The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the unconventional story of a solo developer who built a SaaS product generating $10,000 monthly recurring revenue — without a website, without ads, and without ever posting on Twitter. The secret: Reddit. Specifically, a single subreddit for freelancers. We break down how the founder identified an underserved niche, built trust t...

Episode 103 of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into the surprising economics of browser extensions. Lucas and Luna break down how a solo developer built a Chrome extension that generates $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue by solving a niche problem for e-commerce store owners. They explore the specific tactics: a free tier that converts at 8%, a pricing page that charges per 1,000 actions, and a...

Episode 102 of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into a solo developer who built a SaaS product that has zero user interface. Instead, customers interact entirely through an API. Lucas and Luna break down how this developer hit $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue by selling API access to a niche data enrichment service. They discuss the technical and business decisions behind the product: choosing a...

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore an overlooked path to recurring revenue: building SaaS integrations that larger companies ignore. They examine the story of a solo developer who hit $10,000 MRR by creating a set of API connectors for niche CRM and ERP systems. The discussion covers how to spot underserved integration opportunities, the economics of building and p...

Episode 100 of The Indie Hacker Podcast: Lucas and Luna explore how a solo developer reached $10k MRR by shipping a weekly newsletter-turned-SaaS called 'Version One'. They break down the strategy: a public roadmap, incremental feature releases every Friday, and a pricing model that charges for access to the latest updates. Learn how consistency and transparency won a loyal audience without a sing...

In episode 99 of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna break down how one solo developer built a SaaS tool that charges per active user — not per seat, not per API call. They walk through the numbers: a flat $4 per active user per month, starting with a 14-day free trial that requires a credit card. The trick? Defining 'active' narrowly — a user must perform at least one billable action per mon...

Episode 98 of The Indie Hacker Podcast. Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a solo developer who bootstrapped a SaaS product to 10K monthly recurring revenue using nothing but cold email outreach — no content marketing, no social media presence, no paid ads. They break down the specific tactics: how he sourced leads from niche directories, crafted a three-sentence pitch that got a 40% open rate,...

Episode 97 of The Indie Hacker Podcast explores the story of a solo developer who grew a B2B SaaS to $10K monthly recurring revenue using a referral program as the sole customer acquisition channel. Lucas and Luna break down the three strategic elements that made it work: a two-sided incentive structure that rewarded both referrer and referee, a frictionless sharing interface that minimized drop-o...

Most indie hackers obsess over features, but one solo developer doubled his revenue by running a simple pricing page A/B test. In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down the exact numbers: a 2-column vs 3-column layout, the surprising winner, and why a $29/month plan outperformed a $19/month plan. They explore the psychology of choice architecture, the Pareto principle in pricing tiers, and how to...

Most founders dread refunds. But one solo developer built a SaaS product with a no-questions-asked, full-refund-at-any-time policy—and it became his secret weapon. Lucas and Luna break down the counterintuitive economics of a generous refund policy, why it actually reduced churn, and how it built trust with skeptical B2B buyers. They walk through the numbers: refund rates stayed under 5%, customer...

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna break down how a solo developer named Sarah Chen built 'MenuMetrics' — a tiny macOS menu bar app that shows real-time SaaS metrics — and grew it to $10,000 monthly recurring revenue without any venture funding. They walk through Sarah's specific strategy: identifying a hyper-specific pain point (the hassle of checking multiple dashboards)...

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a solo developer who grew a SaaS tool from zero to $10,000 monthly recurring revenue primarily through a customer referral program. They break down the specific mechanics: how the developer offered one month free for both the referrer and the referee, how the program was integrated into the onboarding flow, and why...

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how a solo developer built a simple web-based calculator for subscription businesses to model their recurring revenue. The tool, called RevRun, grew to $10,000 monthly recurring revenue within 18 months without any paid advertising. The conversation dives into the developer's strategy of targeting a specific pain point for SaaS fo...

Episode 91 of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into an unconventional path to $10K MRR: selling a physical product alongside a SaaS. Lucas and Luna examine the story of a solo developer who paired a simple web app with a printed journal, using the tactile item to drive recurring subscriptions. They break down the economics—how a $25 journal with a $15 monthly subscription hit $10,000 in monthly recu...

In episode 90 of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a solo developer who built a desktop app that replaces spreadsheets for small business accounting. They break down how the founder discovered the niche by talking to local accountants, why he chose Electron and SQLite for a lightweight but offline-capable product, and how a 'pay what you want' launch on Hacker News br...

This episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into the story of a solo developer who built a marketplace for AI prompts and hit $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue within eight months. We explore how he identified the niche, leveraged existing AI tools rather than building his own model, and used a combination of affiliate partnerships and content marketing to acquire customers without a sales t...

Episode 88 of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into the story of Taylor, a solo developer who built a micro-SaaS called TweetGenie that scrapes Twitter data to help creators optimize their posting schedules. Taylor reached $10K MRR in 11 months with zero funding, no paid ads, and a product that does exactly one thing: tells you the best time to tweet based on your followers' activity patterns. Lucas...

In Episode 87 of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a solo developer who reached $10,000 monthly recurring revenue by building a lightweight API monitoring tool specifically for other SaaS companies. They break down how the founder identified a pain point from his own experience as a developer, launched a bare-bones MVP on Twitter with just a few lines of code, and gre...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down the story of a solo developer who reached $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue from a single Product Hunt launch — with no prior audience, no social media presence, and zero paid ads. They walk through the exact launch strategy: a polished landing page, a targeted list of 50 early supporters, and a follow-up email sequence that converted launch-day visito...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the story of a solo developer who built a command-line interface tool for developers, reaching $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue without a single user interface. The episode dives into how he found product-market fit by solving a specific pain point: automating database migrations for teams using PostgreSQL. They discuss his pricing strategy, distribution...

Episode 84 of The Indie Hacker Podcast dives into a fresh playbook: selling SaaS to universities as a solo developer. Lucas and Luna unpack the story of a solo dev who built a simple syllabus-sharing tool called CourseFlow, hit $10K MRR by licensing it directly to university departments, and did it without any VC funding or a dedicated sales team. They break down the specific tactics — starting wi...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down the story of a solo developer who built a SQL query optimization tool and hit $10,000 monthly recurring revenue entirely through developer communities and word-of-mouth. No sales calls, no paid ads, no enterprise contracts. They walk through the specific strategies that worked: a viral Hacker News post that drove the first 500 users, a free tier that turn...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how a solo developer bootstrapped a SaaS to $10,000 monthly recurring revenue without spending a single dollar on ads, content marketing, or paid tools. They break down the specific strategies: leveraging existing communities on Reddit and Hacker News, building in public on Twitter with zero follower count, and relying on a product-led growth loop where ever...

Most indie hackers are terrified of free tiers. They assume free users just burn server costs and never convert. But in this episode, Lucas and Luna break down a real case study: a solo developer who built a SaaS product that reached 10K MRR by giving away a genuinely useful free tier. They walk through the specific numbers — how the free tier drove 80% of signups, how a 3% conversion rate on thos...

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna break down how a solo developer reached $10K in monthly recurring revenue by selling Notion templates, spreadsheet packs, and resume kits on Gumroad — no software-as-a-service, no code. They walk through the exact numbers: a $19 average sale price, a 3.2 percent conversion rate on a freebie landing page, and a launch week that brought in...