Michael Gerogiannis

I'm a software engineer. So when marketing scared me, I shipped a feature. Scared again? Another feature. Almost 8 months of this. Now I have a gorgeous padel club management SaaS and zero customers. Started sending some DMs over the past weeks. Most get ignored. 😮‍💨 Hardest thing I've done. Should've started on day one.

A couple of months ago, a newsletter platform approached me offering to market my saas on their feed for €2,000. Having 0 paying customers, I told them it was out of my budget and that I'd revisit it later. Fast forward to today... I'm wondering: Did I make the right call, or was I too cautious? Curious what you'd have done 👇

@SimonHoiberg I liked the "university" part I think my product desperately needs it 👌

The perfect SaaS is fully self-serve. (Otherwise, it's not really "-as a service" - it's just... software) Users should be able to: → Sign up themselves → Onboard themselves → Create value for themselves → Find help by themselves → Cancel by themselves No handholding from the team should be needed. Little to no (human) support should be needed. Here's how you do it: 1️⃣ Use Stripe to handle payments. 2️⃣ Use Aidbase to handle support. 3️⃣ Create an outstanding knowledge base. 4️⃣ Create a "university" with guides and tutorials. 5️⃣ Make your product agent-friendly. Help your users (and their agents) help themselves.

@Joelpillar1 Definitely the marketing part!

Founders, What's been harder: Building the product or finding users?

@marclou @trust_mrr It would be interesting if we could see revenue distribution per domain/market

Last 30 days revenue distribution on @trust_mrr: 🪦 51% — $0 (pre-revenue) ☕ 35% — <$1K (coffee money) 🍜 10% — $1K–10K (ramen profitable) 🥩 3% — $10K–100K (steak profitable) 🛥️ 0.4% — $100K+ (yacht w/ AC) n=8,281 startups

@LoganTGott I got it completely wrong! 😂

@michaelg_me You didn’t read the post haha

Delete LinkedIn. Seriously. As a founder you should never be in that feed. You're scrolling slop and rewriting cringy personal posts. None of that converts. The founders closing the most deals off LinkedIn are barely on it. They're on calls and shipping product while their engine runs without them. That part is our job. We run the content, the outbound, and the funnel. You go run your company... while we build your pipeline Simple.

@AdityaShips It seems this is the way to go! I have already 3 projects that actually solve problems I face myself which I am about to share the journey

I used to overthink shiny ideas and blindly ship random apps just because they felt exciting. It’s been a year now, and I’ve made just $2K from all of them combined. That clearly wasn’t getting me anywhere. so here is the new plan: - build something that solves my problem - ship it within 7-10 days - Market it everywhere for the next 90 days (X, Reddit, SEO, gonna try everything along the way) - Document the entire journey on X - If it doesn’t reach $2K/m within 100 days, sell it and move on Just one product for 100 days, no more chasing shiny ideas I hope this works out

@indiesoftwaredv What kind of services do you freelance?

I make $10k - $20k/m from freelancing Ask me anything

@TheSpacerr Congrats! How did the person come to you since you haven't officially launched?

My first sale ever. I can't even explain the feeling. What's even crazier is that I haven't officially launched yet. Someone out there saw my product and decided it was worth paying for. Thank you. Keep pushing guys!

@pmitu Did Claude ask the person?

Just saw a person replace Claude. It started.

@RatheeJaisal Congrats 👏 did you change something on what's offered on the plan?

Got 3 sales yesterday of our most popular plan 🥳 growing slowly but surely

Thanks for this 🙏 Here's exactly what I tried for my padel club management saas: Instagram → Posting features. Sending DMs. I actually had a few phone calls with the club manager in which I was trying to book a demo of the app. Most of the DMs were simple ignored. Facebook groups → Checked some padel communities. I realized that are more for padel players who want to engage with each other. So not my audience. Cold email → Pitched club owners on "manage your club better." I tried to personalize them by checking which are the tools the club already uses and tailor my message based on their painpoint. In every attempt that I mentioned I was trying actually to solve their painpoints instead of selling. I actually offered to some of them 6 months of free trial just to get familiar with the app! The thing that kinda worked for me was to travel myself to padel clubs with my laptop and show direclty a demo of my app to a manager (if I was lucky enough to find a manager at the time I got there) but that's not feasible from my side. The problem I realized I have is that I find it very hard to get to show a demo of what the app does to potential customers and convince them that I am trying to solve their problems. Based on all the above, I would genuinely love your feedback. What's worked for you? 🚀

@michaelg_me My guess is that you are selling directly and not helping people who are experiencing the pain you are solving. Can you share more about what you tried, i,e, specific tactics so I can help give some feeback

I’ve tried almost everything to get my SaaS in front of the right people. ❌ Instagram ❌ Facebook groups ❌ Cold email ❌ Reddit None of them really worked. So I’m trying something different. Starting today, I’m going to distribute my content on LinkedIn too. Let's see if that sticks. I'll share the results publicly. 🚀

@danielba777_ Great that worked for you 👏 I'm trying to figure it out for my business too

@michaelg_me Tried different Marketing Angles, focused on a really good onboarding and focused on Analytics. I think that's something you develop over the time when you ship a lot of apps and actually try marketing

2 months ago: - about to give up on apps, thought my work is not worth it bc AI slop apps flooding the app store - $150 MRR today: - $1.5k MRR, growing day for day - def know it's all about distribution, not the app - motivated af

OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6. Half an hour later, Anthropic posted this 👇 As a solo builder, I don't care who wins. I just enjoy the crossfire. 🍿

@i_mika_el Indeed 😂

@michaelg_me the competitor bot showing up while padel club owners stayed at 0% summarized the whole problem 😅

I posted on LinkedIn to promote my padel SaaS. > 1,510 impressions > 1,065 people reached > 11 reactions > 4 comments > 1 follower Then I read the audience breakdown: → 25% software developers → 15% IT services → Top job title: "Software Engineer" (15%) → Padel club owners? basically 0% I was pitching a padel club management tool to a room full of… engineers. My exact peers. Nobody who'd ever buy it. But here's the part that actually made me laugh: One of the 4 comments was an automated one from a bot account belonging to a company that builds THE EXACT SAME PRODUCT I do. A competitor's growth-hack bot came to farm engagement on my post, in front of my audience of engineers, on a product neither of us is reaching the right buyers for. Building in public means watching your distribution problem unfold in real time. Lesson: reach ≠ relevance. 1,000 wrong people are worth less than 10 right ones.

@danielba777_ How is it going with tiktok as marketing channel?

4 days with over $100 in a row. 15/07: $105,05 14/07: $167,86 13/07: $104,06 12/07: $128,78 My only marketing channel: TikTok (10 accounts), posting 1 slideshow daily (today skipped) all by myself No excuse but I had much to handle today, tomorrow I'll continue posting

@hustle_fred Currently placed on the first situation and it's so hard to stay consistent 🙃

3 ways to start a business: 📝 1. start while having 9-5 - safest and easiest one - best for staying sane 📝 2. find investors and go all in - best for becoming very rich - more stressful and much harder 📝3. quit your job and go all in - you need 1 year of runway at least - very risky but 10x faster growth somehow I've done all of them... (P.s. 3rd is only for experienced or insane people)

@alexcooldev In the AI era I think the pricing models need also to change 🤔

I still believe SaaS will keep growing. I just tried vibe coding an entire SaaS, spent over $2K on tokens, and it still has bugs. Then you still have to maintain it, ship updates, and fix issues. The bigger the project gets, the more tokens it burns. Meanwhile, most SaaS subscriptions cost only $19–$99/month :))

@neerajjj6785 A headache 😫

USA has Claude USA has Grok USA has Gemini USA has Llama USA has Copilot USA has ChatGPT China has DeepSeek China has Qwen China has Ernie China has GLM China has Kimi China has MiniMax Europe has?