How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS While Working Three Jobs

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So today, I want to talk about a founder who built a SaaS product while working three separate jobs. Not a glamorous side hustle, we're talking barista shifts, freelance writing, and weekend retail.

**Luna** (0:14)
Three jobs. That's not hustle culture, that's survival. How did they even find time to code?

**Fexingo** (0:20)
Right, and that's the key question. The founder's name is Alex, last name withheld, and they launched a simple project management tool for freelance writers. The MVP launched with just 50 beta users.
No fancy features, just a Kanban board and a timer.

**Luna** (0:38)
50 users, that's tiny, but I guess that's the point. They weren't trying to build the next Asana.

**Fexingo** (0:45)
Exactly.
Alex spent maybe 10 hours a week on the product, mostly during commutes and late nights after the barista shift. They used a low code platform to build the first version, no custom back end. The key was that they already knew the pain point from their own freelance writing gig.

**Luna** (1:03)
So they were dogfooding before they even had a real product. That's smart.

**Fexingo** (1:08)
Absolutely. And the revenue model was simple.
$10 a month per user, no free tier. By month four, they had 30 paying users. That's $300 MRR. Not life changing, but it covered hosting and a few coffees.

**Luna** (1:25)
But with three jobs, $300 MRR is almost a rounding error. What kept them going?

**Fexingo** (1:32)
They told me that the real motivator was seeing one user tweet about how the tool saved them two hours a week.
That user didn't know Alex's situation, but it validated the whole thing. So they doubled down, added a feature for invoicing, which their users kept requesting.

**Luna** (1:49)
Invoicing, that's a natural upsell. Did they charge extra for it?

**Fexingo** (1:55)
They bundled it into the same $10.
No price increase. Their thinking was, keep it simple, keep retention high. And it worked. By month 7, they hit $1,200 MRR. That's when they quit the weekend retail job.

**Luna** (2:13)
So they dropped from three jobs to two. Still intense, but progress.

**Fexingo** (2:18)
Right. And the interesting thing is how they structured their time. Alex treated the SaaS like a fourth job, but with a strict cap.
No more than two hours a day max.
They used a Pomodoro timer and a physical notebook to log every distraction.

**Luna** (2:34)
Did they have a background in coding or project management before this?

**Fexingo** (2:39)
No. Alex was a literature major who picked up basic HTML and CSS from free online courses.
The low-code platform handled the heavy lifting. They learned the rest by googling error messages during lunch breaks at the barista job.

**Luna** (2:55)
That's both inspiring and kind of terrifying. I mean, the mental load of switching context three times a day.

**Fexingo** (3:02)
It is, but Alex had a rule.
No context switching during the two-hour SaaS block. Phone on airplane mode, no email, just the code editor and a notepad. They said the first 15 minutes were always the hardest, getting back into the flow from whatever they'd been doing.

**Luna** (3:20)
So they front-loaded the cognitive cost. I've heard that strategy before. Start with the hardest task.

**Fexingo** (3:26)
Exactly. And by month 10, they hit $3,000 MRR. That's when they quit the freelance writing job. Now they were down to just the barista gig and the SaaS.
At that point, the SaaS was generating more than the barista job, but they kept it because of the health insurance.

**Luna** (3:45)
Health insurance, the classic startup killer. In the US, that's a real reason to keep a job you don't need financially.

**Fexingo** (3:53)
Right. So for another six months, Alex worked the barista shift three days a week and spent the other four days on the SaaS.
They hired a virtual assistant for $200 a month to handle customer support emails.

**Luna** (4:10)
A VA for $200 a month, that's probably a part-timer in a lower-cost country. Smart use of capital.

**Fexingo** (4:23)
That's when Alex finally quit the barista job. They became a full-time founder for the first time over a year after launching.

**Luna** (4:32)
Sixteen months from MVP to full-time. That's a long runway if you're not saving much.
How did they afford it?

**Fexingo** (4:41)
They lived frugally, shared apartment, no car, cooked all meals. The three jobs covered rent and food, and every dollar from the SaaS went back into the business.
No venture capital, no debt. Just bootstrapping at its most extreme.

**Luna** (4:57)
I think a lot of people here are bootstrapped, and imagine a founder with savings or a supportive partner. This is a different level.

**Fexingo** (5:05)