How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS Selling to Private Members Clubs

**Lucas** (0:01)
So, you walk into a private members club, leather chairs, dim lighting, someone at the front desk with a clipboard. That clipboard is the product.

**Luna** (0:11)
The clipboard is the product? You mean the guest list?

**Lucas** (0:15)
Exactly.
Most private members clubs still run their membership and bookings on paper or spreadsheets. There's no off-the-shelf software made for them. That's The Gap, our founder, Alex Chen, spotted back in 2022

**Luna** (0:31)
And Alex is a solo founder?

**Lucas** (0:33)
Yes. He built Clubstack, a booking and membership management platform for private members clubs. Think SoHo House, The Battery, or your local city club. These places have very specific needs.
Managing member rosters, guest passes, event bookings, billing, wait lists. None of the general tools like Mindbody or Salesforce fit well.

**Luna** (0:57)
Right, because a club isn't a gym or a yoga studio. The social dynamics are different.

**Lucas** (1:03)
Totally. Alex spent a month just hanging out at a friends club in San Francisco, watching how they operated. He noticed the front desk spent hours each day managing guest lists manually. Members would call to bring a guest, the staff would scribble in a notebook, then later transfer it to a spreadsheet.
It was error-prone and slow.

**Luna** (1:24)
So he built a prototype?

**Lucas** (1:26)
He built a very basic web app in three weeks, just a member directory and a guest sign-in form. He showed it to the manager of that club. The manager said, If this also handled event billing and wait lists, I'd pay you $500 a month for it. That was Alex's light bulb moment.

**Luna** (1:46)
So he validated the pain point first, then built the full product.

**Lucas** (1:51)
Exactly. He spent the next three months building Clubstack. He launched with 20 clubs, all friends of friends in the Bay Area.
Charged them $199 a month. That's about $4,000 in monthly recurring revenue from day one.

**Luna** (2:08)
And he grew from there?

**Lucas** (2:10)
He grew to 50 clubs within six months, then 100 within a year. Today, mid-2026, he's at over 200 clubs.
Still a solo founder. No outside funding. He's profitable.

**Luna** (2:25)
What's the secret sauce? How did he scale without a sales team?

**Lucas** (2:30)
Two things. First, the niche is concentrated. Private clubs talk to each other. Club managers know each other. So word of mouth spread fast. Second, the product is sticky.
Once a club sets up its member database, guest policies and billing, switching costs are high.

**Luna** (2:50)
I imagine churn is very low.

**Lucas** (2:53)
Alex told me his annual churn is under 5%.
That's incredibly low for SaaS. Most B2B SaaS companies see 5% to 7% monthly churn in the early days.

**Luna** (3:05)
Monthly? That's huge.
So Club Stock's annual churn is like a dream.

**Lucas** (3:11)
Exactly.
And his average revenue per club has increased too. He started at $199 a month, but now clubs pay between $299 and $599 depending on the number of members and features like event ticketing or integrated payment processing.

**Luna** (3:30)
So he's expanding features and upselling.

**Lucas** (3:33)
He added a waitlist feature that clubs love members can put themselves on a waitlist for a sold out event, and it automatically notifies them when a spot opens. That alone reduced front desk calls by about 30 percent, according to his clients.

**Luna** (3:49)
What about the billing piece? Clubs often have complex billing, monthly dues, event fees, guest charges.

**Lucas** (3:57)
That was the hardest part. Alex spent two months building a billing engine that handles prorated memberships, one-time guest fees, and event tickets.
He says it was the most tedious code he's ever written. But it's the moat. Stripe's billing API can't do club-specific proration out of the box.

**Luna** (4:16)
So the complexity becomes a barrier for competitors.

**Lucas** (4:20)
Exactly. Another competitor would have to build that same billing engine. It's not impossible, but it's a lot of work for a small market. And the market is small but profitable.
There are about 5,000 private members clubs in the US alone, according to the Club Managers Association of America.

**Luna** (4:40)
So a total addressable market of maybe 5,000 clubs at $500 average monthly revenue. That's $30 million a year in recurring revenue.
Not huge, but plenty for a solo founder.

**Lucas** (4:55)
And he doesn't need to capture all of them.
At 200 clubs, he's at about $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue. With no employees and low overhead, he's pulling in a very solid profit.

**Luna** (5:09)
One thing I'm curious about, how does he handle support? Solo founders often burn out on customer support.

**Lucas** (5:17)
He automated a lot. He built a knowledge base and a chatbot that answers about 70% of common questions, things like how to add a member or generate a guest report.