I Built 4 SaaS Apps to $100K MRR: Here's My Exact Playbook

Tibo

• Built and exited Tweet Hunter and Taplio.
• Said the exit was an $8 billion acquisition.
• Built many apps and uses the same playbook repeatedly.
• Built four apps that passed $100,000 per month.
• Is building five apps and trying to grow them to $10 million in annual revenue.
• Said he failed for five years before learning the importance of talking to users.

Portfolio of Products

• Runs a set of SaaS products making about $700,000 per month together.
• Has about 50,000 paying customers across the products.
• Has seen total monthly revenue grow about 20% per month for over six months.
• Built Rabbit.ai as the oldest and highest-revenue product.
  • Lets users input a video and text to create an engaging video.
  • Makes about $400,000 per month.
  • Is still growing about 10% month over month.
• Built Outrank as a fast-growing SEO product.
  • Started as a blog post generator.
  • Is becoming an all-in-one SEO SaaS for growing organic traffic.
  • Passed $200,000 per month.
• Built Super X as an all-in-one SaaS for growing an audience on X.
  • Passed $13,000 per month.
• Built Post Sinker as a social media tool for posting across platforms.
  • Makes about $1,500 per month.
  • Lets users post on 10 platforms.
• Acquired Feather for $250,000.
  • Turns Notion pages and Notion content into a blog on the web.
  • Makes about $10,000 per month.

Core Product Philosophy

• Believes builders often add features instead of doing the harder work of talking to people.
• Thinks developers need to leave their comfort zone and understand real user pain.
• Builds true relationships with early users to understand their life, workflow, and core problem.
• Uses his own products so he can understand the problem more deeply.
• Fixes small issues quickly when users mention them.
• Treats fast fixes as a way to turn users into long-term customers and advocates.

Twelve-Step SaaS Playbook

• Build the MVP in days or weeks.
  • Use no-code, boilerplates, or shortcuts.
  • Compress the learning loop because most projects fail.
• Find five to 10 highly relevant people in the target audience.
  • Reach them through tweets, subreddits, or email.
  • Ignore feedback from people who are not relevant users.
• Build a real relationship with those early users.
• Talk to users every day.
  • Look for recurring usage.
  • Understand why people return or stop returning.
  • Point support links to Twitter DMs until a product reaches $10,000 per month.
• Understand the user’s ultimate goal.
  • Find ways to help them achieve the larger outcome behind the feature request.
• Fix users’ problems instead of your own.
• Iterate while maintaining constant user relationships.
  • Stay active on social channels to see what users ask for.
• Repeat until users cannot live without the software.
  • Focus on retention and stickiness before broad acquisition.
  • Treat thoughtful complaints as a sign users are committed.
• Go broad with acquisition after the product has stickiness.
  • Try channels such as Product Hunt, socials, and build-in-public.
  • Use free channels to reach roughly $1,000 to $3,000 per month.
  • Tibo launches on Product Hunt and talks about software on socials until about $10,000 in revenue.
• Turn the company into a media company.
  • Build a content workflow that fuels growth.
  • Create industry content, testimonials, and case studies.
• Build scalable channels.
  • Focuses on SEO, ads, and affiliate programs because they can scale.
  • Used Outrank’s build-in-public growth to reach $20,000 per month, then added ads, SEO work, and affiliates to grow from $20,000 to $200,000.
• Scale what works and kill what does not.
  • Test broadly because acquisition is hard.
  • Double down on the one or two channels that actually drive growth for each product.

Portfolio Strategy

• Builds multiple products to be more resilient.
• Wants to support his family even if one product is disrupted.
• Feels the AI landscape is moving quickly and can make startups obsolete.
• Cited the risk he saw when Elon Musk took over X and almost killed TweetHunter while it was making $200,000 per month.

Lessons and Advice

• Deeply understand the user’s core need.
• Maintain a constant communication channel with users.
• Talk to users every day and understand their situation.
• Become a user of your own product to become an expert on the problem.
• Do uncomfortable work instead of only building features.