How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Martial Arts Studios

**Fexingo** (0:01)
You know, I've been thinking about how many solo founders go after these really broad markets, project management, CRM, that kind of thing, and then wonder why they can't break through. So I wanted to talk about someone who went the opposite direction and found a surprisingly sticky niche.

**Luna** (0:17)
All right, I'm listening. What's the niche?

**Fexingo** (0:21)
Martial arts studios. Dojos, if you want to be formal. There's a guy named Mike, I'll call him Mike.
He prefers to stay low-key who built a SaaS called Dojo Flow. It's a scheduling, belt tracking, and payment management platform for martial arts schools. He launched in 2021, bootstrapped, no funding, and he's now north of $2 million in annual recurring revenue.

**Luna** (0:47)
Two million ARR as a solo founder? That's impressive. How did he even find that market?

**Fexingo** (0:53)
He was a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. His instructor was still using a paper ledger to track attendance and belts. Mike just asked, hey, can I build something to digitize this?
And that was the spark. He built the first version over a weekend in PHP Nothing Fancy, and showed it to three local dojos. Two of them signed up within a week.

**Luna** (1:18)
So he had domain expertise.
That's a huge advantage. He knew the pain points firsthand.

**Fexingo** (1:25)
Exactly. And the thing about martial arts studios, they're small businesses, but they have really high retention. Students typically stay for years, so the studio needs to track progress over time. That means the software becomes part of the daily routine.
Once a dojo is using dojo flow, switching costs are high because all that history is in there. His churn rate is under 3% annually.

**Luna** (1:50)
3% churn is insanely good.
Most SaaS companies would kill for that. And it's a micro SAAs, so he's probably keeping most of that revenue.

**Fexingo** (2:01)
He runs it with just one part-time support contractor. His gross margin is essentially the hosting cost plus that contractor. He's profitable from day one because he never hired salespeople.
He did all the customer acquisition himself, mostly cold emails and demo calls.

**Luna** (2:19)
Wait, cold emails to martial arts studios?
How does that even work? I feel like those owners are probably overwhelmed with spam.

**Fexingo** (2:28)
He said his open rate was around 60% because he kept the subject line hyperspecific. Something like belt tracking for.
That's it. And he personalized every email with a detail he found on their website. He booked 30 demos from 100 emails. That's a 30% conversion to demo, which is nuts.

**Luna** (2:50)
That is nuts.
So, it's a combination of niche relevance and real personalization. But what about the product itself? What does it do that a generic scheduling tool doesn't?

**Fexingo** (3:02)
Great question. The core differentiator is belt progression tracking. Most martial arts have a colored belt system, white, blue, purple, brown, black in BJJ, or similar in karate taekwondo.
The software logs each student's test dates, stripe achievements, and instructor notes. It also generates a printable certificate when they get promoted. Dojo owners told him that was worth the subscription alone because it saved them hours of manual record keeping.

**Luna** (3:32)
That makes sense.
And I imagine payment management is also tricky for studios. They often have monthly fees, but also event fees for tournaments, uniform purchases, that kind of thing.

**Fexingo** (3:45)
Right. He built a simple invoicing module that handles recurring billing and one-time charges. It integrates with Stripe, of course. But he deliberately didn't build a full accounting suite. He wanted to stay focused on the core workflow.
One thing he told me, if you try to be everything to everyone in a niche, you're just as dead as a broad player.

**Luna** (4:09)
I love that philosophy.
And it's a reminder that you don't need a massive feature set to retain customers. You just need to solve the one or two painful problems better than anyone else.

**Fexingo** (4:21)
And by the way, if these conversations are useful for what you're building or running, the show stays ad free because listeners like you chip in. If you want to support it, you can do that at buymeacoffee.com/fexingo.
No pressure, just wanted to mention it.

**Luna** (4:37)
Yeah, it's a small way to keep the lights on and keep these deep dives coming. So, back to Dojo Flow, how did he price it?

**Fexingo** (4:45)
He started at $49 a month per location, then raised it to $79 after a year.
He said he underpriced initially because he was nervous, but a few customers told him they'd pay double.
So he listened. Today, his average revenue per account is about $120 a month, because some studios have multiple locations or want extra features like custom reports.