I built Microsoft Teams App that makes 200k/ARR. AMA!

[dirtyglove]

Hey there, my name is Ilia. I launched my app for Microsoft Teams in summer of 2020 during COVID epidemic. App provides internal knowledge base for companies that using Microsoft Teams.

It took me almost 3 years to hit 200k / ARR.

• I’m working on this app alone
• I don’t raise any investments
• I achieved this number only by organic growth

Ask me any questions I will be happy to answer them.

P.S. app is called Perfect Wiki, here is a link to the landing page -> https://perfectwiki.com

UPD. Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/SochiX

UPD 2. I created a Telegram channel where I'll share tips & tricks on how to build SaaS for Microsoft Teams. Join me here -> https://t.me/teams_development

 

[caseyanne2]

@dirtyglove THIS IS WHAT I’M HERE FOR. YES, a real indie hacker with a really cool micro SaaS app and not another trash GPT wrapper.

So I’m building a micro SaaS for Microsoft’s analytics platform Power BI called Displagent. It’s my first app ever and has been a huge learning experience, I’m at $100 MRR and am about to totally revamp the entire website (it’s horribly out of date).

Question: what’s your opinion on building for Microsoft shops and Microsoft tools?

Personally, I think there’s huge opportunity. People may like to hate on MS at times, but there are so many BUSINESSES that use their products - it seems like a massively overlooked market. And I really like the idea of B2B vs. B2C (thanks to @christian1991 and the MicroConf YouTube channel), and Microsoft ecosystems seem ripe for the picking for B2B since so many businesses use their stuff.

I’m also building a massive, open source job orchestration platform for C#/.NET called Didact. I guess you could say I’m very skewed towards Microsoft markets and tech, but my experience so far has told me that a lot of people use these tools.

Your thoughts?

Also: how long did your SEO efforts take to kick in? What technical SEO did you target, mainly and tags, or did you go way further and do advanced micro data or JSON-LD?

I’m so glad you shared this, this is why I joined this sub.

 

[dirtyglove]

@caseyanne2 Thank you for your feedback and congratulations for your product!

> Question: what’s your opinion on building for Microsoft shops and Microsoft tools?

I think you're right. It's a really big market. Also it's a B2B market and based on my experience it means that your average customer will pay more than on B2C market.

On my opinion the only one disadvantage of the whole story is that you tightly connected to Microsoft and you can't predict its decisions. But I guess uncertainty will chase entrepreneur on any market.

> Regarding SEO

I didn't pay to much attention to technical part of SEO as I strongly believe "Content is a KING". Nevertheless I had specified title and meta tags, and added relevant JSON-LD micro data to some pages of the site.

 

[caseyanne2]

@dirtyglove Thanks for your feedback! I hope to join you in your MRR range one of these days soon!

 

[caseyanne2]

@dirtyglove I got so excited about your story that I shared it to my Twitter. There’s a big community around the #buildinpublic and #indiehackers hashtags, so I shared it with all of them. Maybe that’ll get you some extra exposure! So hyped after reading your post, you’re the ONLY person I’ve met who is building for Microsoft tools like me.

 

[baconwizard]

@caseyanne2 Is it THAT overlooked? Now that I think about it.. I've seen Android apps, iOS apps, web dev courses/bootcamps everywhere, but never specifically "Microsoft store apps". I guess it goes to show how much we are influenced by all the advertising?

 

[baconwizard]

On that note, do you have any suggestions on where to begin learning it? Don't know what I'd pull off but it never hurts to learn something new

 

[caseyanne2]

@baconwizard I mean, considering the Slack groups, subreddits, and Twitter groups that I am a part of, I’ve never come across a single dev building a Microsoft tool for one of their big apps like myself and OP. Maybe Microsoft just isn’t a popular topic of choice in the startup world?

I’m not sure, honestly. But a lot of businesses use the Microsoft ecosystem, so it makes sense to me to build for the ecosystem.

I started with a need that I had, and went from there. Otherwise, I’ve used the Microsoft docsite and my coding experience to try and build my tool.

Feels like most of my journey has been flying by the seat of my pants, I learn as I go constantly.

 

[alexander92]

@caseyanne2 What is the backend tech stack like? Is it always c#, .Net?

 

[melisue3]

@alexander92 No, you are free to choose your technology. I have developed myself a bit, my stack is Node.js, and I found this very simple boilerplate on github https://github.com/selego/teams-app-nodejs-boilerplate. It's hard to find good templates on git, they are all using .net and not updated since long time

 

[caseyanne2]

@alexander92 No definitely not! Your backend can be whatever you want it to be! Most of the services have REST API services that you can use - that’s what I do - and it’s backend-agnostic.

My backend is .NET but that’s because I love .NET.

 

[scsethiopia]

@caseyanne2 Am sharing your story to my audience ( social and newsletter). I would love to interview you for a full deep dive if you don't mind.

 

[caseyanne2]

@scsethiopia Hi there, sure! You can dm me and I’ll be happy to setup a time to chat!

 

[smiddy10]

@dirtyglove How did you come up with the solution and validate it? What was the initial idea, and what problem did you identify? For someone who would start from scratch, what advice would you give them? Thanks.

 

[dirtyglove]

@smiddy10 Great question!

It was COVID pandemic, and it was a great boost of Zoom. I found that Zoom launched their marketplace and created a few apps for that, but quickly realized that Zoom marketplace doesn't have a lot users.

Thus I decided to give a try for Microsoft Teams Marketplace. It has much more traffic than Zoom. Also I found a thread on Microsoft user voice about built in wiki. Everyone was really disappointed with that. I decided to create an alternative to it.

First version was deployed at the beginning of July 2020, after a few days I got a first customer.

 

[klwalsh85]

@dirtyglove Any add ons with a Microsoft products are usually not that great. Windows OS, Office, need add-on 3rd party for basic stuff.

 

[dirtyglove]

@klwalsh85 Yep, so there is a huge market to earn on.