I Built 3 SaaS Apps to $200K MRR: Here's My Exact Playbook

Introduction

Right now, we have five apps and we're doing just over 200 grand MRR.

This is Mike, a founder from Australia who built five different SaaS apps that make a combined $200,000 MRR. But here's what's interesting. Each successful app he's created follows the same repeatable framework. And this framework works so well that he guarantees every app he puts through it becomes successful.

"I like to build ideas that can't fail."

I asked Mike to come onto the channel and he shared everything, including his five apps that make $200,000 a month, how he picks ideas that cannot fail, and his exact 10-step playbook that he uses over and over. This episode you cannot miss. So, let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story.

About Mike & His Businesses

Pat: All right, Mike, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story.

Mike: Hey Pat, my name's Mike. I've currently got three SaaS businesses doing over 200 grand a month, and we've got two more on the way. Current businesses are curator.io, juno.co, frill.co, fluke.co, and soon smile.co. Our aim over the next 5 years is to get to about a million dollars MRR. And we want to do that with the smallest team possible without raising any capital.

The Five Businesses

Pat: All right. Amazing. You have a bunch of different apps making a ton of money. Can you share a little bit more about what your businesses do and what your holding company does as a whole?

Mike: Our current businesses are:

1. Curator.io

A social media aggregator for websites and events.

2. Frill.co

A customer feedback tool, which allows you to collect customer feedback, plot it to a road map, and announce new features.

3. Juno.co

A digital signage business aimed at cafes, gyms, schools, and shops.

4. Fluke.co

A no code tours platform that allows you to build onboarding tours for SaaS businesses tool tips pop-ups things like that without having to bother the developers.

5. Smile (Launching Soon)

An innovative way at doing group ecards for B2B businesses.

Combined Results:

Altogether these five apps make just over 200 grand a month
Fully bootstrapped
Used exactly the same playbook to launch all of them

Mike's Background

Pat: Okay I'm excited to get into the playbook of how you did this clearly is working. You've done it with three about to be five companies. Before we get into that, I want to understand a little bit about your background. How do you get to the point where you own multiple SaaS businesses?

Mike: Well, I used to be a developer, one of the world's worst developers. I was a Flash developer and ended up running an agency, a digital advertising agency and sold that a number of years ago. I somehow fell into advertising, ironically realized I was rubbish at advertising. And what I really loved was building products. And that's how I got back into building products.

Mike's Approach: Minimizing Risk

Pat: Okay, Mike, one of the big reasons I wanted to bring you on the channel is you have this sort of strict and meticulous way of looking at building apps, choosing ideas of what to build, and I really like your approach. So, could you break that down for me? What is your approach to building apps?

Mike: So, our entire approach is about minimizing risk. I expect every single one of our businesses to be successful. We have a much higher rate of success. We haven't had a failure.

The Model

Step 1: Find the Idea

Go and find the idea
Work out how well they're doing despite of a bad UX

Step 2: Assemble the Team

Tech heavy team structure:
- Front-end developer
- Back-end developer
- Designer (ideally)
- Someone who does everything else around the product (like Mike)
Always start with four co-founders
This minimizes founder fallout (one of the key reasons most businesses fail)

Step 3: Prioritize Design

We believe that good design sells
Have a designer on the team
Like people that can do a little bit of everything
Every single person on the team should be thinking about the UX

Step 4: Equal Equity Split

Always split the company equally: 25% each among four co-founders

Step 5: Growth Strategy

Grow the company to about $10,000 MRR (covers costs)
After $10,000 MRR, split the profits between the founders
That's when we start to pay ourselves

Business Philosophy

"These businesses are about bigger salaries, not big exits."

Don't invest as much money back into advertising
Don't invest as much money back into staff
Stay super super lean
All the profits come out to the founders

The 10-Step Playbook

Pat: Okay, I think this is amazing. You sort of have this framework for how to find ideas and how to build an idea that's almost impossible to fail as you sort of explained. I want you to get more detailed though. Can you break down this playbook step by step? So anybody watching can do the same?

Mike: Sure. We have a 10-step playbook and we follow this to the letter every single time we launch a business.

Step 1: Pick an Idea That's Been Done Before

"New ideas are risky. New ideas need validation."

If you pick an idea that's been done before, you know that people want it
You know that it works

Step 2: Decide What is a Good Enough MVP

Work out from your competitors what are the things that their customers want the most
Build the MVP
Get it out there as quickly as possible
Get people using it

Step 3: Offer a Lifetime Deal (LTD)

Core to how we make money early on

Offer away your product for $59, $100, whatever it is for a single time payment

Step 4: Never Give Away an Account for Free

"Always charge people. If people pay for it, they'll use it."

Key to what you want at this stage in the playbook
You want people using your product
You want people telling you why it's crap
You want people giving you as much feedback as possible

Step 5: Sell a Private LTD

Do as much work as possible to sell a private LTD:

Work in Reddit groups
Work in private Facebook groups
Get on to X
Find out where your customers are living
Work with the LTD groups to get your product bought by as many people as possible

Example: For Frill, we launched a private LTD and raised about $30,000 from our private LTD.

Step 6: Start Writing Content

"It is never, ever, ever, ever too early to start writing content."

Start writing landing pages
Start writing blog posts
Use that money from the private LTD to start writing content
Write competitor pages, alternative to pages
Get it out there as early as humanly possible
The longer it's up there, the longer ChatGPT and Google will start indexing it and start sending you traffic

Step 7: Launch on AppSumo

AppSumo is great because they have huge, huge reach.

Two options:

Launch on their marketplace (lower fee)
Work with their sales team on their select offering

They have a huge database of people they can mail out to
This can get you way more users and a hell of a lot more capital
Your aim should be to close your LTD with $100,000 in your pocket that you can use for a year or two to write more content

Step 8: Do One Last Private LTD

"Many people don't want to miss out on a deal."

This is where you're closing off your LTD for life
It will never ever be available again
Pump your prices up a little bit
Offer one last private LTD
Send it out to your mailing list
Then close it and ideally close it forever

Step 9: Get Reviews (Live or Die Moment)

"This is crucial. This is live or die moment."

You've got $100,000 (or however much you raised) in the bank. Now:

Get your current LTD customers to help you get honest reviews on:
- Trust Pilot
- G2
- Wherever they're willing to write reviews
So incredibly important
Will boost your domain ranking and get honest reviews
The LTD community are willing to do that because they really want you to succeed
They're your early ambassadors

Step 10: Answer Questions on Reddit

It used to be Quora, but more and more we're seeing Reddit as an important place.

Scan Reddit
See who's asking for one of your competitors
Answer honestly, authentically on Reddit posts
Look for subreddits where your customers are hanging out

Why this is crucial:

You've now moved to MRR
Money's depleting, but hopefully you're starting to get MRR
By the time your money runs out, hopefully you've got enough MRR to stay alive

That's it. That's the 10-step process.

This has worked for us on three companies. We're halfway through the playbook on a fourth company. We're about to start it on the fifth company.

Ideas That Can't Fail vs. Ideas to Avoid

Pat: Okay. Thank you for sharing that playbook. That's amazing. Super tactical, super step-by-step, and I can see how that works. I want to jump back to the earlier steps of the playbook, which is finding ideas. Specifically, you really focus on finding ideas that can't fail. Can you go a little bit deeper on that? What is an example of an idea that can't fail? And then what is an example of an idea that could potentially fail that you wouldn't touch?

❌ What Mike Will NEVER Build

"We will never go after an AI focused business."

Reason: Too many times you have 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.

✅ Ideas Mike Would Consider

Documentation Tool:

Don't feel like the documentation tools out there are doing a really good job
Or the ones that are doing a really good job are severely overpriced
Good documentation especially today is going to be the key to success
AI needs good documentation to recommend your product well
But: Won't rely on AI to build or be an integral part of the business

Tech Stack

Pat: Okay, cool. I like that. Not going after sexy ideas that may not exist in 6 months. Avoiding platform risk. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about tech stack. I know you come from a bit of a development background. How do you actually build these apps and what tech stack do you have them built on?

Mike: The tech stack varies depending on the founding team and what they're comfortable using:

Core Stack

Frontend: Vue or React (varies by team)
Backend: Predominantly PHP and Laravel

Tools We're Loving

Willow Voice: I can barely type anymore. Just press the function key and talk at your computer
Granola: For meeting notes. I absolutely love it
Slack: Obviously
Framer: For websites. We've just moved over. All of a sudden websites are no longer the job of the tech team
VO: For prototyping. We prototype everything in VO, then take it into design and Figma, then build it

Advice for Founders

Pat: Okay, cool. Thanks for sharing that. The last question that I have for all founders who come on Starter Story, if you could go back in time and give advice to young Mike, before you got started building apps and software and SaaS, for anybody who's watching this, what would be your advice to get started and build awesome companies like you're doing?

Mike: Really simply, just work with people you enjoy working with. Work with people that you are quite happy to go and have a drink at the pub with. It's actually the main reason I do all of this. I feel like I go to work every day and I go to work with my mates. It's it's, you know, it's brilliant fun. We spend a lot of time working on the details because we love doing that.

"Don't just create something that customers want. Create something that you love building as well. That's super super important."

Pat: Well, I love that, Mike. What's the point of building businesses if it's not fun? Thank you for sharing everything about all the companies you're building. I think it's going to inspire a lot of people. Thanks for coming on and sharing.

Mike: Thanks a lot. Have a good day.

Conclusion

Thank you, Mike, for coming on the channel and sharing all the different apps that you built. Personally, what I love about Mike's apps is that they are all boring. They're boring businesses, but they crush it and they make a whole lot of money. I think there's something to learn there about not chasing shiny, sexy ideas.

Key Takeaways

Minimize Risk: Pick ideas that have been validated by existing competitors
Four Co-Founders: Equal 25% split minimizes founder fallout
Design Matters: Good design sells
LTD Strategy: Use lifetime deals to raise $100K+ and get early adopters
Always Charge: Free users won't give you feedback
Content Early: Start SEO and content as early as possible
Build What You Love: Work with people you enjoy and build things you're passionate about
Avoid Platform Risk: Don't build on APIs you don't control (AI-focused businesses)
Stay Lean: Focus on bigger salaries, not big exits
The Playbook Works: Mike has used this exact process successfully 3+ times

Goal: Reach $1M MRR with the smallest team possible, fully bootstrapped.