How I Built It: $23K/month micro-saas

So, I'm Andy Cloak. I'm the founder of Data Fetcher and I make $23,000 a month in recurring revenue.

>> This is Andy. He's a solo founder who lives in London and he built a successful micro SAS with one simple strategy.

>> So, step one is you want to find a I brought him onto the channel to break down exactly how he built this $23,000 per month business. In this video, we'll go over the genius platform strategy

hiding in plain sight, his six-step framework for finding $20,000 per month ideas, and a few business ideas that you can build in 2025. All right, let's get

into it. I'm Pat Walls, and this is

into it. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story.

All right, Andy, welcome to the channel.

Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story.

>> Hey, Pat, great to be here. So, I'm Andy Cloak. I'm the founder of Data Fetcher.

Cloak. I'm the founder of Data Fetcher.

It's now at 600 paying customers and it makes $23,000 a month in current revenue and I work on it as a solo founder.

>> All right. Well, before we get into what data fetcher is, how it works, can you just give me a little bit of background on your story and how you got here?

>> Yeah, sure. So, I studied engineering at university, but I never loved it. I

always wanted to launch my own projects and so I taught myself to code and then I was working as a freelance React developer in London for various startups kind of launching things on the side trying to get something off the ground and none of them would go anywhere until

the first one that kind of made some money which was a Tik Tok influencer directory. So I was scraping Tik Tok,

directory. So I was scraping Tik Tok, selling that data as a SAS business and that got to a few thousand dollars a month in MR and I sold it and that kind of bought me a few months off to come up with the next thing something a bit more

sustainable and I was kind of trying to launch like an IPO's newsletter. I was

pulling financial data into Air Table to manage it all there and that really swed the seed for what would then become data fetcher years later.

>> Okay. Can you tell me a little bit more about data fetcher what it is and what it actually does? Yeah. So, data fetcher is an air tableable extension that lets you connect to any other platform. So,

rather than like manually pulling your data into your air table database, you can connect it up using APIs and then schedule that to happen automatically.

And it's a super flexible tool. So, we

have people doing marketing data. So,

pulling in like Facebook ads, Google Analytics, we have people doing operations type workflows. So, the use cases honestly keep on surprising me like even 5 years in. And that's

honestly one of the best parts of running the business is seeing what people build with it.

>> That's awesome. You built your app on top of a platform, Air Table. How did

you find the opportunity to build on this platform and why did you decide to build a business on top?

>> Yeah, so I saw a very similar add-on for Google Sheets called API connector and they were doing super well. They had

like 100,000 users and seemed to be like smashing it. Kind of the perfect

smashing it. Kind of the perfect lifestyle business. And having run into

lifestyle business. And having run into this problem on Air Table before, I thought, could I build this for this new platform that's taken off? Air table was just growing super fast and they just launched this marketplace and I kind of

validated it by looking at their forums to see what problems people were running into. And there seemed to be this need

into. And there seemed to be this need for like a really flexible tool. That

was kind of the validation stage. All

right. Well, before we get back into how Andy built this $23,000 per month micro SAS. Let's talk about what made this

SAS. Let's talk about what made this possible. He didn't try to create the

possible. He didn't try to create the next unicorn. He just built a simple

next unicorn. He just built a simple tool to solve his own problem. And what

started as a small side project completely changed his life. This is

exactly why we launched Starter Story Build. It's your place to build and

Build. It's your place to build and launch your side project using AI tools like Lovable and Cursor. And in just a few days, you'll learn how to use AI to build fully working apps and actually

launch your project to the world. We've

had hundreds of people go through the program and launch their first side project. So, if you're serious about

project. So, if you're serious about launching something this year, this is where to start. Just head to the first link in the description to check out Starter Story Build. All right, let's get back to Andy's story. when it comes

to building on platforms like Air Table, what are the pros and cons of building on top of a growing platform like Air Table?

>> Yeah. So, the main benefit I guess is distribution, right? So, being on the

distribution, right? So, being on the marketplace, especially being early to a marketplace like that, on a growing platform, you've just got this steady stream of super qualified leads and they trust you because you've been approved by the platform themselves. So, the

other benefit of it is just it's big enough to kind of change my life financially, but it's not such a big opportunity that there's loads of people raising loads of money to come and build like a $100 million business. So it's

kind of in this perfect indie hacker opportunity space where it just like sits in that sweet spot. I guess the main downside is the platform risk. So

like your tool becoming kind of redundant overnight. Air Table have been

redundant overnight. Air Table have been pretty good so far. They've been a great kind of platform to build on. And I look at it as data fetcher sits in this sweet swap between they have scripting and they have no code imports but they're

unlikely to build something that like goes completely in between the two of them. And so I think it's safe for now.

them. And so I think it's safe for now.

Touchwood.

>> Cool. You mentioned to me that you have kind of a framework for finding ideas to build on growing platforms. Could you break that down a little bit for us?

>> Yeah, of course. So, the first step is obviously finding that platform and there's a tool I love for this which is exploding in topics. Step two, you then want to find a painoint on that platform and you can look in their forums, on

Reddit, on Twitter. You just want to find that use case. Step three is you want to borrow a proven add-on or pattern from like a more established platform. So for me that was obviously

platform. So for me that was obviously Google Sheets and Air Table and borrow all the kind of like UX from that as well as making it native or feel native to the platform you're on. Step four is you want to check you can integrate with

your growing platform. So you want to look for is there a public API? Is there

a marketplace an extension SDK? Step

five is you want to do some napkin maths to find the size of the opportunity.

Work out how many users does this platform have? How common is this

platform have? How common is this problem? And then how much are people

problem? And then how much are people willing to pay for it. So again, you can use that established platform to look at price points on there and assume they'll be roughly similar on the growing platform. And step six, you want to work

platform. And step six, you want to work out will the platform crush you? How

likely is this platform to build this into their feature set? And so you can look at their road map. You can look at their support forums and things like that and work out what kind of noises are they putting out about this feature that you're trying to build as well as

how native does it feel like? How likely

are they to add this as a native feature? And that's the hardest one to

feature? And that's the hardest one to do, right? Because how can we see into

do, right? Because how can we see into the future? But you can use all of the

the future? But you can use all of the data that you can find on the internet and just kind of like back into does this feel like an opportunity and then you just have to go for it.

>> All right. So that framework's awesome based on your framework and kind of what's hot right now. What are some great platforms to be building on right now that the audience watching could potentially build something?

>> Yeah. So I think Notion is a great platform to build on. So it's not the newest tool, but it's still growing like crazy and the API is relatively new. So

I think there's a bunch of opportunities around automation, around reporting and getting data in and out of notion.

Another one that I love is Figma. And so

I think there's loads of little opportunities with things like exporting Figma to Web Flow to Framer to whatever kind of CMS or web design tool that you want to use or hosting tool. The last

thing I'd say is probably not building on like chatpt or claude. So although

there's like huge growth in those tools, everyone and their dog is building for Chat GPT and Claude just because there's so much competition. I think you're better off trying to use those tools to superpower your business and your tool.

>> That's great. How did you grow this app from basically zero to $23,000 a month?

>> Yeah. So, I got the first customer after a few days. As I said earlier, just the benefit of being on a platform so early and then I found that I could see certain use cases coming up again and again, certain APIs that people connecting to. So, I started doing

connecting to. So, I started doing content marketing around those use cases. So writing blog posts, creating

cases. So writing blog posts, creating YouTube videos on the most popular integrations and then that just drove it through to like 1K and MRR after a few months and then 3K after a year and then

I realized that I could make it even easier for people. So I started building these no code integrations so for even less technical people to use data fetcher and that drove it through to

10,000 in MR after the first year and then it was just that rinse and repeat for a couple years. So talking to customers, getting the feedback, building it in and then telling people about it through content marketing. Went

to 20K after 3 years.

>> Cool. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Let's switch uh topics a little bit and let's talk about tech stack. How did you build this? What tech did you use and

build this? What tech did you use and kind of what tools you use on a daily basis?

>> Yeah, so the extension itself is Typescript and React and Air Table's own extension SDK. And then the back end is

extension SDK. And then the back end is also TypeScript and Postgress, GraphQL and Node. Obviously the front ends like

and Node. Obviously the front ends like the web app the marketing site is Nex.js JS and Tailwind Shad CN it's all hosted on Heroku so the API and the database and stuff like that for the kind of

schedule stuff the workers that's on HTNA which like a super lowcost hosting provider help scout for support tickets fastmail for email plausible for analytics mailer light for the email

newsletter chart mogul for analytics and then obviously air table itself for like product roadmap content pipeline everything like that >> cool that's awesome on the same note let's talk about costs you're making

$23,000 a month. What do the costs and margins look like for a business like this?

>> Yeah, so the biggest cost by far is the hosting. So the hosting is like $2,500 a

hosting. So the hosting is like $2,500 a month. The tools that I just mentioned,

month. The tools that I just mentioned, all those SAS tools come to about $1,000. The office that I go to, the

$1,000. The office that I go to, the co-working is $150. So the total margin is 85%, the default state is super lean, which is the perks of SAS business.

>> Cool. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Have there been any lessons that you've learned going from, you know, trying to figure out what idea to build to actually being a really successful indie hacker in the space?

>> The biggest lesson has been the power of focus over chasing shiny objects. So,

over the few years, I've wasted probably 6 months trying to launch side businesses. And each time that I was

businesses. And each time that I was working on them, the thing that I tell myself is that it was because of platform risk or the market saturation, whatever it was. But really, it was cuz growth had slowed and I was getting bored and losing motivation. What I do

now, it's a bit weird, but I use Claude as kind of like a business coach. So,

every time I start to get distracted or I'm not working hard enough, I literally go to Claude and I say, "Be my business coach and make me focus on the thing that's working and talk me out of trying to launch something new." And I'm embarrassed to say that it actually

works pretty well. And so, it's almost like having a co-founder, having that accountability.

>> That's amazing. Last question that we ask everyone who comes on the channel, if you could stand on Andy's shoulder, you know, before you had a successful business, what would be your advice to young Andy?

>> So, I'd tell young Andy to do proper user testing. do it early and do it

user testing. do it early and do it often because I wasted almost an entire year without ever speaking to the people that are using what I'd built. And in

one afternoon, I found all of these UX issues and solving those, you know, increased the revenue, increase the usage, increased everything almost overnight. You learn why they actually

overnight. You learn why they actually like your tool over other tools. As easy

as it is not to do, speak to the people that are using what you've built.

>> Well, that's great advice. Talk to your customers. Thank you, Andy, for coming

customers. Thank you, Andy, for coming on the channel and your business is awesome. excited to see you hopefully

awesome. excited to see you hopefully come back sometime again. Thank you,

man.

>> Thanks so much. That was great.

>> All right. I want to thank Andy for coming on to the channel. I love his story because he launched this thing as just a simple side project and eventually he grew it into a business that changed his life. I think anyone

can launch apps like these and start to work toward their dream business. And

again, this is why we created Starter Story Build. It's a program where we

Story Build. It's a program where we teach you how to use AI to build your next project. And in just a few days,

next project. And in just a few days, we'll take you from idea to a working app ready to ship to the world. Just

head to the link in the description to learn more about how to join Starter Story Build. Thank you guys for

Story Build. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one.

watching. We'll see you in the next one.

Peace.