From Zero to $230K ARR: The Indie Hacker's Playbook

Hello

I am Deven, a software engineer turned indiehacker. This is my journey of how I scaled my product from 0 to $230k ARR.

I started Supergrow 2 years ago(April 2023), and it currently has 800+ recurring customers. If I had to start all over again, here's exactly what I would do.

I am dividing this blog post into 8 steps. Let’s go.

Step #0: Finding the Right Idea

People often say ideas are worth zero. I strongly disagree. If you're an indie hacker, choosing the right idea is the most important thing at the initial stage.

How to Find the Right Idea

Here's my approach to finding a winning idea:

  1. Look for validated markets: Pick a market that's already proven and has a positive trend pushing it upward. As an indie hacker, you cannot afford to spend your limited time or money educating users about a problem. The users should already know about the problem.

  2. Find markets with paying customers: The biggest indicator of a real market is that there are companies already making money in it. One important caveat: Don't take VC funding (YC or any sort of funding) as proof that a market exists. Many funded startups are still trying to validate their market.

  3. Avoid creating new categories: Creating an entirely new category in the market is a much harder sell compared to going after a crowded market and iterating on features for an underserved Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Let me show you how this works in practice by sharing my own experience.

My Journey to Finding Supergrow

Let me share how I applied these principles and came up with the idea for Supergrow, my current product that's doing $230K ARR:

Before Supergrow, I was working on another product called Honeypot, which helped founders find leads from Twitter. I regularly shared my learnings and journey building Honeypot on Twitter. One day, a SaaS founder purchased the annual plan of Honeypot. Curious about what convinced him, I reached out to ask.

His response was eye-opening: “I saw your content on Twitter and felt the need for the product. I started following you on Twitter. Your transparency made me feel like I kind of knew you, and then I just bought the plan.”

This was my lightbulb moment. I realised the power of personal branding for founders, and thought I should build something that could help other founders build their personal brands on Twitter and LinkedIn.

However, around this time, Elon Musk acquired Twitter and completely changed the Twitter app ecosystem. They effectively killed thousands of apps overnight by introducing a $45K per month API plan that only established companies could afford. This made building on Twitter impossible for indie hackers like me. My product Honeypot.so was at $12K ARR when this API pricing change killed it.

Interestingly, this Twitter change affected many indie hackers who had built their businesses on the platform. My now co-founder was working on another Twitter-based tool that was similarly impacted by the API changes. Having followed my journey and updates on Twitter, he reached out to explore the possibility of working together on something new.

At the same time, I noticed LinkedIn was increasingly focusing on creators and incentivising people who were creating content on their platform. I did some market research and found existing personal branding tools, but they were falling short in helping people with content creation, the most important part of personal branding.

Coincidentally, OpenAI had just launched GPT-3, bringing massive improvements to AI-assisted content creation. I saw the convergence of these market trends: a growing need for personal branding, LinkedIn's creator focus, and the advancement of AI for content creation.

This market analysis led me to create Supergrow—a product in an existing market (LinkedIn personal branding tools), but with a focus on an underserved need (AI-powered content creation), with affordable pricing.

Now that I had identified a promising idea, the next step was to thoroughly understand what was already out there.

Step #1: Study Your Competitors Deeply

Find competitors in your market and use their products day in and day out. The goal isn't to copy them but to understand why they built what they built. Try to identify what you could improve that would improve the core workflow of their users.

My Competitor Research for Supergrow

When I started building Supergrow, I thoroughly studied the three main players in the LinkedIn content creation space:

Taplio: It was the biggest player in the market—very pricey with tons of features. However, I noticed that their content creation capability (the core function users needed most) wasn't great. They had built an impressive set of features, but the most critical component was shit.

AuthoredUp: This was a free Chrome extension. The design was poor, and it didn't work reliably. Yet people were using it simply because it was free. One thing stood out, though they had an excellent post preview feature that users loved.

ContentIn: I struggled to understand why people were using this tool at all. Its UI looked like it was from the 90s, and 90% of the time it didn't work properly. Yet it still had users, which confirmed there was strong demand for this type of solution.

After studying these competitors, I created a small proof of concept focused specifically on generating better LinkedIn posts. The results immediately showed that I could create something significantly better than what was available. This was incredibly motivating.

This experience taught me a crucial lesson: when studying competitors, focus on understanding their core value proposition and where they're falling short in delivering it. Don't get distracted by all their features or fancy marketing. Instead, ask yourself: “What is the one thing users really want from this type of product, and how can I do it significantly better?”

Your improvement should focus on the core user experience, not just cosmetic changes like improving the onboarding flow or the signup page. Those optimizations come later.

I've watched many copycats who duplicated my entire product but failed to add any unique value. Almost all of them shut down within a year.

With a clear understanding of the market gap and competitive landscape, I was ready to build something users would truly love.

Step #2: Build an MLP (Not an MVP)

Build a Minimum Lovable Product, not just a Minimum Viable Product. What's the difference?

An MVP proves your concept works. An MLP proves that people will love using it.

My Approach to Building Supergrow's MLP

My key insight was simple: everybody has stories or learnings that they want to share on LinkedIn, but they don't know how to transform those experiences into an engaging LinkedIn post.

This realisation guided my entire product development. For Supergrow, I focused intensely on simplicity and solving this one core problem exceptionally well. My first version had an extremely simple design with:

The entire product experience was designed around a simple workflow: users would share a short paragraph about their learnings or worries, and Supergrow would generate high-quality content based on that input.

I deliberately avoided feature bloat. No complex dashboards, no analytics, no scheduling tools, no audience insights—just pure content generation that worked better than anything else on the market.

Your first version should focus on doing one thing exceptionally well—so well that users are willing to overlook the features you haven't built yet. It should solve a specific pain point better than existing solutions, even if it has fewer total features.

With a focused product that solved one problem extremely well, it was time to tell the world about it.

Step #3: Share Your Journey Publicly

Document and share your building journey on Twitter, LinkedIn, or other platforms where your potential customers might be. This serves multiple purposes.

How Sharing My Journey Built Supergrow

My cofounder and I consistently shared updates about Supergrow's development on LinkedIn and Twitter. This transparency and public building approach led to several significant outcomes:

In our content formats, we mixed different types of content:

This variety kept our content interesting while consistently reinforcing our expertise and product development. The key wasn't just sharing wins—it was sharing the entire journey, including challenges and decisions.

Don't just share your wins—share your struggles, decisions, and learnings. Authenticity resonates more than perfectly polished updates.

As our visibility grew through consistent sharing, we were ready to monetise our early traction.

Step #4: Launch with Lifetime Deals (LTDs)

Don't give your product away for free. Instead, offer lifetime deals through platforms like AppSumo and RocketHub, or through private Facebook groups dedicated to LTDs.

Our Successful LTD Launch on Rockethub

In our case, the Rockethub team reached out to us after seeing our journey shared online. This is another benefit of Step #3—platform teams are constantly looking for promising products to feature.

The Rockethub team, particularly Charlie Paten and Karan, were incredibly helpful in preparing us both mentally and from the product side for the launch. They understood what would make the campaign successful and guided us through the process.

Our LTD launch on Rockethub generated $65,000. This gave us enough capital to scale both our product development and marketing efforts without needing to raise external funding. Having this cash cushion allowed us to make decisions based on what was best for the product rather than chasing short-term revenue.

Why People Worry About LTDs (And Why You Shouldn't)

I've seen many founders hesitate to offer lifetime deals. Yes, we all know subscription is the holy grail of SaaS, but at the early stage, what you're really looking for is a tight feedback loop and validation, not perfect unit economics.

Here are the common concerns about LTDs and my perspective:

Recurring costs of supporting users for life: From my experience, only about 10% of LTD purchasers will actively use your product, and less than 5% will use it regularly. This drastically reduces the actual support burden compared to what you might expect. The cost of supporting this small group is well worth the capital and feedback you receive.

LTD customers can be demanding: It's true that LTD customers often have high expectations, and this can cause mental strain. However, this pressure forces you to build a better product faster. Their demanding nature becomes an asset if you channel it properly.

Platforms take a significant cut: Most LTD platforms will take 30-50% of your revenue. Despite this, the exposure, credibility, and remaining capital are still worth it at the early stage when your alternative is often $0 in revenue.

Lifetime deals serve three core purposes:

Price your LTD high enough that customers take it seriously but low enough that it's an obvious bargain compared to your eventual subscription price.

With capital in the bank and a growing user base, we needed to build a system to capture and implement feedback effectively.

Step #5: Create a Customer Community

Form a Slack, Discord, or WhatsApp community with your LTD customers. The goal is to be as close to these early adopters as possible.

Getting Close to My Early Customers

In the early days after our LTD launch, we dedicated 1-2 hours every day to Intercom, personally responding to customer questions and feedback. This direct communication provided invaluable insights that shaped our product roadmap.

Beyond chat support, I added tools like Microsoft Clarity and Mixpanel to understand exactly what features people were using and where they were getting stuck. The heat maps and user flows revealed patterns that weren't always apparent from direct feedback alone.

Most importantly, we scheduled 3-4 customer calls every week. These conversations went beyond feature requests and revealed the deeper needs and use cases that our customers had. Often, the most valuable insights came from casual conversations rather than formal feedback sessions.

These early adopters will:

This community connection is the unfair advantage that indie hackers have over larger companies with layers of customer service reps and managers.

Once we had established a direct line to our users, we needed a system to organise and prioritise their input.

Step #6: Iterate Based on Customer Feedback

Talk to your community regularly. Run surveys, conduct interviews, and pay attention to support requests.

Scaling Our Feedback Management

In the beginning, Intercom was sufficient for managing feedback and feature requests. However, as our user base grew, the volume became overwhelming. That's when we integrated with Canny, a dedicated feedback management platform.

This transition accomplished several things:

We also implemented a proactive approach to gathering targeted feedback. We added prompt messages on Intercom and integrated them with specific pages in our app. When a user visited certain features, Intercom would automatically send a message asking for feedback about that particular feature. This contextual feedback was incredibly valuable—users could respond while actually using the feature, providing much more specific and actionable insights.

To maximize visibility and participation, we prominently placed the Canny link in our product's sidebar. This high visibility generated a significant amount of feedback, almost too much.

Staying Focused Amid User Requests

One critical lesson I learned: not every piece of feedback is worth acting on, no matter how many upvotes it gets. You need to maintain a long-term vision for your product.

For example, many users requested that we build LinkedIn DM automation features. Despite numerous requests, we deliberately chose not to build this. It would have diverted our focus from our core value proposition of content creation and potentially turned us into a completely different product.

The most dangerous feedback isn't the obviously bad ideas—it's the good ideas that aren't right for your specific product vision.

Having a clear picture of what your product should (and shouldn't) become is essential for filtering the feedback you receive.

We prioritised features based on a combination of user votes, our own intuition, and most importantly, alignment with our long-term product vision. This disciplined approach ensured we built a coherent product rather than a collection of disjointed features.

What You'll Have After These Six Steps

If you've followed the process I've outlined so far, you'll have achieved three critical milestones:

  1. A working product that people actually use – Not just a product that works technically, but one that solves a real problem well enough that people incorporate it into their workflows.

  2. Product ambassadors who can't stop talking about you – By listening to your early users and solving their problems, you'll have created vocal advocates who promote your product without being asked.

  3. Most importantly, paying customers – You've validated that people will exchange money for the value you provide, which is the ultimate form of validation.

These three elements create the perfect foundation for transitioning to a subscription model and scaling your business. Now it's time for the final step.

Step #7: Launch Subscription pricing

Once you've validated your product with LTD customers and improved it based on their feedback, it's time to transition to a subscription model and expand your reach.

Our ProductHunt Launch Success

When we were ready to launch Supergrow's subscription model, we decided to make a big splash on ProductHunt. This turned out to be incredibly effective because of all the groundwork we'd laid in previous steps.

We reached #1 Product of the Week on ProductHunt, largely because our happy LTD users were eager to support us. They actively posted about our launch on LinkedIn and Twitter, and many shared in various communities they belonged to. This organic support was far more powerful than any marketing we could have done ourselves.

A Critical Launch Insight

One small but powerful insight from our ProductHunt launch: offer a special deal specifically for people coming from the platform. We gave our product for $1 for the first month to ProductHunt visitors.

The results were remarkable—more than 50% of these trial users converted to full-price subscriptions after the first month. This approach allowed us to:

Find Your Second Marketing Channel

Beyond your product launch, you need to figure out at least one other scalable marketing channel besides your own personal branding. For Supergrow, it was partnering with LinkedIn influencers.

Finding the right influencers and structuring mutually beneficial offers with them became one of our most important skills. My cofounder took the lead on managing these relationships, developing a systematic approach to identifying and working with the right LinkedIn personalities whose audiences matched our ideal customers.

Whatever channel you choose—influencer partnerships, content marketing, paid ads, SEO, or something else—it needs to be something you can systematically optimise and scale.

With a successful launch and a second marketing channel in place, you can now:

  1. Launch your subscription pricing model

  2. List your product on platforms like ProductHunt, Uneed, and other relevant directories

  3. Leverage the testimonials and case studies from your LTD customers

  4. Start expanding your marketing beyond your initial community

Mistakes I Made Along the Way

Despite our success, two significant mistakes cost us time and growth potential:

Mistake #1: Focusing Too Much on B2C Initially For the first two years of Supergrow, I focused heavily on B2C customers. This was a strategic error. The B2B market offers significantly less churn and more predictable revenue streams. We're now pivoting toward B2B customers, and I wish we had done this from the beginning. For indie hackers building similar tools, consider the lifetime value and acquisition costs between B2C and B2B customers before committing your limited resources.

Mistake #2: Neglecting SEO From Day One We relied heavily on our social media presence and influencer marketing, but completely overlooked SEO. This meant missing out on a steady stream of organic traffic that compounds over time. If I could start over, I would invest in SEO content from the very beginning, even if just publishing one quality article per week. The compounding effect of SEO would have given us a much stronger foundation and reduced our dependence on platform algorithms.

Final Thoughts

To summarise what truly mattered in our journey to $230K ARR:

The path I've outlined worked for me in reaching $230K ARR, and I believe it can work for you too. I am launching another product soon, and will follow the same journey myself.

I'd love to hear what you're working on—connect with me on Twitter here: devenbhooshan

Leaving you with this Twitter post :)