How a Solo Founder Built SaaS by Selling to Car Washes

**Lucas** (0:01)
So, Mike Chen built a SaaS for car washes. Not the flashiest vertical, but that might be exactly why it worked.

**Luna** (0:09)
Car washes.
I feel like that industry is a lot more tech-forward than people assume. I've seen those tunnel washes with the LED displays and subscription plans.

**Lucas** (0:20)
Exactly.
Mike noticed that the point of sale systems most car washes were using were ancient, like Windows 95 era touchscreens. He thought there has to be a better way.

**Luna** (0:32)
And he was right. But how does a solo founder even get their foot in the door with a small business owner who's probably skeptical of software sales?

**Lucas** (0:41)
Mike's approach was pretty scrappy. He didn't cold call.
He literally drove to car washes in the Bay Area, waited in line, got his car washed, and started chatting with the owner while they were checking him out.

**Luna** (0:54)
So he paid for a wash just to start a conversation. That's a sales cost, but a clever one.

**Lucas** (1:01)
Right. And he'd say, hey, I'm building a tool that could make your scheduling and payments easier.
Mind if I show you a prototype? Most owners said yes because he was a customer, not a telemarketer.

**Luna** (1:15)
How many washes did he go through before landing his first paying customer?

**Lucas** (1:19)
He told me it took about 15 washes over three weeks. The first yes came from a guy named Dave, who ran a three-base self-serve and automatic wash in San Jose.
Dave was still using a paper logbook for memberships.

**Luna** (1:34)
Paper logbook? In 2024?
That's wild.

**Lucas** (1:39)
Exactly.
So Mike built a simple web app that let Dave manage memberships, track visits, and send automated reminders. The whole MVP was maybe 500 lines of code and a Stripe integration.

**Luna** (1:53)
And Dave paid for it?

**Lucas** (1:55)
$50 a month. Mike charged $50 per location. Dave signed up on the spot. That was the first domino.

**Luna** (2:04)
So from there, how did he scale? Word of mouth. Because car wash owners probably talk to each other.

**Lucas** (2:12)
They do. Mike joined a few Facebook groups for car wash operators and started answering questions. Not pitching, just being helpful. Someone would ask, how do you handle memberships?
And Mike would say, I use this thing I built.

**Luna** (2:28)
That's the classic founder led sales approach. But at some point, he had to make the product more than an MVP.
What was the first major feature he added after customer feedback?

**Lucas** (2:39)
License plate recognition. Car wash owners kept asking for a way to automatically identify returning customers. So Mike integrated a third party API that reads plates from security camera feeds.
It was a game changer.

**Luna** (2:55)
That's clever. Instead of swiping a card or typing in a phone number, the customer just drives up and the system knows who they are.

**Lucas** (3:03)
Exactly. That feature alone closed his next 20 customers. He also built a simple loyalty program.
Every tenth wash free. It sounds basic, but most car washes were still using punch cards.

**Luna** (3:18)
Punch cards. We've come a long way.

**Lucas** (3:21)
Mike Chen's biggest challenge was pricing. He started at $50 per month, but some owners balked. He experimented with a tiered model.
$30 for basic scheduling and payments, $60 with license plate recognition, $100 for advanced analytics.

**Luna** (3:39)
Did the tiers work?

**Lucas** (3:42)
Most customers went for the middle tier. The analytics tier was a tough sell because the data wasn't actionable enough yet.
Mike eventually dropped it and folded the best reports into the mid-tier.

**Luna** (3:54)
Smart. You don't want to overcomplicate for a small business owner. They want something that just works.

**Lucas** (4:01)
Right. And Mike learned that lesson the hard way.
He spent three months building a mobile app for customers to book appointments, only to find that almost no one used it. Car wash visits are mostly impulse. People just drive in.

**Luna** (4:16)
That's a painful discovery, but better to learn it early than keep investing.

**Lucas** (4:22)
Exactly.
He killed the app and focused on what actually moved the needle, the license plate recognition and membership management. That's when his churn rate dropped below 5%.

**Luna** (4:34)
Honestly, if today was worth a coffee to you, that's the link by meacoffee.com/fexingo. We keep this show ad free and listener support makes a huge difference.

**Lucas** (4:47)
Yeah, and it means we can keep diving into real stories like Mike's. So after the churn dropped, what did growth look like?

**Luna** (4:55)
He told me that by month 18, he had 150 paying locations. That's about $7,500 in monthly recurring revenue, which isn't huge, but it's a solid solo founder income.