How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS While Serving Active Duty Military

**Fexingo** (0:01)
If these conversations are useful for what you're building or running, today's case is one of the most extreme examples of building under constraints I've ever come across.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
Extreme how?

**Fexingo** (0:13)
The founder is an active-duty army officer. She built and launched a logistics SAS while deployed in South Korea, sleeping four hours a night, and she still can't quit her day job because she's literally serving on a military base.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
Wait, she's still active-duty right now? She's running a SAS company while in uniform?

**Fexingo** (0:34)
Yes. Captain Elena Vasquez. She's a logistics officer stationed at Camp Humphreys, and her company, Baselink, does procurement software for military-based supply depots. She coded the MVP during her deployment in 2023
She says she'd get back from convoys at 10 p.m., code for two hours, sleep, wake up at 4 a.m. and code for another two before morning formation.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:00)
That's not hustle culture. That's just survival.
How did she even identify the problem while deployed?

**Fexingo** (1:07)
That's the key part. She saw it firsthand. The base she was on was still using paper forms and spreadsheets to track parts for vehicle maintenance. She'd watch supply clerks manually cross-reference inventory against a shared drive that was only updated once a day.
She thought, I can build a simple database tool that does this in real time.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:29)
And she built it on a government network? That's a security nightmare.

**Fexingo** (1:34)
She was smart about it. She didn't use any government equipment or data. She built the prototype on her personal laptop using dummy data she made up. The first version was basically a glorified spreadsheet with a front end built in Python and SQLite hosted on a cheap VPS.
She didn't touch any sensitive information until she had a security-cleared co-founder who could handle ITAR compliance.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:00)
ITAR, International Traffic and Arms Regulations. That's a huge barrier for anyone building software for the military.

**Fexingo** (2:08)
Exactly.
ITAR governs anything related to defense articles and services. If you're building supply chain software for a base that handles weapons parts, that software itself may fall under ITAR. Elena told me she spent six months just figuring out whether her product needed to be registered with the State Department.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:29)
What did she find?

**Fexingo** (2:31)
Her initial MVP didn't touch ITAR-controlled data because it only tracked non-sensitive items, office supplies, furniture, stuff like that. But to scale to parts for vehicles and weapon systems, she needed an ITAR-compliant infrastructure and a co-founder who already had a security clearance. She found one in a retired Air Force mechanic she met at a veteran entrepreneurship event.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:55)
So her first customer was Fort Hood?

**Fexingo** (2:58)
Yep. She onboarded the supply depot at Fort Hood in early 2024 before she even incorporated. She did the deal under her own name as a sole proprietorship. The first contract was for a three month pilot at $2,000 a month.
She told me she was so nervous, she triple checked every line of code before demoing it to the depot commander.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:21)
That commander just said yes to a demo from a captain who coded in her spare time?

**Fexingo** (3:27)
It helped that the commander knew her reputation on base. She had a track record of fixing logistics problems. Plus, she didn't pitch it as a startup. She pitched it as a tool she'd already been using informally on a thumb drive.
She said, Sir, I built a thing that slashed my team's data entry time by 70 percent. Can I show you?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:49)
That's a great sales approach. Don't sell the technology, sell the outcome.

**Fexingo** (3:54)
Right. And the pilot worked.
Fort Hood extended the contract to a full year and expanded it to two more depots. By the time she incorporated in mid 2024, she had three customers and $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:11)
Wait, she incorporated after she had revenue? How did she handle taxes and liability before that?

**Fexingo** (4:17)
She operated as a sole proprietorship, which is perfectly legal. She filed a Schedule C with her personal taxes. But she told me she incorporated as an LLC only after a JAG officer.
That's a military lawyer, warned her that without liability protection, a contract dispute could wipe out her personal savings. That's when she realized she needed to formalize.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:42)
And she's still active duty. How does she manage time now?

**Fexingo** (4:46)
Her day starts at 5:30 a.m. with physical training. She's on base until 5 p.m. Then she switches to founder mode from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Her co-founder handles most of the daytime customer support and compliance paperwork. She does product development and strategic sales calls in the evenings and on weekends.