How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS for Themed Escape Rooms

**Lucas** (0:01)
So, there's this guy, Alex, who spent two years running a haunted house attraction in Ohio, and he got so frustrated with the booking chaos that he built his own software. Today, it runs over 130 themed escape rooms across the country.

**Luna** (0:16)
A hundred and thirty venues? That's not a side project, that's a real business.
So, how did he go from haunted house to software?

**Lucas** (0:24)
Well, he didn't start with software.
He started with a whiteboard and a walkie-talkie. Every Friday night, groups would pile into the lobby, waivers on clipboards, and he'd be juggling three rooms at once, trying to figure out who was next. He kept thinking, there's got to be a better way.

**Luna** (0:43)
So, the classic pain point, did he try existing tools first? Because I feel like every founder says that.

**Lucas** (0:51)
He did. He tried a generic booking calendar, a CRM for salons, even a restaurant reservation system.
None of them handled the specific stuff, like waivers, group sizes, time limits, and the fact that a room can only take one group at a time. So he spent his nights learning to code.

**Luna** (1:10)
And he built a prototype for himself, right? Did it actually work for his own venue?

**Lucas** (1:16)
It worked well enough that his managers begged him to keep using it after he left. That was the moment he realized he might be on to something.
He called it EscapeDesk, and the first customers were other haunted houses and escape rooms he knew from industry events.

**Luna** (1:32)
So word of mouth, but I'm curious about the pricing because most booking software charges per booking, right? He did something different?

**Lucas** (1:41)
Right, and that's part of why it's grown. He charges per room per month, $50 per room, plus a small setup fee. So a venue with three rooms pays $150 a month, flat.
No sorpresa per booking fast. He says it makes the math simpler for owners, and it lets them predict their costs.

**Luna** (2:02)
But doesn't that cap his revenue? I mean, if a venue has more groups, he doesn't make more money.

**Lucas** (2:08)
That's the trade-off, and he's aware of it, but it also keeps his churn low.
He's at about 90% renewal in year two, and he's got an expansion path. When venues add a new room, they pay more. Plus, he's got a dons like gift cards and loyalty programs that bring in extra.

**Luna** (2:27)
So expansion revenue through new rooms.
That makes sense. But how did he actually land his first customers? Because cold emailing Escape rooms can't be that easy.

**Lucas** (2:39)
This is the part one love. He didn't cold email.
He offered a free half-day trial, but he would come in and personally run the software for the venue. So he'd sit at their front desk, take bookings, manage the waitlist, print waivers. He basically did the job for them for a Saturday afternoon.

**Luna** (2:59)
That's brilliant. He's showing, not telling. But that can't scale. He can't be at 130 venues.

**Lucas** (3:07)
No, it doesn't scale and he knows that. But for the first 20 customers, it was worth it.
He says every single trial became a paying customer. And after that, the reputation did the selling.

**Luna** (3:20)
That's a 90% conversion on trial to paid. That's unheard of in SaaS.
So what's the catch? Like, why aren't more people doing this?

**Lucas** (3:31)
Because it's a tiny niche and it takes a lot of hustle. Escape rooms aren't a huge market.
Maybe 8,000 venues worldwide. But that's exactly why it works. There's no big player paying attention, and the ones who do are generic and don't understand the quirks.

**Luna** (3:48)
So he's got a moat just by being specific. But I bet there's a risk.
What if a bigger player decides to add escape room features?

**Lucas** (3:57)
That's the constant worry. But he's got a few things going for him.
His customers love him, he's got a decade of niche knowledge, and he's constantly shipping small improvements that matter to owners. For example, he just added an integration with major waiver apps. That was a big ask from his users.

**Luna** (4:16)
Speaking of waivers, I've seen that shift to app-based waivers in the industry.
How did he handle that? Did he chase it or wait?

**Lucas** (4:24)
He watched his customers use them and realized they wanted to keep the experience seamless.
So he built a simple integration that lets guests sign waivers on a tablet before they arrive. He says it's been his most requested feature this year, and it's already boosted his expansion revenue by about 15 percent.