How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Landlords

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, there's this founder named Sarah, who used to manage a couple of rental properties on the side while working a full-time job in IT.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:09)
Classic side hustle setup.

**Fexingo** (0:12)
Right. And she kept running into the same headache.
Tenants would text her about a leaky faucet or a broken heater, and she'd lose track of who had responded, which contractor she'd called, and whether the job was actually done.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:26)
Spreadsheet hell, basically.

**Fexingo** (0:29)
Exactly. So she built a simple web app for herself.
Tenants could submit maintenance requests. She could assign them to contractors, and she could track status. It solved her problem.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
And then she realized other landlords had the same problem. Yeah.

**Fexingo** (0:46)
She posted about it in a local landlord Facebook group, just describing what she'd built for herself. And within a week, she had 15 other landlords asking if they could use it.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
That is the dream validation moment.

**Fexingo** (1:01)
It really is. And look, if these conversations are useful for what you're building or running, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:10)
Yeah. It's a small thing that adds up.

**Fexingo** (1:13)
Buy me a coffee.com/fexingo if you've gotten something out of them.
Anyway, back to Sarah. She launched a paid version within two months.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:23)
What did she charge?

**Fexingo** (1:26)
She went with $10 per unit per month. So if you had a fourplex, that's 40 bucks a month.
Cheap enough that it's an easy yes for a landlord, but it scales with property size.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:38)
I like that she didn't charge a flat rate. That way a landlord with two doors pays less and one with 20 pays more.
It feels fair.

**Fexingo** (1:47)
Exactly. And it also means her revenue grows automatically if a landlord adds more properties. She didn't ask for annual contracts or set up fees.
Just month to month, cancel anytime.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:01)
Low friction. How did she find her first customers beyond that Facebook group?

**Fexingo** (2:06)
She stayed in those groups, but she also started posting in regional landlord associations. She'd offer a free 30-day trial, no credit card required. Her conversion rate from trial to paid was around 40 percent.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:22)
That's solid, especially for a solo founder with no sales team.

**Fexingo** (2:27)
Right. And she kept the product dead simple.
No accounting features, no lease management, no tenant screening, just maintenance requests and contractor tracking. She didn't try to be Bildium or Appfolio.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:40)
She stayed in her lane.

**Fexingo** (2:42)
Exactly. She knew that if she tried to add everything, she'd never ship, and her users didn't need everything. They needed that one pain point solved.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:53)
What was her tech stack?

**Fexingo** (2:55)
She built it with Ruby on Rails and used a simple bootstrap frontend. No mobile app, just a responsive web app. Tenants could submit requests from their phone browser, which was good enough.
Smart.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:09)
No need to build native apps for a B2B tool like this.

**Fexingo** (3:13)
Right. She focused on reliability and speed over features.
A landlord submits a request, the contractor gets an email alert, the landlord gets a notification when it's done. That's the core loop.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:27)
And she charged for it from the start. No free tier, just a trial.

**Fexingo** (3:33)
Yeah. She launched with the paid plan immediately.
No fremium. She believed that if someone wasn't willing to pay 10 bucks a month, they probably weren't that serious about solving the problem.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:45)
I think that's underrated. A lot of founders give away too much for free and then struggle to convert.

**Fexingo** (3:52)
Totally.
And Sarah's customers were landlords, people who understand cash flow and value. They're used to paying for tools that save them time.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:03)
So what happened after the first year?

**Fexingo** (4:06)
She had about 150 paying properties, which was around $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue. She was still working her IT job, but she was spending about 15 hours a week on the SaaS.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:19)
So she was basically running a side business, pulling in $180,000 annually?

**Fexingo** (4:24)
On a run rate basis, yes.
But she was also paying for hosting and a part-time support contractor. Still, it was profitable from month three.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:35)
What was the hardest part for her?

**Fexingo** (4:37)
She told me that customer support was the biggest time sink.
Landlords would ask how to do things that weren't obvious, or they'd want features that didn't fit her roadmap. She had to say no a lot.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:50)
That's tough when you're solo. Every feature request feels personal.