SaaS founders can't achieve $100k MRR in the first week
21 posts across 7 communities in the last 30 days; 38% from r/SaaS.
“I’m living a very similar story right now. Built something to solve a problem in my own businesses, almost treated it like a side project, then someone outside my world asked to pay for it. That first payment changes the way you look at the whole thing.”
“The “small but deep” part got me wondering. People aren't being convinced they should care about the problem - apparently the right people already know they have it and go looking for you. Curious whether the customers tend to be the companies actually stuck integrating the old…”
“I’ve seen a lot of “$X in 30 days” posts lately, so I figured I’d share the complete opposite. No big revenue number. No “we hit $10k MRR.” I don’t even have paying customers yet. Just the story of how I accidentally ended up building a Micro SaaS for one of the least exciting…”
Several SaaS founders express frustration that they are not achieving the rapid revenue growth ($100k MRR) frequently touted online. They question whether this is a common experience or if their businesses are underperforming, and offer encouragement to others struggling with slower progress.
SOURCES (60)
“Congrats! Good work on that and hopefully some day mine as well. [re: My SaaS just crossed $1.5k mrr and i just cant believe it]”
“https://preview.redd.it/1kk47qdg2vvh1.png?width=847&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0f7c0084c9e3422e1c255e3f256312312e01dda i remember starting at $0 MRR and wondering if anyone would ever even use it let alone buy it it blows my mind to think i now have a business with a valuation of $50k from something i built with just a wifi connection and my laptop for context my saas is a faceless video generator to monetise youtube channels. It's a pretty crowded niche but i've still been able”
“right! it's actually wild. I think because setting it up doesn't directly boost MRR (monthly recurring revenue), founders just punt it to some imaginary 'post-Series A' roadmap. the funniest part is when white-hats have to resort to sliding into a startup's customer support chat or linkedin DMs just to report a massive leak because there's no official channel. [re: scanned 100 recent product hunt launches. the amount of exposed AI infrastructure is wild.]”
“$0 counts… We see the “I hit $5-$10k MRR” posts every day, but not as much about the early months. How many months from launch to your first $100 MRR? submitted by /u/EdwardKost7 [link] [comments]”
“I keep seeing posts about AI startups going from $0 to $10K MRR in 30 days. Well, here's a slightly different story. We just crossed $1K MRR on Stripe. It took us 7 months, a pivot, multiple redesigns, thousands of euros in failed marketing experiments, and a lot of questioning whether we were building the right thing. And technically, we'd already passed $1K MRR before this through customers paying outside Stripe. But there's something satisfying about finally seeing that number on”
“A $35k competition prize is non-recurring funding, not a 60-second income stream. The useful follow-up isn't the pitch timing; it's what milestone that cash unlocks before the next dollar has to come from customers.”
“That line is the real post. The prize did not come from a short pitch. It came from the fact that you already had something worth pitching. I have run a small shop and now build software for other small businesses, and I see the same pattern all the time. People try to make money from nothing in a weekend, fail a few times, then blame the idea or the timing. The ones who stick around usually have a thing they have been working on for years. The pitch is just the moment that work gets seen. The n”
“The part I keep thinking about is that the dog walking and the yard sale failed because there was no accumulated advantage. The pitch worked because the years you spent on the product gave you answers before the judges asked. That is not really making money in a minute. It is a minute of collecting on work you already did. I have seen the same thing with small shops. The first customer looks sudden, but it stands on every boring Tuesday before it. At pitch events the winners usually have the dee”
“Dumb take. There are more harmful things. Plus I bet you barely get any snap emails to begin with.”
“Curious where this ended up. Looking at the ~70 accounts, are there any that behave weirdly better than the rest? Same type of customer that sticks way longer, keeps adding users, referred someone else, etc. Wondering if the average churn number is hiding one little pocket of customers who are basically telling you what they want this to be.”
“Thanks for the comment! I'll be doing it. Manual work and such. Feels better because I'm not blocked by someone else's service not working.”
“I’m living a very similar story right now. Built something to solve a problem in my own businesses, almost treated it like a side project, then someone outside my world asked to pay for it. That first payment changes the way you look at the whole thing.”
“The “small but deep” part got me wondering. People aren't being convinced they should care about the problem - apparently the right people already know they have it and go looking for you. Curious whether the customers tend to be the companies actually stuck integrating the old accounting system, or consultants/dev shops who run into the same integration across multiple clients? Wouldn't surprise me if one of those is quietly worth a lot more than the other.”
“If the goal isn’t to beat to best performance index I don’t know what goal you have tho🤔”
“Looking for input of the experienced saas founders. Background: It is my first saas. We launched 6 months ago and are currently at 23k € MRR, two people (only me and co founder). It is a b2b SaaS. I hope to get some guideance and input. I have a plan in general but why not ask people who have already done what you want to do? So any help is appreciated. 🙏 My questions: ➡️ What were the steps that really helped you to scale to 100k mrr? ➡️ What were your biggest mistakes? ➡️ What do you wish to”
“Getting to a little over $3k MRR in three months is encouraging because it proves some willingness to pay. It does not answer the ceiling question yet, though. I would separate market depth from expansion: how many active licensed assessors are in your current market, how many have actually seen the product, and what percentage of those are already paying? That tells you whether you are nearing saturation or have barely penetrated the niche. Then compare the cost of supporting a new state’s repo”
Can’t even get 4K to begin with lol. I’m not bothered by it
“Yeah this is painfully me lol. I’ll check the same MRR number 10 times, learn absolutely nothing new, then reward myself by changing a button nobody asked about.”
“Nobody cares about SaaS unless you are 10mln ARR first month story. It’s all pedigree rn, more than ever.”
“i would be interested to know what percentage of startups fail before 10k MRR at 70% margin is achievable vs after that point.”
“Why joining startups then? I think you will see this poor risk vs reward ratio in every startup - India or US??”
“the cancellation one is where I'd push a bit. by the time someone cancels they've usually decided weeks earlier, and the reason they give is often the polite one, "too expensive" or "wasn't using it enough". I'd talk to people whose usage dropped but who are still paying. they still remember what changed and haven't built a story around leaving yet.”
“Hello all! 6 months ago i asked you all for some advice to get from 4k mrr to 15k mrr. Today my saas just crossed 15k mrr and we aim to go for 40k mrr milestone next. anybody has any tips to make this jump? submitted by /u/NewCyptoGuyLOL [link] [comments]”
“I revisited my notes from conversations with around 40 SaaS founders doing between $5k and $100k MRR. Some were bootstrapped, some had raised a bit. Most were trying to grow without turning the company into a constant fire drill. I wasn’t looking for some secret formula. The conversations were all pretty different, but after 30–40 of them, a few things kept coming up. One important metric at a time - m ost weren’t trying to improve everything at once. They picked one bottleneck :activation, rete”
“I’ve seen a lot of “$X in 30 days” posts lately, so I figured I’d share the complete opposite. No big revenue number. No “we hit $10k MRR.” I don’t even have paying customers yet. Just the story of how I accidentally ended up building a Micro SaaS for one of the least exciting B2B problems imaginable. It started with a client of my automation studio. They run a commercial cleaning company with around 50 employees, and they had a pretty frustrating problem: their bigger corporate clients were sta”
“I wouldn’t compare this too much with people chasing $50k MRR. The better question is whether the economics work for your goal. At $35/year, 14 customers is about $490 ARR. That’s obviously still small, but you already have paying users and signups appear to be increasing, so I wouldn’t judge the business from the current revenue alone. I would recommend to work backwards from what you actually want this side project to produce. For example, if your goal is an extra $500/month, at $35/year you n”
“Fuck what everyone else is saying. You have a good start for software. You are in industry, so you're building the tool for yourself. You understand the user flows and pains. Now, here's the million dollar question. Do you have distribution? If this app was polished, did exactly what you want it to, functioned flawlessly - how many days would it take you to get 100 users using your network? If the answer is "It would take me under a month because I'm a respected member in this c”
“Hey, I am the opposite. Great coder, ex-FAANG, but terrible at sales and marketing. Perhaps we can join forces for a win-win, up for a chat?”
“No stats worth quoting yet. The system has only been properly running for a short while and I have deliberately kept volume low while the domains warm up. I would rather post real numbers later than impressive ones now.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I obviously don’t know literally everything, I’m just saying I never understood why it takes years to execute a b2b saas. 30k MRR isn’t much in my opinion, but I obviously can’t put that standard on other people. I just have different goals that I’m afraid won’t work.”
“Hey man, congrats, how do you manage the infra behind this? do you plan on scaling as users progress?”
“If anyone in here has reached that milestone or you know someone who has how did they do it? Just curious. Because that’s my goal currently submitted by /u/dillonz321 [link] [comments]”
“I managed to have a quick chat with a guy in an event for founders, he has a strong portfolio of AI tools making close to $20k MRR I asked him, what do you advice me to get there and I was expecting some complicated growth strategy Instead, his advice was surprisingly simple: He told me that he came across a framework about startup launch mistakes that really resonated with him. The biggest takeaway launch day usually isn't the problem. what happens before launch is. some mistakes he has bee”
“just hit $2,500 MRR in 13 days on my new SaaS no ads. no team. no huge audience push. just a solid replicable system let that sink in for a second not $2,500 in revenue. $2,500 in MONTHLY recurring revenue that compounds. next month starts at $2,500 baseline, not zero and this isn't luck . it's the 7th saas i've shipped with the same playbook. same steps, same tools, same order: → Day 1: validated the idea → Day 1-2: built the MVP → Day 3: landing page written using the 3-Day Challen”
“just hit $2,500 MRR in 13 days on my new SaaS no ads. no team. no huge audience push. just a solid replicable system let that sink in for a second not $2,500 in revenue. $2,500 in MONTHLY recurring revenue that compounds. next month starts at $2,500 baseline, not zero and this isn't luck . it's the 7th saas i've shipped with the same playbook. same steps, same tools, same order: → Day 1: validated the idea → Day 1-2: built the MVP → Day 3: landing page written using the 3-Day Challen”
“just hit $2,500 MRR in 13 days on my new SaaS no ads. no team. no huge audience push. just a solid replicable system let that sink in for a second not $2,500 in revenue. $2,500 in MONTHLY recurring revenue that compounds. next month starts at $2,500 baseline, not zero and this isn't luck . it's the 7th saas i've shipped with the same playbook. same steps, same tools, same order: → Day 1: validated the idea → Day 1-2: built the MVP → Day 3: landing page written using the 3-Day Challen”
“That week two ghosting point is the one that keeps coming up. From what other builders in this thread said, the tell seems to be whether people come back on their own after the novelty wears off, not the launch numbers. One person said their churn only fixed once they added onboarding and a weekly reminder email, which lines up. Honest answer is I am on the research side of this, not the win side, so I will flip it back to you. When you had something that stuck versus something that did not, cou”
“I keep reading the "I built X and hit $Xk MRR, here is my playbook" posts, and they always skip the parts I actually want to understand. So for anyone who has genuinely gotten a micro SaaS to real revenue, would love honest answers to any of these. Even one is helpful. Where did your first 100 paying customers who did not already know you actually come from? The specific channel, not just "organic". What single channel drives most of your growth today, and roughly what does i”
“All of them had customers. One has $4.5 M in revenue. Only one had a customer that wasn’t paying but it was an LOI for a pilot.”
“You have shiny object syndrome. Stop reading new books until you hit $1k MRR from one venture. Apply what you know first.”