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Bootstrapping a SaaS from $10K MRR to $20K MRR

This is a follow up to my Journey to $10K MRR post. It is a collection of the major themes that I experienced while growing Bannerbear from $10K MRR to $20K MRR.

🗓

6 Months

The journey from zero to $10K MRR took about 1 year. The journey from $10K MRR to $20K MRR took about 6 months.

February 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • 🌏 Added Stripe Climate
  • 📈 Line Chart Object
  • 🔔 Team Notifications
🤝

Customer Led Development

The more customers I get, the more development is led by them. I still add items to the backlog based on my own ideas, but generally they stay there until a customer mentions them — then I prioritise.

March 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • 🤖 Integromat Integration
  • ✂️ Smart Crop
  • 📖 New API Docs
📖

Investing in Documentation

The more tutorials I have, the more users convert as they understand the product better. The better my API docs, the more my product appeals to developers, and also reduces my support load.

April 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • 📱 Mini Apps
  • 📹 Video Multi Overlay feature
🎢

Ups & Downs

You might be thinking what contributed to the big spike on X date? The answer is... nothing. Day to day SaaS life is erratic, one day great, next day quiet. But zoom out and you see consistent growth.

⌛

Long Term View

During this period I cultivated a more long term view. I stopped obsessively checking my MRR, stopped freaking out over a churned customer, and focused more on the needs of long-term customers.

May 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • 🎨 New Editor
  • 💪 Hiring First Contractor
💪

Getting Help

At this stage I started to have more work than I could deal with alone. I hired a freelance writer to help me write tutorial content for our marketing automation blog.

June 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • 🥸 Face Detect
💥

Wow Factor

Sometimes it's good to indulge your inner geek and just build features you think are cool. Face detect has a wow factor that plays well on the marketing site. It's also used extensively by several customers now.

July 2021
  • What I Shipped
  • ⚡ API Quick Start
  • 🔒 2FA Authentication
🐘

Bigger Customers

A core strategy going forwards is targeting bigger customers. My experience with retention / churn is typical for SaaS — low tier customers churn fastest, mid and high tier customers stay longest.

  • At $10K MRR to $20K MRR, I am...
  • 💪 making my first hires
  • ⌛ taking a more long term view
  • 🤓 still writing all the code myself
  • 💰 more aware of the areas I want to invest in
  • 🤝 happy to let customers lead the way
  • ⚡ mindful I need to balance that with internal innovation

Use Cases

  • Generate Images via API
  • Watermark Videos via API
  • Generate PDFs via API
  • Generate Images with Zapier
  • Watermark Videos with Zapier
  • Generate PDFs with Zapier
  • More Use Cases

Product

  • Image Generation API
  • Multi Image Generation API
  • Video Generation API
  • PDF Generation API
  • Template Library
  • Bannerbear for Enterprise

Integrations

  • Airtable Integration
  • Zapier Integration
  • Integromat Integration
  • Forms
  • URLs
  • WordPress

Demos

  • Multi Image Demo
  • AI Face Detect Demo
  • Twitter to Instagram
  • Github Social
  • Smart Crop Demo
  • Online Certificate Maker
  • Online Wedding Invite Maker
  • Online Event ID Card Maker
  • Online Photo Collage Maker
  • Online Invoice Maker

Docs & Guides

  • Help Articles
  • Blog
  • eBooks
  • API Quick Start
  • API Reference

Other

  • System Status
  • About Bannerbear
  • Open Startup
  • ⤷ $10K MRR SaaS Journey
  • ⤷ $10K to $20K MRR
  • ⤷ Journey to $1MM ARR
  • Affiliate Program
  • Facebook Preview Tool
  • Twitter Preview Tool
  • Changelog
  • Pricing
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