How I Built a $10K/Month SaaS (Beginner Strategy)

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How I Built a $10K/Month SaaS (Beginner Strategy)

Starter Story

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Aug 2, 2025

This is how Abhishek built an $11K/month SaaS by copying an existing $100M company.

🛠️ Want to start building with AI? Check out Starter Story Build → https://build.starterstory.com/build/ai-build-accelerator?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=abhishek

Follow Abhishek's journey: https://x.com/themkmaker

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🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

This video is an educational case study of one founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

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I met a guy who has the perfect strategy for finding micro SaaS ideas

I think anyone can build a business like mine

And with this simple strategy he's been able to build a pretty successful business

Today UFO makes 11 000 MRR

He didn't need to come up with a brand new idea

He didn't need a crazy marketing strategy

He just focused on one simple thing

I think anyone can copy this strategy to make their first 10 000

I had Abhishek come on the channel and break down this strategy step by step

In my opinion the best approach to build a SaaS is

In this video we'll go over where to start looking for ideas

how to identify if one is worth working on

and how to get your first customer without actually building anything

I think you're gonna like this one

Let's dive in

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

All right welcome Abhishek to the channel

Tell me about who you are what you built

and what's your story

My name is Abhishek and I built UForm

It's an alternative to Typeform

I launched it in 2023 and over the last two years

we have grown it to around 11 000 MRR now

Okay so immediately I just want to get into it right away

I think your approach is super cool

kind of finding this big idea building a small version of it

Can you tell me about how you even came up with the idea on how to do this

I was working on my previous SaaS which was a no code chatbot builder

It was called BotFlow and it has 200 users or so

So majority of them were using it because they wanted a conversational form

And when I talked to them and found that they were using it as an alternative to Typeform

I found that Typeform recently raised their pricing

So then I found there was like a gap in the market

But pricing is something that I found like it can't be the only reason

So I then searched Twitter Reddit Typeform's own forum and all

I found there are like some other features as well that users want

and Typeform is not providing

So then I sold that chatbot builder BotFlow and started working on new form

Okay I mean you just talked about it right there

You called it finding the gap

What do you mean exactly by that

Finding the gap is something where you can you know

take something which is already working people are using it

But there are some gaps like some pain points

people are not finding with the current competitors

If you can fill that gap you can definitely get users

I think like most of our developers think most of the ideas

or most of things have already built in the market right

But there is always a gap

Thank you for sharing that

I mean I just love this strategy

Taking a big idea building a really small version of it

maybe even undercutting the prices building other features

Tell me about why you think other people watching this should adopt this approach as well

In my opinion the best approach to build a SaaS is you should not invent things

As an indie hacker as a bootstrap you can't create the next Uber

You can't create the next Facebook

You need a lot of money for that in your PC funding

In fact you should upload the market which is already validated

like there are already big players there

So people are actually using it and then just find the gap

Okay let's take a deeper dive into the finding the gap strategy

Can you break down this strategy so that someone watching

could think about how they could do something similar

The idea is simple

Step one you look for a popular tool and search social platforms like Twitter

and Reddit with keywords like X alternative

where X is basically the product with lots of users

So far in my case it was Typeform

Then step two find the pain points or gaps which they are not solving

It is fine if the pain point is pricing but only if pricing is too high

Then step three reach out to those users with your solution

with just a basic landing page explaining your solution

So messaging is the key here

Bonus point step four have a tool to simply easily migrate

your competitor's user to your platform with a one click

In Uform we have a landing page where you can paste your Typeform URL

and it will generate a Uform in a few seconds

So people can see like okay this is what we are getting

Okay cool

So I mean that's an awesome strategy

You're a busy founder you don't have time to go build other things

but people watching this might be wondering

okay how can I do this strategy right now

What are the big hundred million dollar companies out there

that I can kind of go do the same thing you did

So what would be your advice or ideas you have around that

Yeah so there are lots of opportunities there

which I would love to build but I don't have time to do

Two of them which I can state right away

One is Kenny Alternative

This is my personal pain point I have faced because we are a small startup

and Kenny has recently trying to go up market

So I searched for a lot of Kenny Alternative in the market

but none as simple as Kenny

Kenny Apart from that there is a one gap that I found recently

This is an app where you can build your forest

the digital forest by doing some habits

And why you should build an alternative right now is

if you search with the latest reviews there

most of them are one star

I think these are the things that you should do

but you will find that there are people who say that

okay Facebook is crap I don't want to go there

But definitely don't build things like a social media

and marketplace or something

That is something that as an indie hacker you should always take

Before we wrap up with Abhishek's story

I wanted to pop in with a question

What do you want to build

No seriously what project have you been thinking about for a long time

Maybe it's a micro SaaS like the one we're talking about today

or maybe it's just a simple tool that will help you be more productive

Whatever it is AI has made it possible to build anything

But let's be honest it's still really hard to figure out where to start

I get DMs every single day from people asking me how to build

build what to build and what tools to actually use

So I decided to create something that makes it easier for you to build with AI

It's called Starter Story Build and it's our program where in just a few days

you'll go from a simple idea to a production ready app

You'll get guidance from our resident experts

and you'll get the roadmap for how to build with AI forever

Honestly I wish this existed when I was just starting out

So if you're curious check out the link in the description

to learn more about Starter Story Build

All right let's get back to the episode

I'd love to learn a little bit more about Uform

and just walk me a little bit through kind of how you built it

Just give me a high level overview of like what you did

until you got the first paying customer and so on

So my approach was simple

I didn't actually make like all the features that Typhoon was providing

So we initially didn't do anything which might be like

a fancy landing page or a logo or anything like that

The first version of Uform had just you can collect some data

using like fields like name email star rating and all

And apart from that you can just download your data as a CSV

There were no integrations with Google Sheet API etc

Nothing was available there

So this was an MBB that I think I built in two weeks

And the landing page was a basic landing page at that time

which just had a start using Uform

which used to take you to the Uform build

And later on like my wife created the current page

Then we got like I guess 200 plus users

Okay cool I mean that's awesome

Next question that I have is around some of the numbers behind it

I know you're super transparent about that stuff

So how's the business going and share with me some of the numbers

Yeah currently we are doing around 11 000 MRR

And there are around 35 000 or so users registered users

And paying customers is around 500 something

We are actually basically in a freemium model

I guess 90 plus of features are free

So our conversion rate is around somewhere around 1 5 to less than 2

Traffic per month we get around 35 000 visitors per month unique visitors

And apart from that a good stat right now is

we have recently got 4 million form submissions

Cool Well thanks for sharing that

What tech stack did you use to build this business

And what tools do you use on a daily basis

Yeah so Uform is built on Laravel

I chose Laravel basically because I love it

I'm working on this since last I guess 10 years

So I wanted to keep the stack which I am comfortable with

And it is hosted on AWS Amazon AWS

We use Cloudflare for security and storage

Apart from that Stripe for payments

We use open AIs a lot for fraud detection

because our freemium model lots of bad users comes in who tries to gain the system

Then we use Slide for help docs

They are great

Apart from that Gmail for bug space

Simple Analytics for web analytics

Kenny for feedback management

And Mailgun for email

Then in total I think our last month expense was around less than 1 200

Next question I have is you know you built this successful business

What have been some of the most surprising lessons that you've learned along the journey

First of all the messaging is important with your app

The message about what your product does should resonate with basically your ideal customer

After that it is all about how good your product is and your customer support

which will not only keep your existing customer but they will also refer others to your product

And the last question is if you could stand on Abhishek's shoulder

before you had this successful business this amazing SaaS business that you built

what would be your advice to yourself or to people watching this who want to do something similar

If you are young take risks early because you have less responsibilities

And don't neglect marketing

That is the important thing

Apart from that I would say don't build things because you can

If you really want a SaaS business to support your lifestyle

then I think you should first search for what people are looking for and then build it

Well that's great advice

Thank you Abhishek for coming on

I love the business that you built and hope to see you at 100 000 MRR

Thank you Brett

Thanks a lot

Man I just loved hearing about how Abhishek thinks about building apps

I think the strategy is cool because it's very approachable

There are a lot of low hanging fruit out there that exist like this

where you can go find a big company figure out what users like and dislike

and then build that micro version of it

It's not necessarily easy but the strategy is pretty simple

And I think it's very doable

And with tools like Lovable and Cursor you can spin up these projects and get started

and have a real working prototype in just a few hours

And that's exactly why we built and launched Starter Story Build

In a few days you'll learn how to build stuff with AI

And who knows

In a few months you might have your own 10 000 per month micro SaaS

If you're interested in Starter Story Build head to the first link in the description to learn more

Thank you again for watching

I'll see you in the next one

Peace

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