How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Locksmiths

**Lucas** (0:01)
So, there's this solo founder named Mark who runs a SaaS called Lockin.
It's scheduling and dispatch software for locksmiths. He's been at it for three years, does about $30,000 a month in recurring revenue, and he has exactly zero employees.

**Luna** (0:17)
Okay, I love that as a starting point. 30K MRR with no team, but how do you even find locksmiths as a market?

**Lucas** (0:26)
That's the part that makes this a great case study.
Mark didn't have any background in locksmithing. He was just a freelance web developer looking for a niche where existing software was terrible. And he had this theory that tradespeople, plumbers, electricians, locksmiths are often underserved by tech because they're too busy working to shop for software.

**Luna** (0:47)
So he picked locksmiths because what? The lock emoji looked cool.

**Lucas** (0:52)
Honestly, not far off. He told me he literally went through a list of trades on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and picked ones that had a clear pain point around dispatching. Locksmiths stood out because a huge chunk of their revenue comes from emergency callouts.
Someone locked out of their car at midnight, and those calls need to be routed fast. Existing solutions were either enterprise field service platforms costing hundreds a month or literally paper notebooks.

**Luna** (1:21)
Paper notebooks in 2026 That's wild.

**Lucas** (1:25)
Right. So Mark did what most founders won't do.
He cold called 30 locksmiths in one week. Just looked up local shops, called during slow hours, said, I'm a developer.
I'm thinking of building something for locksmiths. Can I ask you five questions? He got 22 yes. That's a 73% response rate.

**Luna** (1:47)
That's insane. Most cold outreach gets like a 2% reply.

**Lucas** (1:52)
Exactly. And the reason is that nobody ever calls locksmiths to ask about their software needs. They get calls from customers and maybe from vendors selling Yellow Pages ads. So Mark was this weird novelty, a dev who actually listened. He built a list of the top five frustrations. Number one, missed calls during a job. Number two, double booking. Number three, customers who don't know their lock type and get quoted the wrong price.
Number four, inventory tracking for key blanks. Number five, collecting payment on site.

**Luna** (2:30)
Okay, so the pain points are real and specific. But then he has to build the thing.
What was the MVP?

**Lucas** (2:37)
He built the MVP in 90 days.
Single page web app because locksmiths are on their phones, not at a desk. Core features were a calendar that autoblocks travel time, a simple CRM that logs customer addresses and lock types, and a text to pay link. That's it. No inventory module yet. He launched at $49 a month.

**Luna** (3:01)
And the first 10 customers were the ones he'd interviewed?

**Lucas** (3:04)
Yes. He gave them a 90-day free trial in exchange for feedback. Eight of the first 10 converted to paid. He said the biggest driver was the missed call feature.
The app auto sends a text to any missed caller saying, We're on a job. We'll call you back in 15 minutes. Locksmiths told him they were losing up to 3 calls a day before that.

**Luna** (3:27)
That's a $3 fix for a $40 problem. Now I'm curious about the economics.
30k MRR, how many customers is that?

**Lucas** (3:36)
He's at about 400 subscribers. But he doesn't charge a flat rate. He tiers it based on the number of locksmiths at the shop. Solo operators pay 49
Shops with 2-5 techs pay 99 Bigger operations pay 199 The average revenue per user is about $75.

**Luna** (3:58)
So he's not just selling to solo guys. There are actual locksmith companies with multiple vans.

**Lucas** (4:05)
Yeah, and that was a shift he didn't anticipate. He thought his market was one-person shops.
Turns out, the multi-van outfits have even more pain because dispatch is a nightmare. One customer in Dallas has 12 techs and was using a whiteboard. They switched to lock-in and cut their response time by 40%.

**Luna** (4:25)
Okay, so he's growing. What's his customer acquisition channel?
Still cold calling?

**Lucas** (4:32)
Partly. He still calls new locksmiths he finds on Google Maps. But now he also has a referral program. He gives one month free for any referral that converts. That drives about a third of his new business. He also does something clever.
He integrated with a popular locksmith parts supplier's API.
So when a locksmith enters a key code, the app auto pulls the blank type and price. That integration alone is a selling point.

**Luna** (5:00)
So he's building a mini ecosystem. I want to talk about the downside though. What's the churn like for a niche this small?