How I Built It: $16K/Month Micro-SaaS

Starter Story

Starter Story Starter Story Build

Explore

Case Studies Episodes Ideas Academy Build New

Case Studies Episodes Ideas Academy Login

4,418 Founder Case Studies

How I Built It: $16K/Month Micro-SaaS

Starter Story

Build

Feb 6, 2026

Nic built a micro-saas that makes $16K MRR. And he did it by picking a painfully specific niche and solving their whole problem. This video breaks down how even a "small" niche can still get you to $10K/month

Make sure your app is compliant → https://delve.co/book-demo?utm_source=starterstory&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=primary-feb-05-26

Build your own micro-saas → https://build.starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=blogtopin

Follow Nic: https://x.com/nikpolale

Check out his app: https://www.blogtopin.com/

🔔 Follow the Second Channel: @StarterStoryBuild

🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

This video is an educational case study of this 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.

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro

1:03 - Build your own micro-saas

1:27 - Blog to Pin overview

1:50 - Business analytics

3:08 - Founder background

4:38 - Building the micro-saas

5:34 - Make sure your app is compliant (sponsor)

7:29 - Growth channels

9:00 - Finding similar app ideas

9:44 - Micro-Saas playbook

13:05 - App demo

14:26 - Tech stack

14:46 - Advice

15:30 - Pat and Gus chats

16:49 - Ready to build?

Chapters

Stack

Transcript

Chapters

Stack

No tools listed for this business.

Meet Nick a founder from Ukraine who built an app that solved his own problem

Your app should be the best one for one specific person

But what he didn't realize was that hundreds of other people felt the same way

I built something better faster and cheaper than the competition

So he built it in six weeks launched it

And today this micro SaaS makes over 16 000 a month

I did a bunch of research and could not find a solution

Most founders try to build a tool for everyone

But Nick took a different approach

He picked one painfully specific niche and owned it completely

So I brought Nick onto the channel to break down his

exact process for building a niche micro SaaS

And in this video we'll dive into how he found an idea that ended up being a gold mine

why he decided to keep going even when his launch generated

zero dollars and his seven step framework for building a micro SaaS in 2026

This is one of my favorite SaaS interviews that we've done so you can't miss it

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

Real quick guys before we get into the interview

Nick is an amazing example of someone who built a micro SaaS to solve a very very tiny problem

You're going to learn all about why that's important and how he did it and how you can too

And if you watch this video and get inspired to build

then you should definitely check out Starter Story Build

I'll put a link in the description

but you can click that link and get started building your app right now

All right let's get into the interview

All right Nick welcome to the channel Stoked to have you here

Tell me about who you are what you built and what's your story

I'm Nick I built a Pinterest marketing tool to scratch my own

itch and I grew it to 16K MRR over the last two years

Today I'm excited to share about my experience building this app

and how I picked this niche market

I'm pumped to have you on I really really like this niche

niche that you picked and we're going to talk all about that But before we do

can you share with me what you built how much revenue you're making and could you

your Stripe and other dashboards to show us that this is legit

So Pinterest is like Google but for images

There are more than 500 million active users on Pinterest

and they're actively looking for stuff

I built a Pinterest automation tool which can create

Pinterest pins for your website

A person sees them on Pinterest and goes to your website

Designing Pinterest pins manually takes like five to ten minutes

to design every single pin

And to grow on Pinterest you probably need to have like five to ten pins per day

so it accumulates pretty fast

With Block2Pin you can create your whole schedule for months or two months

in just like a few minutes and it looks pretty good

We operate on a SaaS model and people on the starter plan

they pay around 39 a month

And if they want to scale they either buy agency plan or enterprise plan

And regarding MRR I'm a bit above 16k MRR

As you can see I have more than 400 active subscribers

My churn is around

I also used to have a lemon squeezy as my payment provider

so I still have a few monthly recurring revenue there

And regarding my traffic my traffic is pretty stable

400 300 500

Maybe it grew a bit in the last few months but it's all very steady

And over the months it compounds and grows into a pretty sustainable business

I really like what you built

I think that's super cool

We're going to get on to it

But before we do I want to understand about your background

How do you get into building apps

Do you have a developer background

How do you get here

I learned software engineering when I was 15

I actually got my first software engineer job as soon as I graduated from school

And I've always wanted to build a big corporate software background

I wanted to work in Google like SpaceX

I don't know big big those companies

Unfortunately in 2022 in my home country the war started and it made my life much worse

I've had a long depression and understood that probably like corporate path is not a good one for me

But luckily in like half a year I found an indie hackers community

And also I saw the ChargeUPT launch and I understood that I can make pretty good money

and have a pretty good life building the apps on my own

So I decided to ride that AI wave

I created a few apps and they all failed

I made zero revenue

Then I tried something different

I decided to create an AI blog about my passion cocktails

I tried bringing traffic to that website via all the different possible methods

I tried Google

I tried Instagram Facebook Pinterest everything

And Pinterest worked the best for me

I've tried hiring the person to do the job there to create Pinterest pins

And I understood that I can probably automate it

and made the first blog to pin version in around two months

That's awesome

I love that you had a bunch of failed ideas

Then you just said screw it I'm going to start blogging

You tried to grow that blog and then Pinterest work

And now you're here with a Pinterest SaaS

So that's super cool

We're going to get into how to find the right idea

which I think you might have some good ideas on

But before we do let's talk about the build

You said you built this in less than two months

Can you walk me through that

I got this idea back in December 2023

I had a 9 to 5 back then

So I was building on nights and weekends

I started building using GitHub Copilot back then

I didn't use Cursor

Output didn't exist or some other fancy AI tools

Unfortunately as I had a job and the goal was pretty complex

and AI was not that good it took me around two months to finally get it done

I got a scrappy version built in seven days

but I couldn't make it to a real product and had to rewrite most of it

I launched with a lifetime deal because I didn't really expect anyone to buy it

However I still had 1 000 followers on Twitter back then

I saw my friends going viral with different launches

so I kind of hoped it would happen

But really nothing happened

I had to wait for my first paying customers for 10 days

I switched to the regular subscription model improved the product

And in one month I slowly started getting first real customers

What I love about Nick's story is that he wasn't trying to build a product for everyone

He picked a specific niche and solved a real problem better than anyone else

But as Nick started landing more customers

he ran into something that every fast growing startup probably hits eventually

If Nick wanted to sell his software anywhere in Europe

he would need to have proper GDPR compliance

And that's critical if you wanted to grow that market segment

but also incredibly distracting when all you want to do is just build cool stuff

Well that's where Delve comes in the sponsor for today's video

Delve is an AI native compliance platform

built for teams that want to scale without slowing down

Their AI agents handle the repetitive painful work like collecting evidence

taking screenshots monitoring your tech stack

and auto filling security questions so your team doesn't have to do it

They'll give you a clear list of exactly what to do so you're never in the dark

And unlike traditional compliance tools that feel like a black box

Delve isn't just software

Every customer gets a dedicated customer success manager

and direct one on one support in Slack

to answer questions about compliance for the platform

With Delve you're getting the full audit solution

and there's no need to hunt for an auditor or figure out who to trust

Because Delve works directly with a network of auditors

auditors who already know the platform

which dramatically speeds up the path to audit completion

Over 1 000 fast growing startups like Bland MicroOne and WAP

trust Delve to get compliant without slowing their momentum

momentum And for Star Story listeners

Delve is offering an exclusive discount on any compliance framework

If you're ready to get compliant without the headache

just check out Delve at the link in the description

Thank you Delve for sponsoring today's video

Let's get back to the episode

Super cool how fast you built this

even though maybe it didn't feel that fast for you and you had to start over

you still got it out there

I think what's interesting is that you launched

and didn't really see the success that you wanted to see

and it did take a little bit more time

So what changed from that launch to actually starting

to get customers a little bit slowly

How did you grow this thing to now over 16 000 a month MRR

My three best marketing channels so far are Word of Mouth

Affiliates and SEO or ChargePT and other like LLMs recommending me

I take a deep care about everyone using the app

I review screen recordings of what they do

when something happens with their account

or they don't see the growth on Pinterest

I take a look at what happened

Maybe they need to adjust their strategy

When they need any feature I just build it in a few hours or days

and people really feel it when you care

and they'd be extremely happy to share a word

recommend it to their friends etc

And it becomes a snowball at some point

where people just start using your app

and you have no idea who they are

SEO and ChargePT are also very similar

I did a lot of green in the beginning

I created all the articles

I reached out to influencers

I posted a lot on Reddit etc

Getting all the backlinks is also a struggle

struggle but at some point people just keep coming to your website

and buying on autopilot

That's the marketing I try to go for

kind of asymmetric one

where you do a lot of things in the beginning

you struggle a lot

lot but then as it goes further

you just keep getting customers on autopilot

There really was no hack to growing this thing right

Just experiencing this pain in the beginning

and doing a bunch of things possible

But now the customers just come naturally from word of mouth

mouth and you're mentioned in LLMs

There's no secret hack

That shows me that you're building a really really good business

that solves a really really core problem

And you sort of talked about that already

So what would be your advice for people to find a similar idea

or a similar niche to build in

I just think it's important to build different stuff

and you never know what your true idea will look like

and just find what you love

try to solve these kinds of problems

And then eventually in the process

you'll find something boring

something you'd be happy to pay someone money for

and you'd be able to automate it with your own product

So for Block2Pin I chose this market

because I felt the pain myself

There was a tedious process

where people were doing it over and over again

And now Block2Pin does it better faster and cheaper

For anyone watching who may feel like they have that idea

or they have a place that they want to build in

they see a pretty good niche

What would be your playbook

if you were starting over from scratch

to know that it is worth it to go all in

and build something in this space

What would you do if you had to start over

and build a SaaS in 2026

The first step is find something people already do

and something people already pay for

If you come up with a completely unique experience

something people have never done before

it will be extremely hard to find customers

to find even someone to talk to

to sell it to someone

especially as an indie hacker

Second step is Google what already exists on the market

Research their G2 reviews

maybe AppSumo reviews Captera

If there are any YouTube videos

watch every single one of them

and understand what are the pain points

what people say they don't like about the tool etc

Also review how your competitors use AI

It's possible that they don't automate anything using AI

or it's not the core part of their product

because it's hard for a big company

to change their entire flow

eliminate 90 of complexity

and make the app better

Based on your research

come up with requirements for your MVP

If you did your homework right

your MVP should be faster cheaper

and better for some specific niche

You should have a clear picture of a person

who benefits from your app

Your app should be the best for that specific person

It will be an absolute disaster for everyone else

Step three create MVP

With Cloud Code

it can be done in one to two weeks maximum

Step four you need to talk to ICP you pictured

Find them wherever you can

Reddit xcode reach

record YouTube videos TikToks Reels

find some random Facebook groups etc

If you did your job well

your ICP will be happy to try the app out

because it's better than the competition

it's faster than the competition

and it's cheaper than the competition

Only an idiot will refuse it

In reality you'd probably face issues

Maybe your understanding of ICP was wrong

In this case you need to adjust the app

or adjust the ICP

Maybe you can't reach your target customers

or something else

I don't think it's possible to automate this step

unless you're lucky

Personally I'm not

It's impossible to hide

behind directory submissions or product hunt launch

or viral X launch

You'd need to find a real human

who benefits from what you created

Step five as you found that person

congratulations treat him as your employer

Review everything he did

ask for the feedback

If he has any suggestions

implement it on the same day

and your job is to make sure he's 100 satisfied

Step six eventually as you do it

for a few dozen people

your app will get better for your ICP

It will have a true value

Those customers will become your fans

You'd understand where exactly they hang out

They'll recommend you to your friends etc

Step seven at this point

it's important to still keep working on your app

and improving it by 1 every day

Maybe improving the churn rate

or the onboarding

or the emails you've sent

Everything you can

If you keep adding one paying customers every day

and you have around 10 monthly churn

you'd have around 200 paying customers

by the end of the year

If each one pays you 50

you'd have a 10 000 MRR business

I think it's feasible for almost any niche

as long as you truly solve someone's problem

Well thanks for sharing that playbook

That was amazing

I especially liked what you said about

try to avoid hiding behind directory submissions

and product launches

and just try to help one person

and solve their problem

I think that's really powerful

I'd love to see a demo of your app

Could you just show off what you've built

I think it'd be cool to see what you've built

built and how you built it

As soon as a person signs up

I ask him to add a website

There are a few different options

I choose the first one

Now just add any website

Hit continue

Around a minute

I'll scan your website

understand what it's about

and create a few Pinterest pins

for you to take a look at

These are the images from my website

I can see them

I can make some changes if I want

These are the kind of pins

pins which would work exceptionally well on Pinterest

Then the person can go to his onboarding

as he's seen what the app is capable of

He specifies different settings

how many pins he wants to pin

chooses for which specific pages

he wants to create pins for

chooses which kind of Pinterest boards

he wants to pin for

and then we kick off the full pin generation

one month in advance

In a few minutes

he'll have a schedule

something like that

when there are dozens of pins on each day

and they all look different

They all look unique

They all are very SEO optimized for Pinterest

There are of course more to that

A person can also take a look at the analytics

look at what exact pins are working

So it's a lot more than just a dumb scheduler

but the very simple value for a person

person is presented right away

that he can get a lot of pins

pins scheduled for him in a few minutes

Looks super cool

How did you build it

What tech stack do you use

I use Verso to host my web app

I use Hetzner to run scrapers on my server

I use Oxylabs for proxies

I use Gemini for AI text

and Hell ai for generating AI images

And I use Sequency for sending different emails

and preventing charm

Thanks for sharing that

Last question that we ask everyone

who comes on Starter Story

What would be your advice to young Nick

before you found this idea

Or what would be your advice

to anyone watching this

that wants to build a successful micro SaaS

like you have

Try different things out

And once you are ready

pick one niche

solve one specific pain point

and stick with it for at least a few months

It doesn't mean you should just be

building features in silence

Try different marketing angles

outreach to people on X Reddit via email

record YouTube videos

do everything you can

to reach out to your target audience

and build features to stand out for them

Eventually you'll find something that works

and you just need to double down on that

Well thanks Nick

for coming onto the channel

and sharing all this

Awesome story

Awesome business

It's going to keep growing

I'm excited to see

So thanks for coming on

and sharing everything

Thank you

What did you think about this one

Man that was really awesome

When I first talked to him

in the preparation for this interview

I was really blown away I guess

by just how niche this tool is

It feels random

I think that's probably what I was like

crazy that this guy's making 16k a month

month with like a Pinterest blogging automation tool

I know of Pinterest automation tools

from like seven years ago

that were crushing it too

And it shows that

hey sometimes these new ideas

don't need to be crazy new concepts

Like he sort of mentioned it a little bit

but he said like

I just added like an AI element

I helped use like generative AI

And now he's crushing it

It's easy to like underestimate tools

that you don't use

but how big those actually are

And that's the thing too

is like you hear this

you may hear oh 16 000 a month

month That's not as much as you know

some guy that did an AI tool

that's making 40 50 million dollars a year

But this is a business

that is going to go like this

like slowly grow and have low return

because it's a mature market

You know that these Pinterest people

have been there for 10 years

and it's a totally proven thing

It's not like some AI tool

that's a flash in the pan

It's going to die tomorrow

You can't really look at the MRR

You look at the growth and the churn

especially when you're looking

at SaaS business like this

which is why I think this might be

one of the most valuable interviews

that we've done

Totally

If you are excited about

building something similar

you want to take an old idea

and put an AI spin on it

Well the perfect place to do that

is Starter Story Build

You can click the link

in the description right now

and get started on your idea

It will help you find your idea

build your idea

and get it in the hands of real users

Just like Nick said

it wasn't about hiding

behind a product on launch

It was about getting it

in the hands of one user

that was genuinely

solving their problem

That's what Starter Story Build

is all about

So what are you waiting for

All right guys

I'll see you in the next one

Peace

Starter Story

About

Support

Privacy

Get Access To All Startup Data Right Now (it's free)

Join our free newsletter to get unlimited access to all startup data. We just need your email:

Email address

If you are a human, ignore this field

Starter Story

Want to discover ideas that actually make money?

Get our 5-minute email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.

Email address

If you are a human, ignore this field

It's free and read by 200,000+ founders

Email Address

Have an account? Login by entering your email or continuing with Google.

Please sign in.

Email Address

Password

Create A Password

If you are a human, ignore this field

Email Address

Password

2 + 2 = ?

Check your email for a link to sign in

Check your email

We've sent you an email with a link to sign in. Click the link in the email to access your account.

If there's a Starter Story account associated with that email you'll get an email with a link to automatically log in. The link will expire in 24 hours.

Your existing password still works, should you want to log in with it later.

Starter Story

Unlock the secrets to 7-figure online businesses

With Starter Story, you can see exactly how online businesses get to millions in revenue.

Dive into our database of 4,418 case studies & join our community of thousands of successful founders.

Starter Story

Get The Report

Starter Story

Build a business that changes your life, in less than 5 weeks.

Discover a proven system to find, validate, and build your $1M business idea—alongside a community that won't let you fail.

Our next sprint starts soon...

Starter Story Build

With AI, you can build anything

Come up with an idea, build it, and ship an app that gets users and payments—in just a few days.

Join thousands of builders who are turning their ideas into real products.