Lukas Hermann built StageTimer as a weekend side project. Click start on one screen, a timer shows on another. That was it. No funding, no team, no marketing budget to start. Today it makes over $20,000 a month, runs at conferences and live events worldwide, and his logo even showed up on screen at a Trump event without him knowing.
In this episode of The Founder’s Gambit, Lukas walks through the entire playbook, step by step, from finding the right idea to getting to $20K+ MRR as a bootstrapped founder.
We get into:

• How to find a SaaS idea worth building (hint: stop scratching your own itch)
• Why B2B beats B2C for solo founders and small teams
• The validation method that costs nothing: give it away free and watch if people come back
• Why your MVP should be embarrassingly simple (his was a timer with one button)
• When to stop vibe coding and hire a real developer
• How to get your first users using Reddit with zero following
• The SEO strategy that drives 30% of his revenue today
• Why most bootstrapped founders quit before $10K MRR and what keeps you going
• How to think about churn when it feels like you’re filling a leaky bucket
• The freemium pricing trick that turns free users into your marketing team
• Why he keeps a cheap plan even when everyone says “raise your prices”
•  How his timer ended up on screen at a Trump event through pure word of mouth
• What $20K/month actually looks like when you’re bootstrapped with no employees
• The difference between going wide (more features) and going tall (second product)
• Why “competition is high but also very low” applies to almost every niche

If you’re thinking about building a SaaS, already working on one, or stuck somewhere between idea and traction, this is the episode. No theory, just what actually worked.
Lukas on X: @lukashermann
StageTimer: https://stagetimer.io
Lukas’s blog: https://lukashermann.dev