| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ktzg2rwzygxr519wqcxmw |
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| Readwise ID | 01kt2ktzg2rwzygxr519wqcxmw |
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| Category | video |
Right now, we have five apps and we’redoing just over 200 grand MRR.This is Mike, a founder from Australiawho built five different SaaS apps thatmake a combined 200,000 a month, how hepicks ideas that cannot fail, and hisexact 10-step playbook that he uses overand over. This episode you cannot miss.
So, let’s get into it. I’m Pat Walls,and this is Starter Story.All right, Mike, welcome to the channel.Tell me about who you are, what youbuilt, and what’s your story.Hey Pat, my name’s Mike. I’ve currentlygot three SaaS businesses doing over 200grand a month, and we’ve got two more onthe way. Current businesses arecurator.io, juno.co, frillrill.co,fluke.co, and soonmile.co. Our aim overthe next five years is to get to about amillion dollars MRR.
That was with the smallest team possible,without raising any capital.>> All right. Amazing. You have a bunch ofdifferent apps making a ton of money.Can you share a little bit more aboutwhat your businesses do and what yourholding company does as a whole?
Our current businesses are curator.io,which is a social media aggregator forwebsites and events; Frill.co, which isa customer feedback tool that allowsyou to collect customer feedback, plotit to a roadmap, and announce newfeatures; Juno.co, which is a digitalsignage business aimed at cafes,gyms, schools, and shops; and fluke.co,which is a no-code tours platformthat allows you to build onboardingtours for SaaS businesses, tooltips,pop-ups, things like that, without havingto bother the developers.
Our final business, which we’re launching in thenext two weeks, is Smile, which is aninnovative way of doing group e-cards forB2B businesses. Altogether, these fiveapps make just over 200 grand a month.We’re fully bootstrapped and we’ve usedexactly the same playbook to launch allof them.>> Okay, I’m excited to get into theThe playbook of how you did this clearly isworking. You’ve done it with three, aboutto be five companies. Before we get intothat, I want to understand a little bitabout your background. How do you get tothe point where you own multiple SaaSbusinesses?
Well, I used to be a developer, one ofthe world’s worst developers. I was aFlash developer and ended up runningan agency, a digital advertising agency,and sold that a number of years ago. Isomehow fell into advertising,ironically realized I was rubbish atadvertising. What I really loved wasbuilding products, and that’s how I gotback into building products.
Okay, Mike, one of the big reasons Iwanted to bring you on the channel isbecause you have this sort of strict andmeticulous way of looking at buildingapps, choosing ideas of what to build,and I really like your approach. So,could you break that down for me? Whatis your approach to building apps?
So, our entire approach is aboutminimizing risk. I expect every singleone of our businesses to be successful.We have a much higher rate of success,and we haven’t had a failure.
It is like this. We go and find the idea.We work out how well they’re doingdespite a bad UX. We then go andassemble the team. We like to have ittech heavy, so we’ll have a front-enddeveloper, a back-end developer, ideallya designer as well, and then somebodylike myself who does everything elsearound the product. We always start withfour co-founders. What that does isminimize founder fallout, which is oneof the key reasons most businesses fail.We prioritize design quite heavily. Webelieve that good design sells, which iswhy we like to have a designer on theteam. We like people that can do alittle bit of everything. We like everysingle person on the team to be thinkingabout the UX of the product. That’sreally, really crucial to who we geton board.
With those four co-founders,we always split the company equally, 25%each. We then grow the company to about10,000 MRR, we splitthe profits between the founders, andthat’s when we start to pay ourselves.These businesses are about biggerWe don’t invest as much money back into advertising.
We stay super lean so thatall the profits come out to the founders.
What I love about Mike’s story is his approach to building.He doesn’t just build apps randomly; he actually knows what separates successful SaaS businesses from failures.HubSpot for Startups, who I’m partnering with for today’s video, also knows a few things about successful companies.Over 35,000 customers rely on them to grow their startups, and they just put together an insane resource called How to Build a Unicorn in 2025.
It’s a free high-signal guide packed with the sharpest data and founder insights shaping billion-dollar businesses today.Inside, you’ll discover what kinds of companies are actually winning, hot industries, fast rising topics, and how you can build something around these ideas.My favorite part about this is that they removed all the fluff and made it as quick and actionable as possible.So you can walk away and start executing on these ideas immediately.
If you’re building anything in 2025 and want to…
To understand what separates winners fromeveryone else, just download HubSpot forStartups free guide at the first link inthe description below. Thanks again toHubSpot for Startups for sponsoring thisvideo. Let’s get back into it. Okay, Ithink this is amazing. You sort of havethis framework for how to find ideas andhow to build an idea that’s almostimpossible to fail, as you sort ofexplained. I want you to get moredetailed though. Can you break down thisplaybook step by step so anybodywatching can do the same?
Sure. We have a 10-step playbook, and wefollow this to the letter every singletime we launch a business. First andforemost, pick an idea that’s been donebefore. New ideas are risky. Newideas need validation. If you pick anidea that’s been done before, you knowthat people want it. You know that itworks. Number two, decide what is a goodenough MVP. You need to work out fromyour competitors what are the thingsthat their customers want the most.Build the MVP. Get it out there asquickly as possible. Get people usingit. Core to how we make money early onis the third point in our playbook.
Offer a lifetime deal. Offer yourproduct for 100, or whatever it isfor a single payment. Number four,never give away an account for free.Always charge people. If people pay forit, they’ll use it. That’s key to whatyou want at this stage in the playbook.You want people using your product. Youwant people telling you why it’s not good.You want people giving you as muchfeedback as possible. Number five, do asmuch work as possible to sell a privatelifetime deal. Work in Reddit groups. Work inprivate Facebook groups. Get on to X.
Find out where your customers areliving. Work with the lifetime deal groups, ofwhich there are many, to get yourproduct bought by as many people aspossible. For Frill, we launched aprivate lifetime deal and raised about 30 grandfrom our private lifetime deal. Number six, startwriting content. It is never, ever,too early to start writingcontent. Start writing landing pages,and start writing blog posts. Use that moneythat you got from the private lifetime deal tostart writing content. Write competitorpages, alternative pages. Get it outthere as early as humanly possible. Thelonger it’s up there, the better.
GPT, the longer Google will startindexing it and start sending youtraffic. Once you’ve started writingcontent, launch on AppSumo or one of theother marketplaces. AppSumo is greatbecause they have huge, huge reach.You can do two different things on AppSumo.You can launch on their marketplace,which has a lower fee, or you can workwith their sales team and work on theirselect offering. Both work. Do your ownresearch there, but they have a huge,huge database of people that they canmail out to. This can get you, again,way more users and a hell of a lot morecapital. Your aim should be to close
your LTD with 100 grand in your pocketthat you can use for a year or two yearsto write more content. Once you’ve donean AppSumo LTD, move to stage eight,which is to do one last private LTD. Manypeople don’t want to miss out on a deal.So, this is where you’re closing offyour LTD, your lifetime deal for life.It will never ever be available again.Pump your prices up a little bit andoffer one last private LTD. Send it outto your mailing list and then close itand ideally close it forever. Stage nineis crucial. This is a live or die moment.
You’ve got 100 grand or however much youraise from your LTD in the bank. This iswhere you get your current LTD customers to help youget an honest review on Trust Pilot,on G2, or wherever they’re willing towrite you reviews. It’s so incrediblyimportant. It will boost your domainranking and get honest reviews for you.You’ll find that the LTD community iswilling to do that because they really,really want you to succeed. They’re yourearly ambassadors. It used to be Quorathat we would go out and answerquestions on, but more and more we’reseeing Reddit as an important placeto go and answer questions about yourproduct. Scan Reddit, see who’sasking for one of your competitors.
Answer honestly and authentically on Redditposts, and look for subredditswhere your customers are hanging out.This is such a crucial stage becauseyou’ve now moved to Monthly Recurring Revenue. Money’sdepleting, but hopefully you’re startingto get MRR. And by the time your moneyruns out, hopefully you’ve got enough MRRto stay alive. That’s it. That’s the10-step process. This has worked for uson three companies.
Through the playbook on a fourthcompany. We’re about to start it on thefifth company.Okay, thank you for sharing thatplaybook. That’s amazing. Supertactical, super step-by-step, and I cansee how that works. I want to jump backto the earlier steps of the playbook,which is finding ideas. Specifically,you really focus on finding ideas thatcan’t fail. Can you go a little bitdeeper on that? What is an example of anidea that can’t fail? And then what isan example of an idea that couldpotentially fail that you wouldn’ttouch?
So, one I will tell you is one ideathat or an area that we will never goafter. We will never go after an AIfocused business. Too many times youhave an idea that relies on something,an API that you do not control,something that you’re not in control of,which puts you at massive, massive risk.Having said that, one idea that we, youknow, we almost went after. We stillmay go after, we love the idea ofsome sort of documentation tool. I don’tfeel like the documentation tools thatare out there at the moment are doing aA really good job, or the ones that aredoing a really good job, are severelyoverpriced. And good documentation,especially today, is going to be the keyto success because AI needs good documentationto recommend your product well and to know about your product. Sothat’s something that I think maywork well. We just won’t rely on AI tobuild or be an integral part of thebusiness.
Okay, cool. I like that. Not going aftersexy ideas that may not exist in 6months and avoiding platform risk. I wantto switch gears a little bit and talkabout the tech stack. I know you come from abit of a development background. How doyou actually build these apps, and whattech stack do you have them built on?
The tech stack varies depending on thefounding team and what they’recomfortable using, whether it’s Vue,whether it’s React on the front end. Ourback end still predominantly sits in PHPand Laravel. But again, thatchanges all the time. Some of the toolsI’m loving at the moment are WillowVoice; I can barely type anymore. Youjust press the function key and you cantalk at your computer.
Granola for meeting notes. I absolutelylove it.Obviously, Slack and things like that. We use Framer for websites. We’vejust moved over to Framer. Actually, allof a sudden, websites are no longer thejob of the tech team, and more recentlyVO for prototyping. We prototypeeverything in VO, and then we take itinto design and Figma, and then we buildit.
Okay, cool. Thanks for sharing that. Thelast question that I have for allfounders who come on Starter Story: Ifyou could go back in time and giveadvice to young Mike, before you gotstarted building apps and software andSaaS, for anybody who’s watching this,what would be your advice to get startedand build awesome companies like you’redoing?
Really simply, just work with people youenjoy working with. Work with peoplethat you are quite happy to go and havea drink at the pub with. It’s actuallythe main reason I do all of this. I feellike I go to work every day, and I go towork with my mates. It’s brilliant fun.We spend a lot oftime working on the details becausewe love doing that.
Create something that customers want. Createsomething that you love building aswell. That’s super, super important.
Well, I love that, Mike. What’s thepoint of building businesses if it’s notfun? Thank you for sharing everythingabout all the companies you’re building.I think it’s going to inspire a lot ofpeople. Thanks for coming on, and SharonPat.
Thanks a lot. Have a good day.Thank you, Mike, for coming on thechannel and sharing all the differentapps that you built. Personally, what Ilove about Mike’s apps is that they areall boring. They’re boring businesses,but they crush it, and they make a wholelot of money. I think there’s somethingto learn there about not chasing shiny,sexy ideas. On that same note, this isexactly why we launched Starter StoryBuild. We will help you take your idea,which it’s okay if it’s boring, and turnit into a real app using only AI tools.
So, if you are ready to get off thesidelines and ready to actually launchyour project, then definitely head tothe link in the description to check outStarter Story Build. We are running oneof our new cohorts this week. So, clickThat link and save your spot. All right,that’s it for this episode. Thank youguys for watching. We will see you inthe next one. Peace.