How a Solo Founder Built SaaS for Auto Repair Shops

**Lucas** (0:01)
There are roughly 275,000 independent auto repair shops in the US. Most of them still run on paper logs, white bards and the owner's memory.

**Fexingo** (0:12)
That sounds like a SaaS opportunity hiding in plain sight.

**Lucas** (0:17)
That's exactly what John thought.
He was a mechanic for 12 years before he wrote a single line of code. In 2022, he launched GarageFlow, a scheduling and inventory platform built specifically for independent shops.

**Fexingo** (0:32)
And he didn't have a co-founder or any outside funding.

**Lucas** (0:37)
Bootstrapped from day one, he taught himself to code at night while still working at the shop.
The first version was just a shared calendar with SMS reminders. He showed it to the shop owner he worked for, who said, if you add parts tracking, I'll pay you $50 a month.

**Fexingo** (0:55)
So, he built exactly what one customer asked for. That's the classic solo founder playbook.

**Lucas** (1:02)
Exactly. He built the inventory module over a weekend. That shop became his first customer. Then he cold emailed every other shop within a 50-mile radius.
Out of 300 emails, he got six replies and two demos.

**Fexingo** (1:19)
Two demos. That's a conversion rate under 1%.
Most people would give up.

**Lucas** (1:25)
But those two demos turned into customers. And then he did something smart.
He went to a local auto trade show, rented a booth and ran live demos on a laptop. He signed up 18 shops that weekend.

**Fexingo** (1:39)
The trade show play, direct contact with a skeptical business owner. I imagine auto shop owners aren't the easiest sell.

**Lucas** (1:47)
They're not. They've been burned by expensive software that's too complex. John's pitch was simple.
You already know how to run your shop. I'm just giving you a digital clipboard. No training required.

**Fexingo** (2:01)
That's a strong value prop. Let's talk numbers. What's GarageFlow's pricing?

**Lucas** (2:07)
$99 a month for up to three techs. That includes scheduling, inventory, customer history, and text-based appointment reminders. No contract.

**Fexingo** (2:19)
And how many shops does he have now, mid-2026?

**Lucas** (2:24)
Just over 200
Mostly in the Midwest. He's never spent a dollar on ads. It's all word of mouth and trade shows. His churn rate is under 3% per month. Incredibly low for a SaaS targeting small businesses.

**Fexingo** (2:39)
That churn number suggests he's solving a real pain point. What's the biggest lesson from his journey so far?

**Lucas** (2:47)
He told me the biggest lesson was to sell the workflow, not the features. Early on, he tried to demo every button in the app.
Now he just asks, what part of your day is the most frustrating? Then he shows how GarageFlow fixes that one thing. Everything else is secondary.

**Fexingo** (3:06)
That's something any founder building for a non-tech audience can learn from. By the way, if today's conversation is useful for what you're building or running, it stays ad-free because of listener support.

**Lucas** (3:18)
Yeah, we keep this show clean of ads. If you get value from episodes like this, you can toss a few dollars our way at buymeacoffee.com/fexingo.
It genuinely helps us keep going.

**Fexingo** (3:31)
Appreciate you being part of that. So John, any plans to expand beyond auto repair?

**Lucas** (3:37)
He stayed laser focused. He says there are still 30,000 independent shops within a day's drive of his home base.
He wants to capture even 2% of those before he even thinks about adjacent verticals like motorcycle or marine shops.

**Fexingo** (3:53)
That's a solid tam. And his margins must be healthy at $99 per shop with no paid marketing.

**Lucas** (4:00)
Gross margins are around 85%.
His only real cost is server hosting and a part-time support person. He's on track to hit $150,000 in annual recurring revenue by the end of this year.

**Fexingo** (4:15)
For a solo founder who learned to code at 34, that's impressive. What's his advice for others trying to break into a niche?

**Lucas** (4:23)
He says, don't start with the software. Start with the job. Work in that industry if you can or at least shadow someone for a week.
Understand the pain so deeply that the software becomes obvious.

**Fexingo** (4:37)
That's the opposite of the build it and they will come mentality. And it clearly works.

**Lucas** (4:44)
When you've personally felt the pain of a paper-based system failing on a busy Saturday, you don't build features that look good in a demo. You build features that save you 10 minutes on every job.

**Fexingo** (4:55)
So where does GarageFlow go from here? Any next feature you know about?

**Lucas** (5:00)
He's working on a mobile app that lets techs log hours and parts straight from the bay.