0:02 I built a simple countdown timer into a
0:05 25K per month app. Meet Lucas, a
0:07 solopreneur from Germany who built
0:10 arguably the world's simplest app. In
0:12 this episode, we dive into how Lucas
0:14 turned a stupidly simple idea into a
0:16 business that allowed him to quit his
0:18 job and ultimately changed his life.
0:22 This single Reddit post with 58 ups
0:24 changed everything. Plus, we'll get into
0:27 the exact Reddit post he used to get his
0:29 first paying customers, why he hired his
0:32 wife to help him run the business, and
0:34 his framework for finding more simple
0:36 ideas that can make thousands. All
0:39 right, let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls and
0:42 this is Starter Story. [Music]
0:44 [Music]
0:46 Welcome, Lucas, to the channel. Tell me
0:49 about who you are and what's your story.
0:50 I'm uh Lucas Herman. I'm a software
0:52 developer from Germany. I turned a
0:55 simple idea into a SAS business and
0:58 eventually was able to quit my job and
1:00 work full-time. I'm a soloreneur and I
1:02 built this business with my wife and a
1:05 child. So, we have reached uh 25,000
1:08 revenue per month and we have a total of
1:10 20,000 users that are using our app.
1:13 4,400 of those are paying or have paid
1:15 at any point in time. And we're getting
1:19 86,000 unique visitors per month. Cool.
1:20 Before we get into what your app
1:22 actually does, let's talk about how you
1:24 validated this idea and got your first
1:26 customers for your SAS. How did you do
1:29 that? So, I did it on Reddit. And the
1:31 reason is I'm building something for
1:33 people that I don't know. I'm building
1:35 it for people that are in a video
1:37 production industry. Where are they?
1:39 Where do they hang out? I'm looking for
1:41 a subreddit. It took me quite a while to
1:42 actually find one. These are quite
1:44 hidden. These are very small niche
1:46 stuff. And I think, you know what? Let
1:48 me post it here. So, I put a link in
1:50 here and I say, "Hey, try it out. Give
1:51 me some feedback. What do you think? Is
1:53 this useful to you?" And you can see
1:55 like people make literally lists that
1:57 they tell me, "No, do this. Do this.
1:59 I've been waiting for such an app." And
2:00 because there's no price attached to it
2:02 on the website, it's also not he just
2:04 wants to have our money. It works really
2:06 well. And then the other thing is I
2:08 don't spam it. So, one post per
2:11 subreddit. That's great. All right. So,
2:13 you got this Reddit post. You validated
2:15 it. Let's talk about the MVP and how you
2:17 built that original free tool. What
2:19 tools did you use and what features did
2:22 you include? So my first MVP, it had
2:24 like basically just one feature which
2:26 was click on a button here and a timer
2:28 starts counting over there. I'm use all
2:30 the technologies I already know. I use
2:33 JavaScript, I use Vue.js, I use NodeJS.
2:35 There's no Versell was new at the time
2:36 and I just didn't know it and I didn't
2:39 use it. If I would have used new unknown
2:40 technologies, I would have had to learn
2:42 them, understand them, find out they
2:44 have limitations I didn't know before.
2:45 And it was good because I could I could
2:48 ship my MVP in 3 days and then build
2:50 upon it slowly and and comfortably in
2:52 the 1 hour that I had in the evening
2:55 instead of building on it for 3 months
2:56 just to have something that is usable.
2:58 And then because it was a side business,
3:02 a side project, it took me 224 days to
3:04 actually get my first dollar. And that's
3:06 totally okay. It grew from there. Nice.
3:09 What I love about your business is that
3:10 it's a family business. Tell me a little
3:12 bit more about that. Yeah. So, after I
3:14 earned the first dollar and we had our
3:15 first customers, I thought, well,
3:17 there's also a marketing we need to do
3:19 and we need to now answer these customer
3:21 service emails. And my wife was at a
3:23 point that she didn't want to do her old
3:25 job anymore teaching. And I said, why
3:27 don't you join me? You know, why don't
3:29 you learn marketing and take over these
3:31 parts of the business? And she was
3:33 really excited about it. And she really
3:35 learned quickly. And now she she does uh
3:37 Google ads, she does all the sales
3:39 emails, she does all the customer
3:41 support emails and we have an amazing
3:42 support. People are really happy with
3:46 it. And I do the the product, the the
3:48 finances, the development and kind of
3:49 the overall direction, right? Like CEO
3:51 work. And sometimes we walk over the
3:53 street and talk about how we grow stage
3:55 time or sometimes we just look at any
3:56 business like how would you, you know,
3:58 grow this shoe business over there. We
4:00 think about these business terms
4:01 together which is really fun and it it
4:03 makes for a lot of great conversations.
4:05 That's awesome. I think that's super
4:06 cool how you have that set up. Let's
4:07 take a step back. I want to learn a
4:09 little bit more about your background,
4:11 how you got started and how you got to
4:13 this point where you have this amazing
4:15 SAS business. Yeah. So, my first
4:18 development job was in 2007. That was I
4:20 was younger. I was in high school. I
4:22 literally rode my bicycle to work back
4:26 then and built HTML pages. 2017, I start
4:28 studying. My father really wanted me to
4:30 have a paper. So, I I did. At the same
4:32 time, I start freelancing. I wanted to
4:34 know how it is to have your own business
4:36 as a developer. I get into a startup
4:38 once I'm done 2020 I have my degree but
4:40 already my mind is like how can I build
4:42 my own product right so soon later I
4:44 just start tinkering on this thing so
4:47 shortly after November 2020 right as
4:48 corona was hitting first commit for
4:50 stage timer that was when I built the
4:52 MVP and then a few days later I post
4:55 this post on Reddit and by 2022 my wife
4:57 encouraged me hey why don't you to quit
4:59 because stage time was already making
5:02 enough money to just get by uh 3,000 a
5:04 month so I did quit thanks to her I
5:06 probably would have been much longer in
5:07 the job if it wouldn't have been for my
5:09 wife. And then by September 2023, we
5:12 reached a 10K monthly revenue mark that
5:15 every soloreneur is aiming for. All
5:17 right, before we dive deeper into how
5:19 Lucas built this into a $25,000 per
5:20 month business, let's talk about
5:22 something a lot of earlystage founders
5:26 overlook. Distribution. Distribution is
5:27 everything. You can build the best tool
5:29 in the world, but if nobody sees it, it
5:31 doesn't matter. That's why we're excited
5:33 to partner with the monday.com app
5:36 marketplace. Monday monday.com has over
5:39 245,000 customers using the platform
5:43 across 200 plus industries from HR and
5:45 IT to operations and event planning. And
5:48 here's the kicker. 90% of enterprise
5:51 accounts use monday.com apps. In other
5:54 words, there's massive built-in demand.
5:56 And unlike other platforms, it's not
5:59 overcrowded yet. It's a great time to
6:01 get in. This is the perfect moment for
6:03 solarpreneurs to get in early, build
6:06 niche tools, and solve real user pain
6:08 points. Even better, monday.com gives
6:10 you everything you need to succeed.
6:13 Robust APIs, flexible SDKs, detailed
6:15 docs, and a dev team that actually
6:18 supports your growth. You build the app,
6:20 set up your pricing, and monetization is
6:22 all built in. Billing, subscriptions,
6:24 payment processing, it's all taken care
6:26 of. We teamed up with monday.com to
6:28 create a free resource that breaks down
6:30 exactly who their users are and where
6:32 you might find your next winning idea.
6:34 Click the first link in the description
6:36 to grab it and take advantage of this
6:38 opportunity. Thank you to monday.com for
6:40 sponsoring. Now, let's get back into the
6:41 video. Let's talk about how have you
6:44 driven customers to your app to sign up
6:47 and grown this thing to over 25,000 MR.
6:49 We have about 50% of our traffic comes
6:52 from Google and then a third of our
6:53 traffic really comes from people
6:56 recommending our tool to others. And we
6:57 have done a lot of work that this is the
6:58 case, right? That people want to talk
7:01 about us or or do inadvertently share
7:03 our tool with others. So we have a niche
7:05 tool, right? Very niche, a niche small
7:08 enough that most big companies wouldn't
7:10 really bother with it. But for us as
7:12 solarpreneurs, perfect. and I decided we
7:14 will see if we can grab stuff that
7:16 people are already doing in our niche
7:19 and then combine our tool with it. So if
7:22 you uh look for countdown timer stream
7:24 deck companions, we uh created a
7:27 documentation page that shows very
7:30 precisely how you use our tool together
7:32 with this integration for this physical
7:35 device. We also created a video and put
7:36 it on YouTube or when you look in
7:37 YouTube and you search for this video,
7:39 it's not doesn't have many views. But
7:41 the trick is the people that do search
7:42 for this and the people that do look for
7:44 this on YouTube, they want to have their
7:46 question answered, right? They have a
7:48 concrete problem and they want to have a
7:50 solution for it. So they find you and
7:52 they're so much more likely to purchase.
7:54 So this is a a super niche keyword. The
7:56 way we find these keywords is we put up
7:58 documentation, put up articles, and then
8:01 we look with a sense for what do people
8:04 actually click on and then double down.
8:05 About a third of your customers come
8:07 from word of mouth. Talk to me about that.
8:08 that.
8:10 Yeah. So from the beginning I wanted to
8:12 be like Dropbox. You know Dropbox you
8:14 create it and then it says oh you want
8:17 to have 5 GB more space you know share
8:18 share the link with a friend have them
8:20 sign up. And I thought how can I
8:22 integrate this into my own app? It's
8:24 called product le growth. And I just
8:26 made sure every single link that people
8:28 share my logo is on it. And not only is
8:30 my logo just like a picture it's it has
8:32 the name stage timer.io in the logo.
8:34 It's like literally written there. And
8:36 it's a name easy enough to remember that
8:38 people often just see it even tell us oh
8:40 I saw it on an event and I used it
8:42 myself. That's the one way and the other
8:44 way is we make it a premium model. By
8:46 doing this we capture a lot of
8:47 freelancers that work in this space and
8:49 they bring it along to the events that
8:51 they invited and somebody says ah we
8:54 need a timer. So they say ah let me just
8:55 pull up stage timer. They pull it up. It
8:57 works so well people are really excited
8:59 eventually they want to use it for the
9:01 next event hit some kind of limit and
9:03 say ah it's it's worth it. let's let's
9:05 purchase it happens very often. So
9:07 having a free tier works really well for
9:09 us. That's great. What kind of tools and
9:11 languages did you use to build the app
9:14 and then also to run the business? So as
9:16 a developer right I use supply text and
9:19 supply merge. These are old tools. The
9:21 fact is for me like copy pasting into
9:23 cloud and generating code there and
9:25 coasting is literally faster than
9:28 integrated IDEs like cursor or copilot.
9:30 One tool I love is air table. We use it
9:32 as CRM. It works incredibly well. It's
9:34 like a big Excel sheet with all our
9:35 customers in it. But what you can do is
9:37 you can do automations on top of that.
9:38 And then on top of this, we use a
9:40 Postmark to actually send out emails.
9:42 I'm a big fan of Postmark. It's like an
9:45 email sending platform but really made
9:47 for solarreneurs. So these are really
9:48 that breadandbut tools that I'm using
9:51 for stage timer. That's amazing. Your
9:54 business makes $25,000 MR. Uh what does
9:56 it cost to actually run this business?
9:58 The SAS business are very very cheap to
10:00 run. We have a server and infrastructure
10:03 cost of 280 a month. Then we spend 250
10:05 on tools and services. That is
10:07 everything from what I mentioned, Air
10:09 Table, Postmark, all of this together.
10:11 And then we spend $1,400 on paid ads. So
10:14 the profit margin is 80% or or higher,
10:17 like between 80 and 90%. Nice. That's a
10:19 good business. Now, let's finally talk
10:22 about what you built. Can you show me
10:24 what app you built and how it works and
10:26 what it does? Yeah. So So this is the
10:30 app. That's it. Imagine you are on a TED
10:32 talk and you have the speaker on stage
10:33 and they want to know how much time do I
10:36 have left in my presentation. So you put
10:37 this in front of him and on my computer
10:39 I have the control interface for this
10:41 very timer and I can just click start
10:43 and you can see how it starts counting
10:46 or you you know holding your microphone
10:47 too far away. It's not you're not loud
10:50 enough. So I show you this message like
10:52 hey hold your microphone closer. Nice.
10:53 And it's much easier like this to
10:55 communicate with your person on stage
10:57 than holding up a paper sign. You can
10:58 imagine the first question that anybody
11:00 watching this is having is like, "Okay,
11:02 why would I pay for this? I can just use
11:04 a timer on my iPhone. How does this make
11:07 $25,000 a month?" So, when I built it, I
11:09 thought, "No way this is going to make a
11:11 lot of money." And then people started
11:12 paying and we started understanding that
11:15 in real life events, real life video
11:17 productions, people need this all the
11:20 time. We had TV broadcasts that do
11:22 broadcast for elections and they need to
11:24 time every speaker. We had horse races
11:26 by it. So, turns out almost everybody
11:28 needs a timer and the iPhone timer won't
11:29 cut it because it's just on your little
11:31 iPhone screen and you need something
11:33 that one person clicks start and and
11:35 five other people can see it. Awesome.
11:36 We haven't even talked about this yet,
11:38 but like how did you actually even find
11:42 the idea to create a timer app? So, it
11:44 was a bit of an accident. And I was in
11:48 my friend's studio and he used this very
11:50 old flash app on a on an old laptop and
11:52 he remote controls everything from his
11:54 nice table. And then to start a timer,
11:56 he has to get up, walk into the other
11:59 room and hit a button and walk back and
12:03 my web developer mind immediately says
12:05 surely there's a better way. So if you
12:07 go to any other business and you just
12:09 observe people doing their job and you
12:11 find that they waste hours and they do
12:13 things in the most awkward ways that you
12:15 would have automated long ago. These are
12:17 the really the simple ideas that you can
12:19 turn into a lot of money. Okay. So you
12:22 built this business it makes $25,000 a
12:23 month. What's a key lesson that you
12:26 learned in the journey building this?
12:28 One lesson I learned conversely is that
12:30 there's more opportunities out there
12:33 than we think. There's so many solutions
12:36 that still have interfaces from 1999.
12:38 Ugly as heck to use. People complain
12:40 about it all the time, especially if you
12:42 go outside the developer bubble. I
12:45 believe there's so many like $1 million
12:47 niches with little apps that you can
12:49 build. The only hard thing is to find
12:50 them. Once you found them, it's just
12:52 this great opportunity that that's open
12:54 before you to build a simple app. Cool.
12:56 Last question that we ask anyone who
12:58 comes on the channel. If you could go
13:00 back in time, stand on Lucas's shoulder
13:02 when you shipped that MVP or even
13:04 before, what advice would you give him?
13:07 So, I would go back and tell myself,
13:10 Lucas, you're a German. You're scared of
13:12 regulation. You're scared of like the
13:15 the finansome, the tax man coming to you
13:17 and saying you've done everything wrong
13:19 and you have to go to prison now. But I
13:21 would tell him this is not the case.
13:24 Just get started. There's a way even in
13:26 this country to build a simple business
13:29 to scale it up and to understand how it
13:32 works. Everybody is just like getting by
13:34 somewhere and you can do it too. Any
13:36 Germans or Europeans watching this?
13:38 Hopefully that inspired you. Thank you,
13:40 Lucas, for coming on to start our story
13:42 and uh keep going. I I will. Thanks,
13:45 Pet. Lucas is a great example of someone
13:47 who turned a really simple idea into a
13:50 really great business. I really like how
13:53 he used Reddit to validate his idea cuz
13:54 you don't need an audience and
13:56 potentially all your customers are
13:58 hanging out in one little subreddit just
14:00 like the one that Lucas had posted. I
14:02 think that anybody can take lessons from
14:05 his story and build a SAS, build a cool
14:07 app, get users, and potentially start
14:09 even getting paying customers. So, if
14:11 you're interested in building something
14:13 similar apps and simple projects, then
14:15 you should definitely check out Starter
14:17 Story Build. In Starter Story Build, we
14:19 show you how to find an idea, how to
14:22 build it with AI tools, and how to
14:24 actually ship it into the real world and
14:26 get users and potentially build
14:27 something that changes your life. What's
14:29 even cooler is that you'll do it all in
14:32 just 12 days. So, if you got that simple
14:34 idea or you want to find it, maybe turn
14:36 it into a great business, head to the
14:37 link in the description to check out
14:38 Starter Story Build. All right, guys.
14:40 Hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see
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