Speedy Squirrel

How I Bootstrapped My Shopify SaaS to $11K/Month

December 13th, 2024

Who are you and what business did you start?

Hello. My name is Aditya. I am the founder of Speedy Squirrel. Speedy Squirrel is an e-commerce SaaS company. We build plugins for Shopify. We have three plugins on the Shopify App Store, the hero one being "Shipping Calculator: ShipMagic". ShipMagic allows you to customise your shipping rates using 30+ parameters, and also allows you to connect your Shopify store with different carriers like USPS, Fedex, Australia Post, etc. Our primary customers are Shopify merchants who are looking to charge accurate shipping rates to their customers. We pride ourselves in providing an easy to use, easy to setup app with top notch customer support. We currently bring in about $11,000 per month.

How do you come up with the idea for Speedy Squirrel?

Before launching my own venture, I worked as a software developer and product manager at several startups in Bangalore, India. These experiences gave me the skills and confidence to independently build, deploy, and maintain products. I began exploring domains where I could leverage these abilities to create meaningful solutions. During my research, I discovered Shopify Apps, which stood out as a promising opportunity for several reasons:

It was a well-defined niche with minimal competition from large SaaS companies. Being a B2B market, it offered fewer customers but higher-value transactions. One of the biggest challenges for startups is customer acquisition. Shopify's dedicated app store for plugins provides a built-in platform to reach potential customers effectively when utilized strategically.

How did you build the initial version of Speedy Squirrel?

The first step in building my business was finding the right idea. I began by engaging with various Shopify communities, hoping to uncover potential opportunities. However, this approach didn’t yield significant results. To dig deeper, I created a free app and offered it to customers in exchange for a 30-minute conversation about their business. During these conversations, I asked about their operations and challenges, paying close attention when they highlighted pain points. This process led to the idea for ShipMagic. Since the concept originated directly from Shopify merchants, I had a handful of potential customers lined up even before development began.

This customer-first approach remains my guiding principle. Every feature in the app today is based on user requests, and there isn’t a single feature that isn’t actively used by at least one merchant.

Starting Costs Launching ShipMagic required minimal investment. Shopify charges a one-time $99 fee to create a developer account. Beyond that, I hired freelance designers to create the logo and app store assets, which brought the total initial cost to approximately $200.

Pricing Model We adopted a flat monthly subscription model, with pricing tiers based on the features customers need. While the structure has remained consistent, we’ve raised prices a couple of times as the product evolved.

To attract early adopters and gather reviews, I offered ShipMagic for free during the first three months. This strategy helped improve our ranking on the Shopify App Store. Since the operational costs were low—covering server, database, and a few tools—I was able to bootstrap the business using my savings.

The MVP and Launch One of the most crucial decisions I made was setting...

Sorry, you need to login and/or become a member to view the rest of this content.

More Business Ideas Like This

Shopify App

$74.4K/month

Saas Company

$661K/month