How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Florists

**Luna** (0:01)
So, a few years ago, a web designer named Jenna Reyes took on a client, a local florist who needed a website. But while talking to the owner, she kept hearing the same frustration.
Ordering flowers from wholesalers was a mess of phone calls, text messages and handwritten notes.

**Lucas** (0:20)
Right, the classic, we need a spreadsheet but better pain point. Did she start building something right away?

**Luna** (0:27)
Not at first, she tried to find existing software and found nothing affordable for a single shop. The big players like Florinext or Flower Shop Network were pricey and clunky.
So she built a simple tool for that one florist, a way to submit orders digitally, track deliveries and manage inventory.

**Lucas** (0:46)
And that became BloomStack. The origin story is almost too clean. But what made florist the right niche?

**Luna** (0:54)
Three things.
First, the ordering cycle is weekly. Florists order fresh stock every Monday or Tuesday. So there's a recurring rhythm that makes software sticky. Second, most shops have two to five employees. So they're small enough that a single founder can sell to them without needing a sales team. Third, the wholesale side is analog full of errors.

**Lucas** (1:18)
The weekly cycle is key. If you can get them to use your tool every single week, churn drops.
So, how did Jenna build the first version?

**Luna** (1:27)
She used Bubble, the no-code platform. It took her about three weeks to build an MVP that let Florist create order templates and send them to suppliers.
No payment integration, no analytics, just the core workflow. She charged that first Florist $50 a month and asked for feedback.

**Lucas** (1:46)
$50 a month is low, but for a solo dev, it's validation. How did she find more customers?

**Luna** (1:53)
She drove to five flower shops in her city, Portland, Oregon, sat down with owners, and showed them the tool on her laptop. One signed up on the spot. The other said they'd think about it.
She followed up twice and two more converted. That gave her three paying customers.

**Lucas** (2:12)
So the first 10 were basically her walking in the door. That's a hustle I think a lot of founders underestimate.

**Luna** (2:20)
Exactly. She also made a short demo video, screen recording, no fancy editing, and posted it in a florist Facebook group. That got her another five signups. By the end of month, too, she had 10 customers at roughly $50 each.
Not huge, but she knew the concept worked.

**Lucas** (2:39)
And that's probably a good moment to say, if you're building something yourself, hearing these details is exactly why we do this show.
And if today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad free is listener support. You can buy me a coffee.com/fexingo.

**Luna** (2:56)
Yeah, it's a small gesture that goes a long way for a show like this.
Everyone here is bootstrapped, same as Jenna's company. So thank you for that.

**Lucas** (3:06)
All right, back to BloomStack. Once she had those first 10, what changed?

**Luna** (3:12)
She started tracking usage and realized that florists who used the tool for three weeks straight stayed for months. So she doubled down on onboarding, personally calling every new sign up, walking them through the first order. That handholding turned 10 customers into 50 in the next quarter.

**Lucas** (3:30)
50 customers at $50 a month is $2,500 MRR. Not life-changing, but enough to quit her web design gig.

**Luna** (3:41)
She made the leap in month four. Then she added a feature that turned out to be the real stickiness, recurring order scheduling. Florists could set up weekly orders for their staple flowers.
Roses, lilies, greens, and the system would auto-generate the order every Monday. That feature doubled retention.

**Lucas** (4:01)
Brilliant. It turns the software from a tool into a habit. I bet that's also what allowed her to raise the price.

**Luna** (4:09)
Yes, she introduced a tiered plan, the basic $50 plan and a $100 plan that included scheduling and inventory forecasting. About 40% of customers opted for the higher tier.
By the end of year one, she was at 150 customers and $90,000 ARR.

**Lucas** (4:28)
What about competition? Surely bigger players started noticing.

**Luna** (4:32)
A couple of existing floral software companies launched lower priced versions, but they were trying to serve all sizes of florists. Jenna stayed hyper-focused on independent shops with fewer than 10 employees.
She built features for that exact use case, like a simple order history screen that lists last week's order, so you can just tweak it.

**Lucas** (4:54)
That's a smart mode.
Be the best for a tiny slice. Where is BloomStack now?