I Turned My 'MVP Template' Into A Business That Now Makes $4,380/Month
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Alexandro Martínez, and I’m working on SaasRock, a Remix boilerplate with out-of-the-box features like Authentication, Subscriptions, Audit-trails, Events & Webhooks, Pricing Plan Builder, Entity Builder, Blogging, Permissions, and more. It’s built with Remix, Tailwind CSS and Prisma, and integrates nicely with Stripe for payments, Postmark for emails and Zapier for Webhooks. The demo is at saasrock.com and it’s hosted on Vercel using Supabase as the postgres database provider.
My customers are full-stack developers and low-code engineers looking to build SaaS applications quickly with a powerful starter codebase.
The current MRR of SaasRock is $4,380. I started working on this on March 19 and pre-launched on June 1st.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I was a C# (.NET WinForms) developer for 8 years, but I wanted to start building web applications, so I learned Vue2 and .NET Core and built 2 websites for my clients.
I fell in love with Vue on the frontend and .NET on the backend, so I built a boilerplate called NetcoreSaas, a SaaS Codebase on NET, Vue, and Tailwind CSS. I launched it on AppSumo and overall I got around 50 customers.
But I felt that my development could be faster because I had to run on VS Code the frontend app and on Visual Studio the backend app, so my journey of finding the perfect stack began. I migrated my Vue2 app to Vue3, then to React, and then to Svelte. The result was the same boilerplate but with different frontends, I called it SaasFrontends. After a while, I got $765 from it.
Then I found out about Remix, a full-stack JavaScript framework focused on web standards. I instantly knew this was the perfect stack, so I built v0.0.1 of “The Remix SaaS kit” (now SaasRock) in 7 days and gave it for free for 24 hours.
The tweet got popular because the Remix team retweeted it and I got more than 1,000 downloads:
At this point, I decided to open source the other SaaS kits and focus 100% on SaasRock.
Take us through the process of designing the initial product.
I start with the end. Before I would start splitting my time with frontend-first (design/UX) and then the backend (DB/logic). Now - thanks to Remix - I build full-stack features, meaning that in one file I touch the frontend, the database, the email server, the meta tags for SEO, the authorization/subscription/permissions logic…everything with the end feature in mind.
Before Remix, I would split my time in:
Backend
Database
Email server
Frontend
SEO
Authorization logic
Role and Permissions logic
Current subscription logic
UI/UX components
7 files for 1 feature! Now it’s all inside 1 full-stack Remix route, I wrote about this here.
I have a whole “Building a SaaS with SaasRock” youtube series where you can see my building process in detail:
Describe the process of launching the business.
I bootstrapped all of it. I paid around $300 for saasrock’s domain, $250 for the logo (which I didn’t use), and $70/month for hosting + database.
This is how the website looked on the first release:
And this is how it looks now:
For each website I release I need to:
- Buy a domain
- Create a Stripe account
- Create a Postmark server
- Create a Gmail account with Google Workspace with my domain
- Create a Twitter account
- Create an Instagram account
- Create a custom logo and illustrations with Canva
- Set up the domain with Cloudflare
- Commit my code to a private GitHub repository
- Create a Supabase database server
- Deploy to Vercel
- Make a blog post about it at IH, Medium, Dev.to, HN, hashnode, LinkedIn
- Tweet about the blog post
- Send my newsletter subscribers the blog post using ConvertKit
There were 3 main stages:
Stage 1) Free for 24 hrs - March 28th
I got around 1,000 gumroad “customers” ($0 each) for v0.0.1, but my phone didn’t stop ringing.
End result: 1066 people downloaded the Remix SaaS kit v0.0.1, in other words, 1066 prospects.
Stage 2) The Remix SaaS kit - March 29th - $299
The next day, I switched the gumroad price from $0 to $299. On the first day, I got my first 2 customers, the day after another one, and at the end of April, I reached 19 customers with a total of $3,063 (I offered discounts to pretty much anyone who asked).
April Remix SaaS kit customers:
The Remix SaaS kit overall analytics:
At this stage I met my product/marketing mentor, and friend, Chris Kluis (check out his services here). He offered to help me with my boilerplate since he has a passion for SaaS applications. He pointed out 2 things:
- Find a name decoupled from Remix and pre-launch it with that domain name
- Switch from $299 to $99 per month.
And so I did, I named it saasrock.com.
Stage 3) SaasRock pre-launch - June 1st - $99/m
For this pre-launch, Chris and I decided to have a Core Edition and an Enterprise Edition.
- Core 🪨 $99/m: Everything you need to build a SaaS.
- Enterprise 🚀 $149/m: Core + Enterprisey features: SSO, Affiliate+Referrals, HelpDesk…
You can view the full comparison here.
I got my first $99 subscriber 2 days after pre-launching saasrock.com, and at the end of the month, I had 5% of the views and 1/3 of the sales from the Remix SaaS kit. But this is MRR, not one-time payments:
As of September 15th, 3.5 months since pre-launch, I’ve got 69 subscribers, and 8k in revenue. Not enough to go full-time but enough to know that there’s a market for a Remix SaaS boilerplate.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Starting the Discord server was key. This way a community around SaasRock is growing, and everybody shares their thoughts on where SaasRock should be headed.
Plus, getting feedback and nice comments about me and the product keeps me motivated to give back!
You can join by clicking here.
The 3 top channels are:
#general - I keep everyone updated on what I’m working on and what I’ll be working on next.
#feedback - Members notify me about errors and post their questions, sometimes they help each other with is so nice to see.
#enterprise - We talk about upcoming enterprise features.
Overall, I think the discord server allows me to keep in touch with end users while building a community, and that’s a good social proof boost for SaasRock’s prospects.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
As of September 15, these are my stats:
Revenue
Visitors (I created built-in analytics if you’re interested)
Acquisition
Discord
The future of Remix
I’m pretty excited about the future of Remix, so I hope SaasRock will be safe. I’m so grateful for Ryan and Michael’s work. But to tell you the truth, Kent C. Dodds leaving the Remix team was a bummer.
I don’t think Remix will reach Next.js’s popularity, but I don’t care about where’s the market at, I care about my DX, and Remix ticks all the boxes for me. Otherwise, SaasRock would be another SaasFrontends a dead project.
The future of SaasRock
I cannot keep up with the current pace I’m delivering SaasRock updates - 2 major releases each month. We’re currently at v0.6 with a lot of features waiting to be built. So the post-v1.0 pricing will be something like this:
- Core $1,399: Perpetual license - 1 dev - Unlimited websites - 1 year of updates
- Enterprise $2,099: Perpetual license - 1 dev - Unlimited websites - 1 year of updates
This way I hope to get a longer customer life cycle (I’m taking inspiration from Gravity, and ABP pricing models).
My long-term goal is to build actual SaaS applications using SaasRock’s codebase, that’s why I’m releasing YouTube video series like this one: Building a SaaS with SaasRock in 10 days.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Great coding is not enough. I thought that the best marketing strategy is “build high-quality products, and customers will come”. I realized that I needed to try every strategy I can think of: Every other day tweets, YouTube videos, and Blog posts.
The key to my marketing strategy is that everything is connected. I build a feature, I add it to the changelog, I create a blog post about it, I tweet the post with my thoughts and I post a YouTube video explaining how to use it. So now, for every feature I build I have a:
- Blog post: IH, Dev.to, Medium, Hashnode, LinkedIn, and my blog.
- YouTube video
- Tweet
Conclusion: Start writing about what you enjoy doing so you can build a system around it.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
GumRoad: Marketplace for my products and services + manage subscriptions.
Stripe: Payment links + Invoices.
Loom: Create short videos for customer support, releases announcements, and quick guides.
Canva: Custom illustrations, blog post covers, social media images, and more.
SimpleAnalytics: A privacy-first Google Analytics alternative.
Postmark: Transactional and Inbound emails for my SaaS applications.
ConvertKit: For SaasRock’s newsletter.
Fiver: Creating quick illustrations, although the chances of getting what you wanted are 50/50.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I have great admiration for the Tailwind Labs team, created by Adam Wathan. The guy is an absolute beast in software development and design. The dream of all SaaS builders. So read the book by him and Steve Schoger, RefactoringUI.
This book inspired me to start designing my things, with zero designing skills, just look at my initial designs.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Just build it, experience is more important than talent. I know it’s cliché but consistency is key for software developers/entrepreneurs.
I was afraid of starting a youtube channel where I’d need to post frequently because 1) I would lose quality and 2) I’m not an English speaker. Instead of posting long videos, I started with short Loom videos that I shared on Twitter, like this one.
I started to gain confidence and after two months of loom videos, I started SaasRock’s youtube channel and it ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve made with this project since it keeps me in schedule and motivated.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Right now I’m still trying to create a solid base for a company so in 1 year I can start hiring people to help me. Especially with the things I’m not good at Marketing, Design, Copy, and Video production.
Where can we go to learn more?
Personal
SaasRock
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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