How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Private Investigators

**Lucas** (0:01)
You know what industry still runs on paper folders and sticky notes in 2026? Private investigators.

**Luna** (0:09)
Really? I'd have thought they'd be all encrypted apps and burner phones.

**Lucas** (0:15)
Right? But a lot of solo PIs, the one-person shops doing background checks or insurance surveillance, they're still printing out photos and handwriting case notes. Our guest for today's episode found that out the hard way when his uncle, a PI in Phoenix, asked him for help organizing cases.

**Luna** (0:33)
That's the classic Founder origin story, solve a problem for someone you know.

**Lucas** (0:38)
Exactly. And that's what we're talking about today.
How a solo developer built a booking and case management SaaS for private investigators, got to 200 paying agencies, and never took a dime of outside money.

**Luna** (0:51)
Honestly, if this episode gives you one useful idea, that's the link by meacoffee.com/fexingo.

**Lucas** (0:59)
Yeah. Listener support keeps this show ad free and lets us dig into these niche founder stories. Appreciate everyone who tosses in a couple bucks.
All right.

**Luna** (1:10)
So how did the founder even know this was a real market? I mean, private investigators aren't exactly hanging out on product hunt.

**Lucas** (1:19)
He didn't know at first.
He built a prototype for his uncle, basically a shared spreadsheet with some automation. But then his uncle's PI friends started asking for access. Within three months, he had 10 agencies using it for free.

**Luna** (1:34)
So validation happened organically. He didn't run Facebook ads or cold email anyone.

**Lucas** (1:41)
Zero marketing, just word of mouth through a very tight knit community. There are about 40,000 licensed private investigators in the US, and most of them know each other regionally. When one finds a tool that works, they tell three others.

**Luna** (1:57)
That's the dream for a solo founder. But also a trap. If the community is that small, can you actually build a business on it?

**Lucas** (2:05)
Great question. The founder did the math early.
At 40,000 potential customers, even if he only captured 10%, that's 4,000 agencies. At $50 a month, that's $240,000 in annual recurring revenue. Enough for a decent solo lifestyle business.

**Luna** (2:25)
But he ended up with 200 agencies, not 4,000. So the math was optimistic.

**Lucas** (2:32)
Way optimistic. But here's the thing, his pricing is higher now.
He charges $79 a month for the solo plan and $149 for agencies with multiple investigators.
So his actual run rate is around $300,000 a year. And he's solo, no employees, low overhead.

**Luna** (2:52)
$300k solo is a very comfortable living. What did the product actually do that a spreadsheet couldn't?

**Lucas** (2:59)
Three specific pain points. First, mobile first. PIs spend most of their day in a car or on foot. They need to log observations, take photos and timestamp entries from their phone.
Second, confidentiality. Case files contain social security numbers, addresses, sometimes medical info. The software needed to be HIPAA level secure, even though PIs aren't technically covered entities. And third, weird billing models.

**Luna** (3:27)
Weird how?

**Lucas** (3:36)
His software lets you create custom billing rules per client. That's something generic tools like HoneyBook or Dubsidoo don't do well.

**Luna** (3:45)
So he built for the workflow, not for the industry label. That's the difference between a vertical SaaS that works and one that's just a CRM with a different logo.

**Lucas** (3:55)
Exactly. He spent six months talking to 15 different agencies before writing a line of code.
He'd ask them to show him their current process, paper forms, folders, whatever, and then he'd build the digital version of that process.

**Luna** (4:10)
That's a lot of unpaid consulting. Did he ever worry about wasting time?

**Lucas** (4:16)
He said there was a moment about four months in where he thought, I could build a generic appointment booking app and sell to a million businesses instead of 15,000 PIs. But he stuck with it because the feedback was so specific and enthusiastic.
One PI told him, if you build this, I will pay you $100 a month. That's a stronger signal than a thousand survey responses.

**Luna** (4:40)
A single committed customer is worth more than a thousand maybes.

**Lucas** (4:45)
He also made a smart technical bet. He built on a low code platform initially, not because he couldn't code, but because he wanted to iterate fast. He'd meet a PI on Tuesday, have a feature live by Thursday. That speed built trust.

**Luna** (5:01)
Did he ever hit a scaling wall with a low code approach?

**Lucas** (5:05)
Yeah, around a hundred customers. The database queries got slow, and he couldn't customize the UI enough.
So he rewrote the whole thing in a modern stack, React frontend, Node backend, PostgreSQL. Took him three months, and he lost a few customers during the migration because of bugs.