Latest / The Indie Hacker Podcast with Fexingo: Solo Developers, SaaS Side Projects, and Independent Tech / How a Solo Dev Hit 10K MRR by Selling Integrations No One Else Wanted
Transcript
- Lucas: So you're a solo dev, you've built a decent API, but you look around and there are already a dozen tools that do the same thing. The obvious play is to compete on price or features. But there's a quieter path that I think is way more interesting. Luna: I'm guessing this isn't about building a better mousetrap. Lucas: Not at all. It's about building the glue that connects the mousetraps nobody else wants to connect. I'm talking about selling integrations — specifically, integrations for the boring, unloved software that enterprises still run. Luna: Okay, but quickly — this episode is possible because of listeners like you. A handful of folks chip in monthly at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that covers the hosting, the tools, and our time. If today's conversation gives you something usable, that's where you can keep it going. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a big difference. No ads, no sponsors, just people who find value here. Appreciate it. So back to integrations — I came across a solo developer who built a SaaS that connects legacy accounting software to modern payment gateways. Think old-school systems like Sage 50 or QuickBooks Desktop. Luna: The stuff that makes most developers groan. Lucas: Exactly. But that groan is exactly the opportunity. The developer — let's call him Alex — noticed that every time he did freelance work for small law firms, they'd ask him to get their ancient accounting system to talk to Stripe. It was a pain, but it was also a pattern. Luna: So he built one connector, then another? Lucas: Right. He started with a single integration between Sage 50 and Stripe. He charged a flat $49 a month per connection. Within three months, he had 20 customers. That's about $1,000 MRR from one integration. Then he added QuickBooks Desktop. Then a niche ERP called Accumatica. Each new integration added roughly $500 MRR from a small but loyal user base. Luna: Wait — so each integration is basically a separate micro-product? Lucas: Kind of, but they share a common backend. He built a core sync engine that handles authentication, data mapping, and error logging. Each new connector is a plugin that describes the specific API endpoints. So the marginal cost of adding a new integration is low — maybe two weeks of work. Luna: What's the moat? Couldn't Stripe or a bigger player just build these connectors themselves? Lucas: They could, but they don't want to. The total addressable market for, say, Sage 50 users in the US who want Stripe integration is maybe 5,000 businesses. That's not worth Stripe's time. But for a solo dev, 5,000 potential customers at $49 a month is $2.9 million in annual recurring revenue. And they're sticky because switching means reconfiguring your entire billing workflow. Luna: So the small market is the moat. Big players ignore it, and switching costs keep customers locked in. Lucas: Exactly. Alex told me his churn rate is under 3 percent monthly. Most of his customers have been with him for over two years. He's at about $10,500 MRR now, and he works maybe 10 hours a week on maintenance and the occasional new connector. Luna: Ten hours a week for over a hundred grand a year. That's the indie hacker dream. But is the model replicable? Or did he just get lucky with the specific niche? Lucas: I think it's replicable if you follow a few rules. First, pick software that's widely used but has terrible developer documentation. The worse the docs, the fewer competitors. Second, target industries with low technical sophistication — accounting, legal, construction. They don't have internal dev teams to build their own connectors. Luna: So you're basically betting on the boringness of the software. Lucas: Right. And on the fact that the official APIs are often incomplete or broken. Alex told me that for one ERP system, he reverse-engineered the API from a Java client library because the documentation was years out of date. That kind of grunt work is a huge barrier. Luna: I can see that. But what about pricing? $49 a month seems low for what is essentially a critical piece of infrastructure. Lucas: He tested higher price points. At $99 a month, conversion dropped by half. At $29, it tripled support tickets because customers treated it like a commodity. $49 was the sweet spot where customers perceived value but didn't think twice. Plus, many of his customers are billing thousands through Stripe each month, so $49 is a rounding error. Luna: That makes sense. But I wonder about scalability. Can he keep adding integrations forever? At some point, the complexity of maintaining a dozen connectors might outweigh the revenue. Lucas: That's a real risk. Alex has about 15 integrations now. He says the biggest time sink is keeping up with API changes. When Sage updates their API, it can break his connector, and he has to drop everything to fix it. He's mitigated that by building a monitoring system that alerts him when an API endpoint returns unexpected errors. Luna: So he's becoming a specialist in these ancient systems. That's a weird but defensible career. Lucas: It is. And there's an interesting second-order effect: he's now the go-to expert for those integrations. Larger companies sometimes offer to buy his connectors outright. He's turned down two acquisition offers because the monthly recurring revenue is more valuable to him than a lump sum. Luna: How much were the offers? Lucas: He didn't share exact numbers, but he said they were around three to four times annual recurring revenue. For a $126,000 ARR business, that's around $400,000. He'd rather keep the cash flow and the freedom. Luna: I can respect that. But let's talk about the downsides. What happens when a major platform like Stripe decides to build a Sage connector after all? Or when Sage updates their API in a way that breaks everything? Lucas: Those are real risks. But the bigger risk, I think, is that the niche might dry up. If Sage eventually sunsets their desktop product and forces everyone to the cloud, his entire integration becomes obsolete. Alex told me he's already seeing that with one of his connectors — the vendor is deprecating the API next year. Luna: So he's on a timer for each integration. How does he plan for that? Lucas: He's branching out into adjacent verticals. He's building connectors for property management software and medical practice management systems. Same strategy, different niches. He's also experimenting with a higher-tier plan that includes custom mapping for enterprise clients at $199 a month. Luna: That sounds like a natural evolution. But it does raise the question: at what point does this stop being a side project and start being a real business that requires employees? Lucas: Right now he's solo and wants to keep it that way. But he's considering a part-time contractor for support. The math works out: one contractor at $20 an hour for 20 hours a week is about $20,000 a year, which is less than the revenue from one good integration. So the marginal cost of scaling is low. Luna: That's the beauty of the model. Low overhead, high margins, and the moat is the boredom of the software. I think there's a lesson here for indie hackers who feel like every SaaS idea is taken. Lucas: Exactly. The next $10K MRR business might not be a shiny new AI app. It might be the glue that connects QuickBooks to something nobody's heard of. The boring stuff pays. Luna: So if someone listening wants to try this, what's the first step? Lucas: Pick a piece of software you've used in a past job that annoyed you. Check if it has an API — even a bad one. Then see if there's a popular modern tool that people want to connect it to. If the combo has fewer than five existing integrations on Zapier or a similar marketplace, you might have a winner. Luna: And then build one connector at a time. Slow, boring, and profitable. Lucas: That's the indie hacker way. Thanks for listening, and if you found this useful, you know where to find us.