SaaS •Entrepreneurship

I Made $1.5M From An App You’ve Never Heard Of

Starter Story • • 14 min • #150
I Made $1.5M From An App You’ve Never Heard Of

An unexpected phone call gave Jordan Rejaud the idea for an app that's now done $1.5M in revenue. And he's done it with zero ads, no content, and a customer base most founders would never think to build for.

Summary

  • Jordan

    • Solo bootstrapped two businesses that each made more than $1 million in total revenue.
    • Built one mainstream business involving self-driving cars and drones for well-known companies.
    • Built Parakeet Chat, a prison-focused communication and AI learning product that made more than $1.5 million over its lifetime.
    • Wanted to be a scientist, engineer, or astronaut as a child.
    • Went to grad school, earned a Master of Science, and worked on a moon rover and other robotics projects.
    • Worked as a researcher at a Fortune 100 company after graduating.
    • Found the corporate world boring, taught himself to code, moved to San Francisco, and moved further into entrepreneurship.
    • Had about a decade of software experience by the time he built Parakeet Chat.

  • Parakeet Chat

    • Helps incarcerated people communicate with ChatGPT and other AI services.
    • Lets users learn about topics they care about, especially legal rights and case law.
    • Also helps incarcerated people communicate with family.
    • Has no traditional user interface, mobile app, or downloadable app.
    • Works through the internal prison email system.
    • Lets users email a specific address, then the bot processes the request and sends back a reply.
    • Can look up information through ChatGPT and sports statistics.

  • Origin And Validation

    • Got the idea after a freelance software client was sent to prison.
    • Stayed in touch with the client through paper letters.
    • Learned from him that many prison services were low quality and expensive.
    • Saw an opportunity to build a better service for incarcerated people.
    • Could not validate with a normal landing page because prison is a closed ecosystem.
    • Treated validation and MVP building as the same step.
    • Shared the concept with contacts inside prison and gathered feedback.
    • Built the prototype in about a month.
    • Built the payment system in another month.
    • Gained 200 paying users and became profitable within the first month after release.

  • Metrics And Business Model

    • Made a little over $300,000 in revenue in 2025.
    • Made more than $1.5 million over its lifetime.
    • Has been tried by around 30,000 people.
    • Reached about 20% of the entire federal prison population in the United States.
    • Created almost 100,000 family connections.
    • Sent about 9 million messages.
    • Charges families on the outside because the users are incarcerated people and the customers are their families.
    • Uses monthly SaaS pricing at $15 or $20 per month depending on the plan.
    • Offers a discount for yearly plans.

  • Growth Strategy

    • Grew almost entirely through word of mouth inside a closed prison ecosystem.
    • Relied on early contacts sharing the product with other people.
    • Built an internal recruitment system where a customer could earn about a month of free credits for recruiting another paying customer.
    • Thinks good products can turn users into advocates when the product strongly resonates.
    • Approaches growth like a scientist by experimenting, failing, gathering data, and iterating.

  • Tech Stack And Development

    • Built the product in TypeScript.
    • Uses React for the front end.
    • Uses Postgres as the database.
    • Uses Redis as an in-memory database with a queuing system.
    • Uses Auth0 for login.
    • Uses Prisma for database calls.
    • Uses Zod to validate incoming information against schemas.
    • Uses many Docker containers.
    • Now relies heavily on AI to write code and says AI is the new tech stack.
    • Believes the specific language matters less than speed.

  • Lessons And Advice

    • Says founders must validate because many entrepreneurs protect ideas in their heads instead of exposing them to the world.
    • Believes most people avoid validation because they fear invalidating an idea they are emotionally attached to.
    • Advises founders to be willing to let ideas die.
    • Says most beliefs about business are wrong before a person has real experience.
    • Credits Parakeet Chat’s success to mistakes he made years earlier.
    • Says there is no overnight success.
    • Encourages people to start immediately with a small, controlled idea that may fail, because they will learn more from it than from reading many books.
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