Latest / The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech / How a Solo Dev Used a Golf Handicap App to Hit 10K MRR
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this solo dev named Mike Chen — former engineer at a midsize fintech company, nothing flashy — and he built a SaaS for tracking golf handicaps. Hit ten thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue in eight months. Luna: A golf handicap app? That feels like a tiny niche. How many people are actually paying for that? Lucas: That's exactly the question I had. But Mike found a real pain point. The official GHIN system — that's the Golf Handicap and Information Network — it's run by the USGA. It costs about thirty dollars a year per person, and the interface looks like it was designed in 1998. Luna: So he built a better UI for the same data? Lucas: Basically, yeah. His app, called HandiCap, syncs with the GHIN database through an API — though he had to reverse-engineer some of it because the USGA doesn't exactly hand out keys. He added features like round tracking, stats on your driving accuracy, putts per hole — stuff the official system doesn't do well. And he charges five dollars a month. Luna: So at ten grand MRR, that's about two thousand subscribers. In eight months. That's impressive for such a narrow audience. Lucas: Two thousand exactly, if my math is right. And the key was distribution. Mike didn't do Product Hunt or Twitter threads. He went straight to golf forums — GolfWRX, which has about a million monthly uniques, and Reddit's r/golf, which is around eight hundred thousand subscribers. Luna: Was he just posting links? Because that usually gets you banned. Lucas: He was smarter than that. He spent a month just being helpful — answering questions about handicaps, explaining the GHIN system, sharing tips. Then he mentioned his app in passing. He also created a free tier for local golf clubs. If a club signs up, all members get a free month. That got him a bunch of trial users who converted at about twenty-five percent. Luna: Twenty-five percent free-to-paid is solid. What was his churn like? Lucas: That's the interesting part. Golf is seasonal — at least in most of the US. His churn spikes in November and December, but then he gets a huge bump in March and April as people start playing again. So his MRR graph looks like a roller coaster. But he smoothed it out by offering annual plans at forty-eight dollars — effectively two months free — and about thirty percent of his subscribers took that. Luna: So the annual plan gives him cash upfront and locks them in for the off-season. Smart. Lucas: Exactly. And he used that cash to build an API integration with a popular scorecard app called TheGrint. That let him pull in round data automatically, which reduced friction. Before that, users had to enter scores manually. Luna: That makes a huge difference for retention. If the app saves you time, you're less likely to cancel. Lucas: Right. So now he's at around ten thousand MRR, but he's still solo. He's using a small virtual assistant for customer support, but all the code is his. He's thinking about whether to add a team feature so groups of friends can compete — which could open up a B2B angle with golf leagues and clubs. Luna: That could double his TAM. But I wonder — how big can a niche like this actually get? I mean, there are maybe five million serious golfers in the US who track handicaps. If he captures five percent, that's two hundred and fifty thousand users. At five bucks a month, that's fifteen million a year. Lucas: But five percent is ambitious. Most niche SaaS products top out around one to two percent of their addressable market. So maybe three to five thousand subscribers — which is still fifteen to twenty-five thousand MRR. That's a great solo business, but not a unicorn. Luna: And that's fine, right? Not every SaaS needs to be a billion-dollar company. A lot of indie hackers would love a twenty thousand mrr business. Lucas: Absolutely. And Mike seems happy with that. He's been transparent about his numbers on his blog — he posted a breakdown last month. Total development cost was about three thousand dollars for the initial version, built in about six weeks. His hosting costs are around two hundred dollars a month. So his margins are incredible. Luna: That's the dream, right? Low overhead, high margin, passionate users. Speaking of which, if you're enjoying these deep dives into real indie hacker stories, consider supporting the show. It keeps us ad-free and lets us keep bringing you concrete numbers like these. You can do that at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, listener support really makes a difference. And it's nice to know people find value in these episodes. Anyway, back to Mike's story — one tactic I thought was really clever: he created a free 'handicap calculator' tool on his site that anyone could use without signing up. Just enter your scores and it gives you your handicap index. Luna: So that's his top of funnel. People search for 'free golf handicap calculator,' find his tool, use it a few times, and then see a prompt to sign up for the full app. Lucas: Exactly. And he optimized that page for SEO. He wrote a blog post explaining how handicaps are calculated, with lots of examples, and that page now ranks number one for several related keywords. He gets about ten thousand uniques a month from search alone. Luna: That's a great example of building in public with content. So for indie hackers listening, what are the key takeaways? Lucas: First, pick a niche where people have a real pain point — not just a 'nice to have.' Golfers who care about their handicap are obsessive. They'll pay for accuracy and convenience. Second, distribution can be organic if you go where your users already hang out. Mike didn't spend a dollar on ads. Third, annual plans can smooth out seasonality. And fourth, build a free tool that drives SEO and captures demand. Luna: And the fifth takeaway might be: don't be afraid of a small market. If the problem is real, the revenue can follow. Lucas: Yeah. Mike's story is a good reminder that you don't need to chase the biggest market. You just need a market that cares enough to pay.