Latest / The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech / How a Solo Dev Hit 10K MRR With a Chrome Extension That Blocks Distractions
Transcript
- Lucas: So today we're looking at a solo dev who built a Chrome extension that blocks distracting websites, pairs it with a Pomodoro timer, and hit ten thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue. No paid ads, no venture capital — just a freemium model and a smart referral loop. Luna: I've seen a ton of distraction-blocker apps. What made this one different? Lucas: The founder is Sarah Chen. She launched the MVP — she called it FocusFlow — back in early 2025. The initial version only blocked Reddit and Twitter, and had a basic twenty-five-minute timer. She put it on the Chrome Web Store for free with no monetization at first. Luna: So she validated demand before asking for money. That's smart. Lucas: Exactly. Within a month she had about five hundred active users. People started emailing her asking for more features — block YouTube, block news sites, customize the timer. That gave her the signal to build a paid tier. Luna: And what did she charge? Lucas: She went with five dollars a month for the pro tier. That gives you unlimited block lists, the ability to block sites by keyword, and analytics showing how much time you saved. The free version stays limited to just three blocked sites and a single timer preset. Luna: Five bucks feels reasonable. Not so cheap that it feels worthless, not so expensive that it's a risk. Lucas: Right. She told me she tested nine-ninety-nine initially, and conversion dropped by half. Five dollars was the sweet spot. By month three she had two hundred paying users — that's a thousand dollars MRR. Luna: And then she did a Product Hunt launch, right? Lucas: Yeah, that was the big growth lever. She launched on Product Hunt in June 2025, got product of the day, and that brought in roughly two thousand new sign-ups in forty-eight hours. About ten percent converted to paid, so she added another thousand MRR overnight. Luna: That's a classic indie hacker move. But most people don't sustain that growth. Lucas: She didn't rely on Product Hunt alone. She built a referral program where existing users could give a friend a thirty-day free trial of pro. If the friend converted, the referrer got a month free. That drove forty percent of her growth over the next six months. Luna: Word of mouth with a structured incentive. I like that. Lucas: By December 2025 she was at six thousand MRR. But then she noticed something — churn was creeping up to eight percent monthly. People were installing the extension, using it for a month, then uninstalling. Luna: Classic extension churn problem. It's too easy to remove. Lucas: Her fix was to build a companion web app. Users could log in to FocusFlow on any browser, sync their block lists and timer settings, and get a weekly productivity report via email. That reduced churn to four percent because the product became stickier — it wasn't just a toolbar icon anymore. Luna: So she pivoted from a pure extension to a cross-platform habit tool. Lucas: Exactly. And the web app also allowed her to offer a lifetime deal — one hundred and fifty dollars, one-time payment, forever pro access. That brought in a lump sum that funded six months of development. She sold about three hundred lifetime deals. Luna: That's forty-five thousand dollars upfront. But doesn't that cannibalize recurring revenue? Lucas: It can, but she capped it at three hundred seats and only offered it twice — at launch and during a New Year's promotion. Today her revenue split is seventy percent subscriptions, thirty percent lifetime. Subscriptions are the stable base. Luna: So by mid-2026 she crossed ten K MRR? Lucas: Just last month — May 2026 — she hit ten thousand four hundred. She has about two thousand four hundred paying subscribers, with an average revenue per user of around four dollars and thirty cents. The lifetime deal holders aren't counted in MRR, but they're a nice cash buffer. Luna: What's her cost structure like? It's a solo operation. Lucas: She hosts the web app on a cheap VPS — about fifty dollars a month. The Chrome Web Store developer fee is five dollars one-time. She uses a Stripe subscription billing — standard two point nine percent plus thirty cents per transaction. So net margin is probably around eighty-five percent. Luna: That's a beautiful business. Low overhead, high margin, solves a real problem. Lucas: And she's never taken outside money. She told me she'd rather grow slowly than give up control. That's the indie hacker ethos right there. Luna: And speaking of control, one of the reasons we love highlighting stories like this is that we deliberately keep this show ad-free. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, listener support is what keeps us independent and focused on the real stories. Appreciate anyone who chips in. Luna: Alright, back to FocusFlow. One thing I want to dig into — the freemium conversion rate. What was it? Lucas: She told me it hovers around four percent. That's fairly typical for freemium SaaS. But because the free tier is genuinely useful, the user base keeps growing. Today she has about sixty thousand free users, and four percent of new free users convert each month. Luna: Sixty thousand free users is a massive top of funnel. That's the power of a Chrome extension — zero friction to install. Lucas: Exactly. The extension has a 4.6-star rating with over eight thousand reviews. That organic discoverability on the Chrome Web Store is a moat. Competitors can clone the features but they can't clone that social proof. Luna: What's the biggest risk she faces now? Lucas: I think it's platform dependency. Google could change the extension API, or start competing directly. Google already has a built-in focus mode in Chrome, but it's basic. If they add more features, FocusFlow could get squeezed. Luna: Has she thought about building a desktop app? Lucas: She's experimenting with an Electron app for Windows and Mac. That would reduce platform risk. But she's careful not to overengineer — she wants to stay lean and only build what pays for itself. Luna: Smart. So the takeaway for other indie hackers: validate with a free MVP, find a price point that converts, and build a referral loop before you scale. Lucas: And when churn hits, don't panic — find a way to make the product stickier. For Sarah, it was the web app. For someone else, it might be integrations or a community. The key is listening to where users are dropping off. Luna: Love it. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Great conversation. See you next time.