Building a 7-Figure SaaS on Slack (Surviving Platform Risk) | Polly

Bilal Aijazi built a multi-million dollar SaaS on Slack despite competing features and clunky onboarding. Here is his 7-figure SaaS growth strategy. In this episode, Bilal Aijazi (Founder of Polly) breaks down how he navigated the treacherous waters of building a business on top of a major platform. You will learn how Polly achieved viral product-market fit with an 80% completion rate on a difficult 5-step installation process. Bilal reveals the evolution of their Freemium Pricing Model, how a fantasy football user led to enterprise HR contracts, and the critical playbook for surviving when platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams launch features that compete directly with you. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The "Pain Tolerance" Metric: Why 80% of users endured a nightmare install process (and what it proved). 💰 Pricing Evolution: Moving from $8/month fantasy football leagues to 5-figure Enterprise deals. 💡 Suriving "Sherlocking": How to pivot and thrive when the platform builds your core feature. 🔥 Viral Loops: Leveraging "Respondent to Creator" conversion to drive organic growth. ⚖️ The Platform Paradox: The risks and massive rewards of building on Slack, Teams, and Zoom. 📖 Chapters: The "Punch in the Face" Reality of Startups Scaling to Millions of Monthly Active Users Leveraging Product Hunt for Viral Growth The 5-Step Onboarding Nightmare (That Worked) Transitioning from Viral Bot to Real Company The Fantasy Football Customer: Early Pricing Experiments Freemium Secrets: Converting Free Users to Paid Platform Risk: What Happens When Slack Copies You? The Mistake of Slack Workflow Builder Horizontal vs. Vertical SaaS Strategies Advice: Why Technical Founders Must Sell The "Just Don't Die" Philosophy This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/462 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus