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

Right now, we have five apps and we're

doing just over 200 grand MR.

>> This is Mike, a founder from Australia

who built five different SAS apps that

make a combined $200,000 MR. 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.

All right, Mike, welcome to the channel.

Tell me about who you are, what you

built, and what's your story.

>> Hey Pat, my name's Mike. I've currently

got three SAS businesses doing over 200

grand a month, and we've got two more on

the way. Current businesses are

curator.io juno.co frillrill.co

fluke.co, and soonmile.co. Our aim over

the next 5 years is to get to about a

million dollars MR. And we want to do

that with the smallest team possible um

without raising any capital.

>> 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?

>> Our current businesses are curator.io,

which is a social media aggregator for

websites and events. Frill.co, which is

a customer feedback tool, which allows

you to collect customer feedback, plot

it to a road map, and announce new

features. Juno.co, which is a digital

signage business uh aimed at cafes,

gyms, schools, and shops. And fluke.co,

co which is a no code tours platform

that allows you to build onboarding

tours for SAS businesses tool tips

pop-ups things like that without having

to bother the developers and our final

business which we're launching in the

next two weeks is Smile which is an

innovative way at doing group ecards for

B2B businesses and altogether these five

apps make uh just over 200 grand a month

we're fully bootstrapped and we've used

exactly the same playbook to launch all

of them

>> 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 SAS

businesses?

>> Well, I used to be a developer, one of

the world's worst developers. I was a

Flash developer and um 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.

>> 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?

>> 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. So, our model

is like this. We go and find the idea.

Uh we work out how well they're doing

despite of a bad UX. We then go and

assemble the team. We like to have it

tech heavy. So we'll have a front-end

developer, a back-end developer, ideally

a designer as well, and then somebody

like myself who who does everything else

around the product. We always start with

four co-founders. What that does is

minimize founder fallout, which is one

of the key reasons most businesses fail.

We prioritize design quite heavily. We

believe that good design sells, which is

why we like to have a designer on on the

team. We like people that can do a

little bit of everything. We like every

single person on the team to be thinking

about the UX of the product. That's

really really crucial to uh who we get

on board. With those four co-founders,

we always split the company equally, 25%

each. We then grow the company to about

$10,000 MR, which covers costs there or

thereabout, depending on which company

it is. Then after $10,000 MR, we split

the profits between the founders and

that's when we start to pay ourselves.

These businesses are about bigger

salaries, not big exits. We don't invest

as much money back into advertising. We

don't invest as much money back into uh

staff. We stay super super lean so that

all 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 SAS businesses

from failures. And HubSpot for Startups,

who I'm partnering with for today's

video, also knows a few things about

successful companies, too. 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. So, if you're

building anything in 2025 and want to

understand what separates winners from

everyone else, just download HubSpot for

Startups free guide at the first link in

the description below. Thanks again to

HubSpot for Startups for sponsoring this

video. Let's get back into it. 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?

>> Sure. We have a 10-step playbook and we

follow this to the letter every single

time we launch a business. First and

foremost, pick an idea that's been done

before. New ideas are risky. Uh 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. Number two, decide what is a good

enough MVP. You need to 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. Core to how we make money early on

is the third point in our playbook.

Offer a lifetime deal. Offer away your

product for $59, $100, whatever it is

for a single time payment. Number four,

never give away an account for free.

Always charge people. If people pay for

it, they'll use it. That's 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. Number five, 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, of

which there are many, to get your

product bought by as many people as

possible. For Frill, we launched a

private LTD and raised about 30 grand

from our private LTD. Number six, 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

that you got 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 chat

GPT, the longer Google will start

indexing it and start sending you

traffic. Once you've started writing

content, launch on AppSumo or one of the

other marketplaces. AppSumo is great

because 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 work

with their sales team and work on their

select offering. Both work. Do your own

research there, but they have a huge,

huge database of people that they can

mail out to. This can get you, again,

way more users and a hell of a lot more

capital. Your aim should be to close

your LTD with 100 grand in your pocket

that you can use for a year or two year

to write more content. Once you've done

an Absumo Ltd, move to stage eight,

which is do one last private LTD. Many

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

So, this is where you're closing off

your LTD, your lifetime deal for life.

It will never ever be available again.

Poop your prices up a little bit and

offer one last private LTD. send it out

to your mailing list and then close it

and ideally close it forever. Stage nine

is crucial. This is live or die moment.

You've got 100 grand or however much you

raise from your LTD in the bank. This is

where you get your customers to write

your current LTD customers to help you

get an honest review on Trust Pilot uh

on G2. Uh wherever they're willing to

write you reviews, it's so incredibly

important. It will uh boost your domain

ranking and get honest reviews for you.

You'll find that the LTD community are

willing to do that because they really,

really want you to succeed. They're your

early ambassadors. It used to be Kora

that we would go out and answer

questions on, but more and more we're

seeing uh Reddit as an important place

to go and answer questions uh about your

product. Uh scan Reddit, see who's

asking for one of your competitors.

Answer honestly, authentically on Reddit

posts on, you know, look for subreddits

where your customers are hanging out.

This is such a crucial stage because

you've now moved to MR. Money's

depleting, but hopefully you're starting

to get MR. And by the time your money

runs out, hopefully you've got enough MR

to stay alive. That's it. That's the

10step 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.

>> 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?

>> So, one I will tell you is is one idea

that or an area that we will never go

after. We will never go after an AI

focused business. 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.

Having said that, one idea that we, you

know, we almost went after, um, we still

may go after, we we love the idea of

some sort of documentation tool. I don't

feel like the documentation tools that

are out there at the moment are doing a

really good job or the ones that are

doing a really good job are severely

overpriced. And good documentation

especially today is going to be the key

to success because AI needs good god

documentation to recommend your product

well to know about your product. So

that's something that um I think may

work well. We just won't rely on AI to

build or be an integral part of the

business.

>> 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?

>> The tech stack varies depending on the

founding team and what they're

comfortable using, whether it's Vue,

whether it's React on the front end. Our

back end still predominantly sits in PHP

uh and Laravel. Uh but again, that

changes all the time. Some of the tools

I'm loving at the moment, uh Willow

Voice, I can barely type anymore. You

just press the function key and you can

talk at your computer. We're using

granola for meeting notes. I absolutely

love it. Obviously Slack and things like

that. We use Framer for websites. We've

just moved over to Framer. Actually, all

of a sudden websites are no longer the

job of the tech team and more recently

VO for prototyping. We prototype

everything in VO and then we take it

into design and Figma and then we build

it.

>> 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

SAS, for anybody who's watching this,

what would be your advice to get started

and build awesome companies like you're

doing?

>> 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 uh 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.

>> 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 Sharon

Pat.

>> Thanks a lot. Have a good day.

>> 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. On that same note, this is

exactly why we launched Starter Story

Build. We will help you take your idea,

which it's okay if it's boring, and turn

it into a real app using only AI tools.

So, if you are ready to get off the

sidelines and ready to actually launch

your project, then definitely head to

the link in the description to check out

Starter Story Build. We are running one

of our new cohorts this week. So, click

that link and save your spot. All right,

that's it for this episode. Thank you

guys for watching. We will see you in

the next one. Peace.