After 6 (quite difficult) months, my tool reached $400 MRR!

Here's how I did it:

1) I stopped building “interesting” products

My earlier side projects were clever, technically fun, and… optional.

This one solves a boring but recurring problem where users can clearly tell if it’s working or not. This single reason mattered more than any tech, UI or features.

Recurring problems also means recurring revenue. And unless you already have built a large distribution, it's REALLY hard to bootstrap if you don't have recurring revenue.

So if there is only 1 thing you take away from this post, it's this: build a recurring painkiller, not a nice-to-have.

2) I validated distribution before writing code

In the past, I built first and hoped people would magically show up. I thought a launch on Product Hunt or a viral tweet will be enough for my project to get momentum. It never is.

So this time, before I started building:

I put up a simple landing page
added a waitlist
manually reached out to people who clearly had this problem

If I couldn't convince people to join the waitlist, meant I couldn't convince them to become a customer when I launch.

Since people were joining my waitlist, I was confident I can continue doing the same once I launch to continue getting users.

3. I talked to users instead of guessing

This was uncomfortable at first, but it helped the most. I realized that getting PMF on your first launch is almost impossible (and it shouldn't be unless you're building for years perfecting your project that no one sees), so I launched as soon as possible and then started to talking to users as much as possible.

I talked to:

people who signed up but never paid
people who paid and churned
people who stuck around for months

Those conversations led me to:

improve onboarding
improve my core offer
get testimonials

Iteration is what turned my project from "meh" to something people actually keep paying for month-after-month.

My timeline (for context)

First ~3 months → ~$100 MRR
Hit churn + MRR tanked
Lots of iteration
Next ~3 months → ~$400 MRR

$400 isn’t life-changing, but it’s the first time a side project felt repeatable instead of just lucky.

For those wondering, here's proof.

If you've got questions happy to go deep so you can apply what I learned to your SaaS!

filippanoski

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