Startups For the Rest of Us

Episode 798 | Lessons From 10 Years of SaaS Growth Without a Hockey Stick


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How do you bootstrap a SaaS to $1 million+ ARR?

In this episode, Rob Walling chats with Colin Bartlett about how he and his co-founder Andy transformed a side project monitoring tool into a seven-figure ARR business that now serves as an early warning system for outages across 6,000+ services. 

From nearly abandoning the product during three stagnant years to discovering their killer differentiation, Colin's journey is a masterclass in patient iteration, finding product-market fit the hard way, and why sometimes the most boring infrastructure businesses make the best SaaS companies.

Episode Sponsor:

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That’s Conversion Factory. They’re a SaaS marketing and design agency that have worked with over 50 startups, including several TinySeed companies. 

Book a call at conversionfactory.co and mention this podcast for $1,000 off your first month. And if you’re at MicroConf Europe next week, make sure to connect with Corey Haines in the hallway track. 

Topics we cover: 
  • (3:08) – How StatusGator detects outages (and why users are part of the signal)
  • (6:23) – From side project to SaaS: the early days of building StatusGator
  • (8:46) – Shifting the ICP: Why developers weren’t the buyers
  • (11:44) – SEO as the engine behind thousands of trials
  • (17:00) – Hitting early MRR milestones and hiring the first marketer
  • (25:12) – How TinySeed funding unlocked a full product redesign
  • (32:05) – Building a dual funnel to boost ACV and win enterprise deals
  • (38:00) – Advice for other SaaS founders playing the long game
  • Links from the Show: 
    • Invest in TinySeed Fund Three
    • MicroConf Mastermind Matching - Applications open until September 24th
    • StatusGator
    • Colin Bartlett | LinkedIn
    • If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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      Startups For the Rest of UsBy Rob Walling

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