One Person SaaS Business: Side Project to $40K MRR and Sold

Tyler Tringas was $50,000 in credit card debt after his venture-backed startup failed. All he had left was a one person SaaS business making $1,000 a month from store locators priced at $5 each. In this episode, Tyler reveals how he grew StoreMapper to over $40,000 MRR, sold it for "level up" money, and used the experience to launch Earnest Capital - a fund for bootstrappers.

Tyler built his one person SaaS business MVP on a single 30-hour flight and had five paying customers within 24 hours of landing. His niche SaaS strategy: latch onto a fast-growing platform like Shopify, prioritize retention over acquisition, and use just-in-time feature delivery to avoid wasting limited time as a micro SaaS solo founder.

He never ran paid advertising across the entire five-year history of StoreMapper. Growth came from Shopify App Store listings, forum engagement, and intercepting freelance gigs on Upwork by pitching his one person SaaS business as a cheaper alternative to custom development.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Validate a one person SaaS business by spotting repeated client requests: Three freelance clients asked Tyler for store locator functionality within two weeks - pattern recognition was stronger validation than any survey.
• 🚀 Latch onto a fast-growing platform for niche SaaS distribution: Tyler listed StoreMapper as the only store locator in the Shopify App Store, giving him a free and steady stream of customers without paid advertising.
• 📉 Prioritize retention over acquisition during the side-project phase: High retention meant small trickles of new signups still compounded into meaningful MRR growth for his one person SaaS business.
• 🛠️ Use just-in-time feature delivery to protect limited founder time: Tyler manually emailed receipts from Gmail for two months rather than building automation - only building features when absolutely necessary.
• 💰 Start cheap to get traction, then raise prices later: StoreMapper launched at $5/month. With 100+ happy customers, Tyler had leverage and data to raise prices substantially for his micro SaaS product.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Tyler's motivational quote - Hemingway
• What is Earnest Capital
• The StoreMapper story begins
• How Tyler came up with the one person SaaS business idea
• Building the MVP on a 30-hour flight
• Five paying customers within 24 hours
• What is micro SaaS
• How much StoreMapper sold for
• $40K MRR and five years to the exit
• Running StoreMapper as a side project with minimal time
• Getting the first 100 customers through Shopify
• No paid advertising - ever
• Focusing on retention during the side-project phase
• Just-in-time feature delivery
• Raising prices and growth strategies
• Deciding when to hire vs do it yourself
• Lessons from selling StoreMapper
• How Earnest Capital works
• Lightning round
• Wrap up and where to find Tyler

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/207
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email