Justin's Field Notes #1: $15M ARR from $15 subscriptions, my virtual employee, Stripe's humble beginnings, and more
Some of the best content I've come across in the last few weeks.
👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses.
Hey friends,
This weeks edition of SaaS Decoded is going to be different.
I want to experiment with a new format called “Justin’s Field Notes”, where I share some of the best social media posts, news items, tools and other tidbits I’ve come across in the last few weeks.
Since I spend a lot of time online and often come across very insightful and useful content, I think it would be a good idea to share some of my favorites with you.
If this post does well and the feedback is positive I’ll aim to share a post like this once a month.
Simple, affordable pricing + clear need + large TAM + good execution + time = massive success
Judge.me is a SaaS app operating in the direct-to-consumer eCommerce market that makes it easy for brands to generate customer reviews.
These guys have been in the market for a long time and have slowly grown to $15M ARR by being focused on solving a clear need for a large market at a great price.
What makes Judge.me stand out is their simple pricing. They have a free plan and a paid plan. The paid plan is just $15 a month.
Another great example that there are many ways to play the SaaS game.
Meet Viktor, my virtual employee
Last week I published a post teaching you how to add an AI agentic agent to Slack. In the post I covered a service called Viktor which was the best agent out of the two services I tested.
I’ve since spent some more time playing with Viktor and I’ve become a big fan.
Since I’ve been focusing on simplifying my day-to-day work I don’t yet have enough recurring tasks for Viktor to move from the free plan to the paid plan but I’m now convinced that using a service like Viktor on top of Slack is a no brainer.
Below are some ways I plan to use Viktor to improve my productivity:
Create weekly recurring tasks in Asana and assign them to relevant projects.
Let me know if any Tableau reports belonging to my clients fail to refresh (I have one remaining projectBI client).
Help me draft SOPs in Slite.
I’m purposefully cutting tasks and drastically simplifying how I work throughout the week so the number of tasks I can automate through Viktor is minimal but I would still recommend giving the service a try.
I’ll report back once Viktor is doing a few more things for the business.
Wallet share, smart user interviews, and other insightful lessons from social media
Below are some of the best posts I’ve come across recently on social media.
That gap has a name: wallet share By Jeff Ignacio [LinkedIn]
They buried their most valuable feature in the Enterprise plan By Mayengbam Tommy [LinkedIn]
We only had 50 users two years after founding Stripe By Startup Archive [X]
HubSpot Acquires Starter Story After Eight-Year Bootstrapped Rise
Yesterday the news broke that HubSpot has acquired Starter Story.
Pat Walls, the founder of Starter Story built the business from the ground up into a 7-figure a year media business with a massive audience.
Pat did a fantastic job telling the full story behind Starter Story in a recent threaded post on X which you should definitely check out.
Here are the highlights:
Started Starter Story from a Starbucks while still working a job. Pat was 27 years old when he started the business.
It slowly grew to $3k - $4k per month which is when Pat quit his job.
He didn’t believe in Starter Story and tried many other ideas.
At 29 he went all-in on Starter Story and grew it to $1M a year in revenue after 2 years.
5 years in he started publishing on YouTube.
Today Starter Story has 4k+ founder stories, 1.6M+ followers, 250k+ newsletter subscribers, 10k+ paid members and millions in annual revenue.
Did you enjoy this format of the newsletter or do you miss the long-form guide style that I usually go with?
Please let me know in a comment below or by sending me a short email to justin@projectbi.net. Any feedback you have for me is helpful.
Until next week.
Justin