Modest Mitkus

I vibe coded web app 1 year ago. It went from $0 to +$60k/month. 1 year of journey, inside a single video:

I feel the same like everyday xd. but I do try to control it nowdays - trying to trust myself more and have this mentality like "fuck - even if everything burns - I will rebuild it". "whenever things go side ways revenue wise my mood is heavily suppressed" - your end results is attached to rev. Which is good (as it means you care about rev part and building actual business) I think its kinda natural as if things are moving in the right direction - all good. you can chill. (do backlog tasks etc and you feel ok by the end of the day). You keep thinking of new ideas, products, what you wish to ship, add and overall how to improve product or try new marketing channels, etc. but if the rev is going backwards you are getting stuck. you can no longer create, ship new things etc. as you need to solve the rev part first. as if you no longer make money whats the point of shipping new features etc so marketing become priority. so maybe money is like foundation? if you keep making money, you keep working on fun stuff, etc. and life is good. and if rev is down you feel like shit and then cant do fun stuff etc? or you do fun stuff but its no fun anymore because you dont make money from it or anything else? ;D

yeah my problem is also that lately part of business has been stagnating quite a bit (overall my portfolio is growing luckily) and i am way too attached to this. whenever things go side ways revenue wise my mood is heavily suppressed and it sucks haha! not sure if you ever had this as well? to me it seems you smartest mf just continually growing 🙂‍↔️🙏

AI lowkey fucked up my productivity in a way I didn’t expect and I’m not sure how to feel about it. On any given day: I code more than ever. I ship features faster than ever. I do more marketing than ever before. I even make slightly more money than before. Yet, I feel like I have achieved nothing at the end of the day. I go to bed lots of times lately feeling unaccomplished. There’s this lingering thought of I could’ve done more. Run more agents in parallel, run them while I’m eating, while being in the gym, heck they should do work while I sleep! You get the gist. It sometimes drives me nuts lol I remember days pre AI where I’d work on a feature for an entire week (that now takes me less than a day) and still go to bed feeling great and happy. Now, there’s seemingly never enough. What do I do to fix this? Anyone else having similar feelings?

@sobedominik for me its wealth + creativity. as long as i have both its good. so if i can create each day something and I can make money and move forward its all good. maybe same for most founders (at least the wealth part xd). but dunno.

hmm yeah this def some food for thought. i’m not fully sure what that one real KPI is. i guess building wealth?! aka increasing profits?! but it’s also now way more about doing fun creative stuff I enjoy while also making money with it i’m running 3 products in parallel so perhaps that amplifies everything a bit more

@m_tnrvrd @HHaandr @RevenueCat yet 😏

@HHaandr @ModestMitkus @RevenueCat No confusion with mine — my MRR has no thousands separator 😂

Apparently, this is how you go viral nowadays 🤞

@HHaandr @RevenueCat more to come 😂 ( I hope)

@ModestMitkus @RevenueCat Thanks! That helps 😆

@HHaandr @RevenueCat supporting the hiring 😂

@ModestMitkus @RevenueCat We're hiring 😅

@HHaandr @RevenueCat aaaaaaah, you killed all the fun now! 😂

@ModestMitkus @RevenueCat x.com/HHaandr/status…

@HHaandr @RevenueCat jesus man 🙈😵 whats the secret ? :D

@ModestMitkus @RevenueCat 353K 😅 I'm in The Netherlands. We use . for thousands here :)

@DmytroKrasun @forgebitz @ConnorShowler most welcome! still trying to figure out things myself :D but I would wish to have something more stable like yours! so keep going! 🚀

@ModestMitkus @forgebitz @ConnorShowler Glad we reached to this point in the conversation, because I have never thought about that for AI SaaS. Thanks for sharing.

B2C app churn is brutal Anyone doing paid ads for B2C is barely scraping by.. That's why they usually need to put out courses selling the dream 👀 Organic distribution is the only viable route for B2C apps

oh yes, not only that :D I think AI tools are more hard to control - the quality and experience can be super different for each customer. For example i have many customers who are super happy and LTV from them is next level. and then i have other customers who are super unhappy which is beyond my control and they churn super fast. even if I know exact issues I cant do anything. many such stories with AI tools. also expectations are different. when for example you sell 1k screenshots with the links to capture u only mainly need to care only if the ss where captured correct. when you sell AI generated video its different. it almost feels you selling real service. even if you do everything right they might not like it and you either do the fixes or u have some issues.

@ModestMitkus @forgebitz @ConnorShowler Did you make the cancellation form an open question? It was the biggest unlock for me to analyze the reasons and fix issues. Also, find the customers who don't churn at all, check if they are happy, find more of them?

@DmytroKrasun @forgebitz @ConnorShowler 5% 🥹🥹🥹jealous 🙈 I personally feel like reached the floor or getting at least close to it.

Yes, I am 100% with you on that. If there is no recurring fundamental use case, one-time payment might even help to earn more money. Easier to convert, and can be a bit pricier. ScreenshotOne is 5% on average. Sometimes 3-4%, sometimes 9%. Also, depends on the segment. Real businesses who are happy and growing and who extract recurring value from it, don't churn. But a lot of one-time users, too. Generate 1,000 screenshots for some use case and go away. I could fix that with buying more credits, but decided not to complicate, but just ignore this segment, and tracking churn only for ICP.

true. old school saas most def have different metrics. ( I think even screenshotone have super low churn and is more stable-safe business to grow than most of biz here - even mine) . I was mainly talking about AI saas in general. (as its shit show by default :D) for example that SwapTok is AI tool which offers to faceswap video with your face. Most people signup generate few videos and churn. Super hard to maintain that type of business with low churn. Even with perfect onboarding/ activation. it would even make more sense to sell as one-time payment so you would actually could get higher ltv. what you can do is scale as fast as possible and expand product to the point where churn lowers by the scope of the saas itself.

Also, 3% is a perfect target, maybe in the current economy/your market situation, it is not achievable at all. No, of course, I haven’t seen any like that in the AI space, @ModestMitkus. But I was talking about B2B SaaS regardless of that’s AI or not. In general Also if you have generic churn of 10-20% might be even tolerable. It can signal onboarding/activation issues, marketing channels don’t fit, … The main question is: for your ideal customer profile, people who extract recurring value from your product and happy to pay more… do they churn? Why? What is your churn for them if you segment your customers? If they churn more than 3%, there is still a room of improvement. For such a profile, they should churn because the use case is irrelevant or they are out of business. Of course, I am not expert and might be wrong, sharing a perspective from my experience.

@DmytroKrasun @forgebitz @ConnorShowler U saw AI saas that have this churn without super low tier pricing and at least 1k customers? As from what I saw and heard from many - 10-20% with aggressive scale.

@ModestMitkus @forgebitz @ConnorShowler 3% for your ICP.

what you think is good churn for b2b AI tool ? I think all AI tools in general have higher churn compared to tools with no AI. 40% is def horrible, but MoM 5% is also hard to reach I think for AI saas. ( ofc its all about the tool itself, some saas in general have shorter customer lifespan. ). where you reach point where one time payment make more sense than subscription with 40% churn.

@ConnorShowler %40 in b2b is really really bad

@DmytroKrasun No AI, no trending niche. Your $33k mrr is more than 99% of others. 🖤amazing work dude!

I launched ScreenshotOne.com on May 29, 2022, 4 years ago 🥳 Since then, it has grown to $33K MRR with over 1,000 paying customers and executed more than 100,000,000 API requests. It is nothing impressive compared to the recent successes of people making millions in months after launch. But for me, it was life-changing: 0. A lot of luck involved, but I proved to myself I can achieve things. 1. Build my life the way I want it. 2. This allowed me to spend a lot of time with my kids and family. I almost didn’t miss any important events for them. 3. To fund pleasures. I have been reading every day, traveling, and meeting interesting people. 4. To give back to others and sponsor certain projects/people. One of the biggest successes for me is that I found ways to sustain my motivation to work on the product, and I don't see why I would stop. Grateful to everyone who supported me on this journey. And onto the next chapter. 🚀 Ask me anything.

@ky__zo Guy wants to get acquired by Hubspot too 🙈

just found a page which is complete StarterStory ripoff. it's full of articles about me and others, with completely made-up facts. it uses AI to write these fake articles with fake quotes, making it look like we actually participated in an interview with them. this guy faked conversations with @fin465, @jackfriks, @ModestMitkus, @rrmdp and more creators, I assume none of them even know about it. the website lies about "working closely with the founders, all the numbers are verified". @md_farhadx it's an absolute goon move to create such a thing. i really suggest you take it down. @thepatwalls, look :)

@KocharAastha Exactly. 🖤

@jaxxdwyer POV: this take.

founders are obsessed with AI ugc content until they realize it doesn't convert

you build product once, but for the marketing it's full-time work. many risks, time investment that never ends. had many offers like this myself. I even got offer to build for free just to pick my brains. but even the - do I receive value or just getting drained of value myself?

Funny how some vibe coders offer me a “co-founder” role: They build the app. I do distribution, marketing, content, positioning, sales, growth, users, revenue… Current MRR: $0. My equity: 50%. Bro, at that point I’m not a co-founder. I’m your entire go-to-market department with a discount code 💀 Especially when I can vibe code the same app in 3 hours.