How do you bootstrap a SaaS to $1 million+ ARR?
In this episode, Rob Walling chats with Colin Bartlett about how he and his co-founder Andy transformed a side project monitoring tool into a seven-figure ARR business that now serves as an early warning system for outages across 6,000+ services.
From nearly abandoning the product during three stagnant years to discovering their killer differentiation, Colin's journey is a masterclass in patient iteration, finding product-market fit the hard way, and why sometimes the most boring infrastructure businesses make the best SaaS companies.
Episode Sponsor:
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That’s Conversion Factory. They’re a SaaS marketing and design agency that have worked with over 50 startups, including several TinySeed companies.
Book a call at conversionfactory.co and mention this podcast for $1,000 off your first month. And if you’re at MicroConf Europe next week, make sure to connect with Corey Haines in the hallway track.
Topics we cover:
- (3:08) – How StatusGator detects outages (and why users are part of the signal)
- (6:23) – From side project to SaaS: the early days of building StatusGator
- (8:46) – Shifting the ICP: Why developers weren’t the buyers
- (11:44) – SEO as the engine behind thousands of trials
- (17:00) – Hitting early MRR milestones and hiring the first marketer
- (25:12) – How TinySeed funding unlocked a full product redesign
- (32:05) – Building a dual funnel to boost ACV and win enterprise deals
- (38:00) – Advice for other SaaS founders playing the long game
Links from the Show:
- Invest in TinySeed Fund Three
- MicroConf Mastermind Matching - Applications open until September 24th
- StatusGator
- Colin Bartlett | LinkedIn
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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