How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Yoga Studios

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, there's this solo founder I've been following for about a year now.
His name is Alex, and he built a SaaS that sells to yoga studios. Not studios in general, specifically yoga studios. And last month, his revenue hit $40,000 per month.

**Luna** (0:19)
$40,000 from yoga studios alone? That's impressive. How did he even find that niche?

**Fexingo** (0:26)
It started because his partner taught yoga at a small studio in Portland. She kept complaining about the scheduling tool they used. It was built for general fitness, had all these features they didn't need, and the attendance tracking was manual.
So Alex, being a software engineer, built a simple web app that let students book classes and check in with a QR code.

**Luna** (0:47)
Right, scratch your own itch. But that's usually where most side projects die.
How did he go from his partner's studio to 40 grand a month?

**Fexingo** (0:56)
The key move was cold email. He scraped a list of 500 yoga studios in the Pacific Northwest, then sent each one a very short email.
Basically, I built this for my partner's studio, try it free for 30 days. No credit card needed. He got about 40 signups from that first batch.

**Luna** (1:16)
That's an 8% conversion rate from cold email. Did he have any kind of landing page or demo video?

**Fexingo** (1:24)
Minimal landing page, just a screenshot of the booking calendar and a signup form. No video. The product itself was pretty bare bones, but the QR code check-in was the hook.
Studio owners loved that students could just scan a code when they walked in, and attendance would auto-populate in the system. No more clipboards or manual entry.

**Luna** (1:46)
Okay, so that feature solved a real pain point. But Yoga Studios are notoriously price-sensitive. How did he price it?

**Fexingo** (1:54)
He went with $60 per month. Flat. No per student fees, no tiered plans. Just one price.
He figured that most studios were paying around $80 to $120 for their existing tools. So he undercut them while offering something more tailored. And he kept it simple, no time-consuming onboarding, just a self-serve sign-up.

**Luna** (2:17)
That $60 price point is interesting because it's low enough to be an easy decision for a studio owner, but high enough to build real revenue. How many paying customers does he have now?

**Fexingo** (2:29)
About 700 studios. But here's the surprising part, his churn rate is only 3% per month. That's incredibly low for a micro-SAS.
Most vertical SaaS companies see 5% to 7% monthly churn in the early days.

**Luna** (2:45)
So, what's keeping them around? Is it the QR code feature or something else?

**Fexingo** (2:52)
The QR code is part of it, but the real stickiness comes from the fact that the product replaces their entire workflow. Once the studio has all its class schedules, student profiles, and attendance history in one place, switching costs are high. Plus, Alex adds one new feature per month based on the most requested item from his users.
Last month, it was automated waitlist notifications.

**Luna** (3:18)
He's basically turning his customers into a product advisory board. That's smart. But let me ask, how did he scale from 40 initial signups to 700 paying studios?
Cold email can't work forever.

**Fexingo** (3:32)
He built a referral loop. After a studio has been using the product for three months, he sends them a message saying, if you refer another studio, you get a month free. About 30 percent of his new customers come from referrals now.
He also does a small Google Ads campaign targeting keywords like Yoga Studio Software, but that only accounts for maybe 15 percent of signups.

**Luna** (3:58)
So the cold email was just the ignition. Once he had a base, word of mouth took over.
I love that because it shows you don't need a huge marketing budget. You just need a product that solves a real problem and a way to get in front of the right people once.

**Fexingo** (4:14)
Exactly. And the thing is, most Yoga Studio owners had never tried a vertical SaaS before. They were using generic tools or just paper. So when Alex emailed them, he wasn't competing against other Yoga-specific software.
He was competing against nothing. That's a huge advantage.

**Luna** (4:33)
That's a great insight for any solo founder looking at a niche. If you can find a market where the existing solutions are either too general or non-existent, you can win just by showing up with something purpose-built.

**Fexingo** (4:46)
Yeah. And Alex's story also highlights the importance of starting with one specific customer segment. He didn't try to build for all small businesses.
He picked Yoga Studios, and that focus let him make every feature exactly right for them.