DEV Community

Cover image for Can I build & market a SaaS app to $100 in 1 month?
vincanger for Wasp

Posted on

64 18 20 21 21

Can I build & market a SaaS app to $100 in 1 month?

Everyone’s saying it. We’re living in the golden age for software development.

With the current suite of tools, it’s getting easier for hackers to create and market their apps. Or, as Mckay Wrigley puts it, what used to take a team of developers, and tons of money, can now be built be a single developer using Cursor.

I agree, although I do think the claims are a tad bit exaggerated, I believe we will see many more solo-developers building profitable businesses, either as side projects, or as their main focus.

In fact, as the creator and maintainer of Open SaaS, a free, open-source SaaS starter, I’m seeing this first hand. Builders using Open SaaS are sharing their success stories, such as getting their SaaS apps acquired within a couple weeks of building it.

It’s pretty amazing, to be honest.

Image description

But not only has the success of my fellow builders impressed me, it’s also inspired me. And it’s motivating me to challenge myself to do the same. So here’s what I have planned.

I am going to challenge myself to build and market a SaaS app to $100 dollars within about 1 month.

The best part is, I am going to document the process almost in its entirety, by live-streaming all my coding and marketing sessions, as well as posting summaries to social media. So if you want to follow my journey, check out the following profiles

Image description

For this challenge, I am going to use my Open SaaS template as a starting point. I’m also assuming the app will use some AI capabilities, such as OpenAI’s API, and maybe Flux image generation via Replicate.com. But, for now, I still haven’t settled on a concrete app idea (I’ll probably have this figured out by day 1 of the challenge).

Now, it should be known that this type of challenge isn’t really something new. Peter Levels (aka levelsio) did this back in 2014 before the rise of LLMs with his 12 startups in 12 months challenge. His reasons for pursuing this idea were that he wanted to get into the habit of just shipping stuff and iterating quickly on his ideas to figure out which ones have potential, and to get out of the habit of ruminating too long on any single app.

For me, I also want to push myself to build and launch more, but I also want to put the current tools to the test and see if it’s really possible to be a 1000x engineer in the age of AI. That’s why I’ll be using the following:

  • Cursor — AI code editor
  • Claude 3.5 sonnet — Top notch LLM for coding
  • Open SaaS — Open-source SaaS starter w/ Stripe, AWS S3, Admin dashboard, …
  • Wasp — The Batteries-included React, NodeJS, & Prisma framework that Open SaaS is built on top of
  • OpenAI API — For the “GPT Wrapper” side of things
  • Replicate.com — API for other open-source AI models (LLMs, Image gen, etc.)

Not only will this challenge help me launch more, but it will also help build my marketing muscle. I unfortunately don't have hundreds of thousands of twitter or tiktok followers, so I'm gonna really have to get my hands dirty and do some grassroots marketing. And by documenting the entire process via streams, video, and posts, it’ll help me get better at “building in public” and finding marketing channels for the right audiences.

I should mention that I’m not stranger to building profitable SaaS apps, as I already have an open-source SaaS app that makes ~$550 MRR. So the nice thing about this challenge will be to see if I just got lucky the first time, or if I have it in me to bring a good idea to life and market it effectively again.

Well, I’ll just have to get to work and see. Come follow along as I do!

Reinvent your career. Join DEV.

It takes one minute and is worth it for your career.

Get started

Top comments (31)

Collapse
 
kipronorugut profile image
kipronorugut

Amazing 🤩

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

🙏

Collapse
 
jess profile image
Jess Lee

Good luck!

Collapse
 
respect17 profile image
Kudzai Murimi

Nice

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

🙏

Collapse
 
arseytech profile image
Arsey Kun

Nice, building mine too, thanks for the inpiration

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

let's gooo!

Collapse
 
interestempire profile image
Interest Empire

Right on, I am going to join you in this challenge.

When you starting?

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

already started! check my socials

Collapse
 
souravsk_08 profile image
Sourav Khandekar

Great buddy 👍

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

thank you

Collapse
 
matijasos profile image
Matija Sosic

I want to follow this!

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

:)

Collapse
 
abha_rani profile image
Abha

Looking forward to live-streams, totally loves process of building products

Collapse
 
vlamartini profile image
Vladimir M Martini

Awesome 👌

Collapse
 
sonubardai profile image
Sonu Bardai

So cool! Excited to follow along with this journey

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

Noice!

Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.

A Workflow Copilot. Tailored to You.

Pieces.app image

Our desktop app, with its intelligent copilot, streamlines coding by generating snippets, extracting code from screenshots, and accelerating problem-solving.

Read the docs

👋 Kindness is contagious

Immerse yourself in a wealth of knowledge with this piece, supported by the inclusive DEV Community—every developer, no matter where they are in their journey, is invited to contribute to our collective wisdom.

A simple “thank you” goes a long way—express your gratitude below in the comments!

Gathering insights enriches our journey on DEV and fortifies our community ties. Did you find this article valuable? Taking a moment to thank the author can have a significant impact.

Okay