Ask HN: One-person startups/SaaS that are profitable?

After 5 years and probably like a dozen failed attempts, I run a profitable one-person SaaS.<p>I initially thought &quot;it was about the tech&quot; and tried remaking levelsio&#x27;s remoteok as a serverless app, and was surprised that no one cared what I built it in, and that traction&#x2F;marketing was everything.<p>I wrote up an article each year about the journey:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2018-review-starting-an-internet-business" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2019-further-reflections-trying-to-start-an-internet-business" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;indiehacking-3-year-review" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;indiehacking-3-year-review</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2022-just-keep-shipping" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxrozen.com&#x2F;2022-just-keep-shipping</a>

I run a &quot;one-person&quot; saas that is profitable. I have an offshore contractor that helps me run the service, and one offshore support person to help with tickets.<p>I do all of the marketing, product development, finances, sales &amp; customer success.<p>Do I recommend it? Probably not. I am very tired of doing everything myself and am excited to grow it to the point of hiring more team members. I recommend that when starting a startup to plan to build it big enough that you can afford not to do everything solo. It&#x27;s stressful and lonely, but also strangely rewarding.<p>A note on &quot;offshore&quot; team members: I hear a lot of people say offshore workers are low quality or don&#x27;t care about the work yada yada. I have found the opposite to be true - offshore folks are the same as any other people you employ: pay your people well, treat them with respect and invest in their future and they will do great work. My support and ops team members have been with me for 3+ years.

I&#x27;m doing roughly $20k&#x2F;mo. with a physical monthly newsletter delivered to people&#x27;s doorsteps. Here&#x27;s the old-school salesletter for it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottscheper.com&#x2F;free-trial" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottscheper.com&#x2F;free-trial</a><p>Here&#x27;s a picture of my Stripe account from last month: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.scottscheper.com&#x2F;3k3Yry2V" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.scottscheper.com&#x2F;3k3Yry2V</a><p>Happy to share how this model works. There&#x27;s a lot of subtleties to it.

Recently I hit 200k ARR with my SaaS for Microsoft Teams -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;perfectwiki.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;perfectwiki.com</a><p>Basically it&#x27;s a knowledge-base fully integrated with Microsoft Teams.<p>- I&#x27;m working on it alone for the last 3 years<p>- I don’t raise any investments<p>- I achieved this number only by organic growth<p>To get more details on how I achieved it you could read my AMA on r&#x2F;SaaS. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;SaaS&#x2F;comments&#x2F;15tnt60&#x2F;i_built_microsoft_teams_app_that_makes_200karr_ama&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;SaaS&#x2F;comments&#x2F;15tnt60&#x2F;i_built_micro...</a><p>P.S Small self promotion -&gt; I created a Telegram channel where I share tips &amp; tricks on how to build SaaS for Microsoft Teams. Join me here -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;teams_development" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;teams_development</a>

Check out levelsio, a single guy pulling in ~200k MRR using pretty much outdated tech stacks <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;levelsio" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;levelsio</a>

Balancing marketing&#x2F;sales with product development is one of my weaknesses, so I actually wrote a post about it on IndieHackers:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiehackers.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;my-product-has-been-launched-for-2-years-maybe-its-time-to-start-marketing-it-f0225b3a23" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiehackers.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;my-product-has-been-launch...</a><p>That site also has a products page where you can search for solo founders making &gt; $XXX revenue. There are tons of profitable solo SaaS.

I run one too. International, customers in Europe, us, south America. It&#x27;s been running for almost 8 years, so now it&#x27;s practically &#x27;finished&#x27; - basically does the job for the niche it&#x27;s targeting.<p>But I&#x27;m tired of being solo, so I&#x27;m merging with other people that are more on the sales part. One of them also has a profitable company (not saaa - involves people transportation) and needs a tech to make everything smoother (insurances contacts etc)<p>We&#x27;ll see how it goes because we come from VERY different perspectives and need to bend our habits to be able to work together<p>Having a profitable SaaS is awesome (I can work on it something like 2 days a month if I want to, just managing specific invoices) but you just get nuts working from home alone after a while. It was fun during COVID-19, can&#x27;t say it is anymore

I make about $10k a month with a one person saas. Self taught via YouTube and stackoverflow. Sales background career wise, although I was a Basic&#x2F;VB nerd as a kid.<p>Php, jQuery, running as a SPA technically with php server side rending the html I have jquery squeeze into whatever div makes sense.<p>Runs on a $4 a month namecheap server, only because I ran into a stupid limitation on the $2 server.<p>Faster than most modern SPAs or websites you find on the internet.

If I recall correctly <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.listennotes.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.listennotes.com</a> is a one-person operation. The owner has posted about it a few times: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.listennotes.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;the-boring-technology-behind-a-one-person-23&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.listennotes.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;the-boring-technology-behin...</a>

I am profitable with <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;garnet.center" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;garnet.center</a> This Shopify app turns your e-commerce store into a marketplace. Happy to answer any question.

Not an answer to your question but why are you offering sentimentscanner for free?

Checkout #buildinpublic on Twitter if you haven&#x27;t already. Many profitable solo builders sharing what they learn.

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