Latest / The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech / How a Solo Dev Built a SaaS Without Writing Code
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this story that's been making rounds in the no-code communities—a solo developer, no programming background, built a SaaS tool for Notion users that's now pulling in about five thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue. Luna: Wait—no code at all? Like, zero lines of code? Lucas: Zero. The person—let's call him Alex, he prefers to stay pseudonymous—spent about a year as a product manager at a mid-size tech company. He knew what good software looked like, but couldn't write it himself. So when he wanted to solve his own problem—tracking page views inside Notion—he turned to Bubble and Airtable. Luna: Okay, so that's a pretty common stack now. Bubble for the front-end and logic, Airtable as the database. Did he use any other pieces? Lucas: He also used a Zapier integration to handle billing through Stripe, and he set up a simple chatbot using Tidio for customer support. The whole thing took him about thirty days from idea to first paying customer. He announced it on a Notion community forum, got ten sign-ups in the first week. Luna: Ten sign-ups—was he charging from day one? Lucas: Yeah, he launched with a single tier at nine dollars a month. He says he wanted to test willingness to pay immediately. After the first month, he added a twenty-five-dollar tier with more advanced analytics—like tracking by specific page, export to CSV, that kind of thing. The conversion rate from free trial to paid was about eighteen percent, which is pretty solid for a niche tool. Luna: What's the user count now? Lucas: He's just over two hundred and fifty paying accounts. The churn rate has been under five percent monthly, which is remarkable for a tool that costs less than a Netflix subscription. He attributes that to the fact that his users are mostly power Notion users—freelancers, small agencies, some internal teams at startups. Once they hook into the data, they rely on it. Luna: Right—switching costs are low in dollar terms, but high in habit. Lucas: Exactly. And because he built on Bubble, he can push updates weekly. He's not waiting on a development cycle. He just drags a new component in, tests it, and deploys. That speed is a huge advantage for a solo founder. Luna: But I've heard people say Bubble apps can get slow or expensive once you scale. Has he run into that? Lucas: He has, actually. At around a hundred and fifty users, the workload units on Bubble started climbing. His monthly Bubble bill went from fifty dollars to about two hundred. But he says the revenue still far outpaces the platform cost. For now, it's manageable. He does have a plan to migrate to a lightweight code stack if he ever hits a thousand users—but that's a good problem to have. Luna: Interesting. So it's not a forever solution, but it's a viable ramp. Lucas: Right. And the key lesson is that he didn't need to predict the scaling path from day one. He just needed to get to product-market fit. Once you have that, you can always rebuild. A lot of indie hackers get stuck trying to architect for scale before they have any users. Luna: What about the support side? He's solo, right? Lucas: He is. He uses a combination of the Tidio chatbot for common questions—things like 'how do I install the script' or 'can I track multiple workspaces'—and then he reserves deeper issues for a weekly two-hour support block. He says the chatbot handles about seventy percent of inquiries. The rest he answers personally, and that's actually helped him discover feature requests. Luna: So he's basically running a business on ten hours a week. Lucas: Less than that now. He says he spends maybe six to eight hours: an hour a day on maintenance and support, a few hours on weekends for features. The rest is just monitoring. It's almost a passive income stream at this point. Luna: It's a great example of how far the no-code ecosystem has come. Five years ago, you couldn't build a subscription analytics tool without a backend engineer. Now a single non-technical person can do it in a month. Lucas: Absolutely. And I think that's the real story here—it's not just about this one tool. It's about the democratisation of software. Alex's background is in product management, not engineering. He understood user needs, he knew how to price, he knew how to market. The no-code tools filled the gap in execution. Luna: It makes me wonder how many other product-minded people are sitting on ideas they think require a technical co-founder. Lucas: Exactly. And that's where I think the indie hacker space is shifting. The barrier to entry is no longer 'can you code?' It's 'can you identify a real pain point and deliver a solution that works—even if it's held together with Bubble and Airtable?' Luna: Right. And listeners, if this kind of thinking helps you, I want to mention something quickly. We keep this show ad-free, and it really is listener-supported. A couple of dollars a month genuinely makes a difference—it covers hosting, transcription tools, things like that. If you've gotten something out of episodes like this one, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing that adds up. We don't run ads, so that direct support is what keeps us going. Appreciate anyone who chips in. Luna: Alright, back to Alex. So he's at five thousand MRR now. What's his next move? Is he planning to stay solo or eventually hire? Lucas: He's torn. He thinks he could get to ten or twelve thousand MRR solo by adding a few more features—like team collaboration and better integrations with tools like Slack. But beyond that, he'd need help. He's considering hiring a part-time customer support person first, then maybe a no-code developer to help with the Bubble workload. Luna: That's a classic inflection point. Do you grow or do you stay lean and profitable? Lucas: Right. And his personality leans lean. He's not trying to build a unicorn. He wants a lifestyle business that covers his expenses and gives him freedom. At five thousand a month, he's already replaced a decent salary in many parts of the world. Luna: Which is exactly the indie hacker dream, isn't it? Lucas: It really is. And the no-code angle makes it achievable for more people than ever. I think we'll see a lot more Alexes in the next few years. Luna: Alright, thanks for the story. Next episode we're looking at a solo dev who used a very different approach—building a SaaS entirely with ai generated code. Should be a good contrast. Lucas: Looking forward to it. See you next time.