

Yeah, it's funny, I was just thinking, uh, earlier today about one of the projects I had done previously, which I thought was awesome, but it came from like, you know, every time I would go to a restaurant and try to look up the menu, I would always end up on the Facebook page and have to find the menu. It still, still happens to me and I hate it, but I was like, I just want to find the menu of this restaurant. And I, and I was like, these places don't have websites, this is really weird. And so this was a long time ago, but I built this tool that you could go— I think it started of Google Places API and you'd put in the name of the business and it would go in and it would pull all the information about the restaurant, for example, from Google. And then it would go out and use Facebook APIs and all these different ways to like pull in information from all the different social media sites that they may or may not have. And it would generate this really nice looking one-page website with their menu and all this stuff and all these other things like being able to like click the phone number to automatically call. Like, it's so amazing how many times you like can't actually click the number yet. I built this thing and I was like, this is awesome. I'm going to be able to give all these people a website for like $100 a year. It's going to be automatically generated and automatically updated. I'm solving a major pain, right? Well, I built it and then I went to show them. And what I found out was so many of these places had— it was intentional that they, they're like, oh no, we used to have a website and now we just like our Facebook page. We got rid of all— we had all that. We don't want it. We just want our Facebook page because it's, it's, we can just update it. You know, that's what people are. Everyone's on Facebook. So we just want to use that. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, so, but that's a perfect example of like, I thought like without talking to people, I was solving— I thought I was solving this major pain point.

This is why, by the way, the reason I brought this up is because this is why even when you have an audience, you cannot guarantee, you know, you're going to hit it right with the product because I have a massive audience. You know, I think Peter Levels has like, you know, but the problem though is that what I perceive as pain is so different. Like today, your pains are so different from the Mac of 2018. 'Cause you're now dealing with some other headaches that you forgot about what it was like to be Mac of 2018. So, so many of my audience are, let's say, like in that situation, they're like 5, 6 years behind me. So I actually don't have a visceral memory of what it felt like. What was the biggest thing that was blocking me in 2016? I don't know, I don't remember, right? So I'm perceiving something that might be painful to me today, right? Mm-hmm. But, and that's why I've struggled with the 2 times I was like, I thought it was painful, but it was not. So again, goes back to the fundamentals and basics. Like I gotta spend time talking to them and let them tell me what's the pain. the pain that they feel. And if it excites me, I'll solve it. If I can't, that's fine. But I can't be assuming pain points. Right. So it's a very difficult— I feel like not hard, but it's just a trap. It's easy to fall in the trap of assuming that you might know what's best for people. Well, anyway, with that said, I think we're almost at the end of our time here. I had such a blast. I feel like time just flew by so quick. Let's touch on what's going to be your focus now in the next few months. Are there any ideas you're kicking around or are you just kind of having fun, taking it slow?

I'm trying to do both. Yeah. My main focus this summer, well, as I mentioned, I'm traveling around with my kids and wife and they're out of school, so trying to focus on family. But the time I am working, I'm focused on my newsletter, which is called The SaaS Bootstrapper, and it's kind of just sharing everything I've learned and continue to learn. You know, especially as you've talked about sort of in earlier stages, because I feel like once that's where people really have a hard time finding out. And I think once you get to a certain spot, you can start to kind of figure it out more on your own, but I want to help people through that. So that, and I have an app called SaaS Pulse that I'm about to push out, which is just a little email digest of the state of your SaaS. So this is a byproduct of something I built, but it's basically just like your MRR and your customers in trial. who's about to convert today and things like that. So about to push that out. That's at saspulse.io. And I have an app called Aware I'm a co-founder of, which is at useaware.co, which is basically a tool to enable you to create custom LinkedIn feeds so you can engage with the people that you want to engage with the most because the LinkedIn feed is a mess. Right. And those are, those are the main, main things right now. So just trying to kind of do that and talking to a lot of, a lot of other bootstrappers that are just trying to help.

What stack are you on? Are you on Twitter, right?

I'm on Twitter. Yeah, Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn too, and I'm on Twitter more. And yeah, my newsletter.

So awesome. We'll plug all the links here at the show notes. But it was a blast, you know, having a chat with you. Enjoy your rest of the vacation or rest of your traveling, and let's keep in touch.

Thanks, KP.

Appreciate it.

Have a good one. Bye, Mac. See ya.

You too.

Bye.