A Bootstrapped SaaS Story: from $0 to $10K MRR

[lumpyspaceprincess]

@rae171710 Great content ! Totally agree with you on the VC thing, I am following the same path as you

The VC path is full of issues that nobody talk about lol Also raising money dilutes you and means much more responsibility than "success" haha

Could you please break down the Aws cost ? are you using ecs ? which ec2 instance type ? how many instances ? on demand or reserved plan pricing ? Thanks !

Ps: also completely agreed with you when you said that you were a machine that codes and learn 12h per day, felt the same at some point haha

 

[rae171710]

@lumpyspaceprincess Hey there!

There are plenty of successful VC stories but no one likes to talk about their failures.

I know only one example: Gumroad by Sahil Lavingia. Here is his story: https://www.wired.com/story/he-wanted-unicorn-got-sustainable-business/

Could you please break down the Aws cost ?

Sure.

We use eight t3.micros, one t3.xlarge and one t2.medium. Which are $310 per month.

AWS S3 transfer costs are $30 per month.

 

[lumpyspaceprincess]

@rae171710 Thanks for the breakdown !

I was wondering for the t3.micros, is it not better to choose the smallest unit type ( e.g nano ) so that it's more cost effective when you need to scale down ?

 

[rae171710]

@lumpyspaceprincess nanos and micros cost almost the same, but micros tend to be better standing against traffic spikes because of higher CPU resources.

 

[mrsneko]

@rae171710 Whoa! That's so cool mate! I always thought you were a company. I made a small not so polished version with Unicorn as inspiration. Less customization but pretty neat for some use-cases.

Completely bootstrapped and yet to take it to market

 

[rae171710]

@mrsneko Good luck! Let me know if you need help or feedback.

 

[mrsneko]

@rae171710 Sure. I need help on marketing and going to market. Never did it before. Would be great to get your thoughts. Will DM. Thank you @rae171710

 

[613jono]

@rae171710 Congrats. Keep going

 

[shanekeeslar]

@rae171710 Nice job! Just one little remark, when you make the window smaller than full size (less than 60% width aprox.), it thinks that you are on mobile device and it says

Hey! The Unicorn Platform builder app is not ready for using on mobile devices yet.

It works flawlessly on desktops though.

Check this out:

I always have 2 monitors with 4 windows open and each is half size so this is a problem if someone does the same.

 

[rae171710]

@shanekeeslar Nice one. I did not think in this way. Thanks!

 

[summerwindslady]

@rae171710 How did you get web clients if i may ask?

 

[rae171710]

@summerwindslady Do you mean during the freelancer era? The first clients were my friends and friends of friends.

Then I went to Upwork.

At first, Upwork looked overcrowded and hard to compete. I decided to focus only on a single thing I was an expert at: animations. I titled myself "Web animations expert".

There were thousands of "Frontend developers" but only a handful of animation experts on the platform.

Clients from Upwork were finding me through search.

 

[samuelh24]

@rae171710 I remember using your service back in 2018, happy to see you grow!

 

[rae171710]

@samuelh24 Ha-ha, thanks for the constant support!

 

[xrei]

@rae171710 How is it different from other website builders?

 

[rae171710]

@xrei Good question!

Short, we offer an easier way to make a beautiful website. You spend less time on learning and making and get better results than WordPress/Webflow/Wix can provide.

 

[jbciii]

@rae171710 What an excellent write-up, Alex! Congrats on your current MRR and I wish you the best in growing your company much further.

Regarding the listing platforms you mentioned (Capterra, G2, etc.), do you have a strategy for raking in reviews from customers? Maybe you ask for them in an email after the customer successfully generated the first landing page, or something like that?

 

[rae171710]

@jbciii Thanks for the warm words Robert!

> do you have a strategy for raking in reviews from customers?

Yes. After giving support in the chat we ask people to leave feedback on the listing platforms. Many people feel happy after getting proper support and agree to spend a few minutes writing some kind words.

 

[jbciii]

@rae171710 Thanks! That's a great idea!

 

[differentviews]

@rae171710 Today, we were talking about Unicorn Platform, and we decided to use it for building a simple landing page for our newly born micro-saas, tulay https://tulay.app/dashboard and now I encountered this post all of a sudden, and you cannot imagine how much I impressed!

Love this story a lot and incredibly happy to see that the founder of the product we want to use, has similar ambitions with us [we were also sharing a story for building tulay https://kovan.studio/building-micro-saas/ in the last 15 days]

Cheers to you and your vision cannot wait to share the landing page we make in Unicorn Platform with you