Latest / The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech / How a Solo Dev Used Micro-Acquisitions to Hit 10K MRR
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this strategy in indie hacking that I think doesn't get nearly enough attention — it's buying tiny, neglected SaaS products for a few thousand dollars and then merging them into a single, growing business. Luna: You mean like acquiring existing codebases and user bases instead of building from scratch? Lucas: Exactly. And I came across a really specific case recently — a solo developer who documented buying four tiny SaaS products over the course of six months. Each cost under five thousand dollars. He merged them all into one platform and took the combined MRR from zero to ten thousand dollars a month. Luna: Wait — ten thousand MRR just from buying other people's abandoned projects? That sounds almost too good to be true. Lucas: Right, that's what I thought too. But the numbers check out. The key is he wasn't buying random stuff. He had a very specific criteria. Each product had to be in a similar niche — all B2B tools for small marketing agencies — and each had to have at least fifty paying customers but flat or declining revenue. Luna: So he was looking for businesses that were basically coasting. Not dead, but not growing. Lucas: Exactly. The original founders had either lost interest or didn't have time. So they were willing to sell for a low multiple — typically two to three times monthly revenue. So a product doing two hundred dollars a month might sell for four hundred to six hundred dollars. Luna: That's practically nothing. But then what? You buy four tiny codebases — how do you even integrate them? Lucas: That's the hard part. He didn't try to unify them all at once. Instead, he kept them running separately for the first few months, but he built a shared authentication layer and a common billing system. So customers from product A could log into product B with the same credentials and the same subscription. Luna: So he cross-sold without actually merging the code. Lucas: Right. And he used a simple tactic: each product's dashboard had a small banner that said something like 'Hey, you also get access to our analytics tool — click here to activate.' And because the billing was already unified, there was no friction. Luna: Did that actually convert? I feel like people ignore those banners. Lucas: Normally yes, but here's the twist — he didn't just show a banner. He emailed each existing customer personally, offering a free month of the other product. No automation, just a short, human email. And about fifteen percent of customers took him up on it within the first week. Luna: Fifteen percent? That's huge for a cold cross-sell. Lucas: It is. And once they tried the second product, a decent chunk stayed on as paying users. So his MRR grew without him building anything new. He just connected existing pieces and did personal outreach. Luna: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that's the only reason we can keep diving into weird niches like micro-acquisitions. So back to the strategy — he eventually rebuilt all four products on a single codebase, but he didn't rush it. Luna: How long did the integration take? Lucas: About four months from the last acquisition. He prioritized the product with the most users first, rewrote its core features, then migrated the others one by one. During the migration, he lost maybe five percent of customers total — which he considered acceptable. Luna: What about technical debt? Buying old codebases sight unseen — you could inherit a mess. Lucas: That's the biggest risk. He actually got burned on one of the four — the code was so poorly written he had to basically rewrite it from scratch. That ate up two weeks of his time. But he still came out ahead because the revenue from that product alone was enough to justify the effort. Luna: So his due diligence wasn't perfect, but he got lucky that only one was a dud. Lucas: He did say he learned to ask for a code review from a trusted friend before buying. But the broader lesson is that even with one bad acquisition, the math still worked because the purchase prices were so low. Luna: What kind of products were these? Can you give an example? Lucas: Sure. One was a simple social media scheduling tool aimed at real estate agents. Another was a landing page builder for local businesses. A third was a client portal for freelancers. All very focused, all with existing customer bases of fifty to two hundred people. Luna: So these are products that are too small for venture capital or even a typical SaaS marketplace. They're in this gray area where no one's paying attention. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why they're cheap. The seller might be making a few hundred bucks a month but spending ten hours a month on maintenance. For them, selling for a couple thousand dollars is a win. For the buyer, it's a low-risk way to acquire customers and revenue. Luna: Did he have any trouble getting the original founders to help with the transition? Lucas: He structured the deals so that the seller provided two hours of documentation and one hour of handover call. Most were happy to do it. One founder even stuck around for a month as a paid consultant to help with the migration. Luna: So for a few hundred dollars in consulting fees, he got insider knowledge. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the part I find most interesting — this isn't a strategy that requires a ton of capital. The total outlay for all four acquisitions was under twenty thousand dollars. The combined MRR after six months was ten thousand. That's a fifty percent monthly return on investment if you look at it purely as a cash purchase. Luna: But it's not passive. He had to do the integration work and the outreach. Lucas: Definitely not passive. He estimated he spent about twenty hours per week on the whole project for those six months. So it's a real job. But compared to building a product from zero users and zero revenue, it's a much faster path to meaningful MRR. Luna: What do you think is the biggest takeaway for someone listening who might want to try this? Lucas: I'd say start by identifying a niche you already understand. Then look for tiny products on marketplaces like Acquire.com or Flippa that serve that niche. Filter for ones with at least fifty paying customers and a clear pain point you can improve. And be prepared to rewrite at least one of them. Luna: And don't forget the personal email outreach — that seemed to be the secret sauce. Lucas: Absolutely. The human touch is what turned a bunch of separate, stagnant products into a growing ecosystem. It's a reminder that in indie hacking, distribution often matters more than the code.