How a Solo Founder Built SaaS Selling to Car Washes

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, Luna, I've been digging into a solo founder story that I think hits a really sweet spot for anyone thinking about their first sass. There's a guy, let's call him Mark, who built a platform for car washes.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
Car washes? Like the ones with the spinning brushes and the little vacuum stations?

**Fexingo** (0:20)
Exactly those. And the key detail is that most small and medium sized car washes, not the massive chains, but the standalone ones with maybe one or two bays, they're still running on paper logs or really basic point-of-sale systems that can't handle things like monthly memberships, dynamic pricing for off-peak hours, or fleet accounts for local businesses.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
So a classic underserved niche. How did Mark get into this?

**Fexingo** (0:43)
He was a software engineer building internal tools for a logistics company, and on weekends he'd take his car to a local wash. He got to chatting with the owner, who mentioned that managing memberships was a nightmare.
He had a binder full of handwritten cards for unlimited wash customers, and he had no way to track who was actually coming in more than once a month.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
A binder? In 2026?

**Fexingo** (1:07)
Right. So Mark asked if he could build a simple web app to digitize that. The owner said yeah, and Mark spent about three weekends hacking together a prototype with a basic database and a payment integration. That was his first customer, and it cost him nothing but time.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:24)
And that prototype turned into a real product?

**Fexingo** (1:28)
Over about 18 months. He quit his job after the first six months, when he had four car washes paying him a flat monthly fee.
Today, he's at 47 locations, all solo, no employees, and he's doing about $12,000 a month in recurring revenue.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:45)
47 locations is a pretty solid niche. How did he find them, especially in the beginning?

**Fexingo** (1:51)
His first three came from literally walking into car washes near his apartment. He'd go in, ask for the owner, and say he had a tool that could save them time on billing. He said about half of the owners he approached were interested enough to give him a demo.
The conversion from demo to paid was around 30%.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:11)
That's a pretty high conversion rate for Cold Walk-Ins. What was his pitch?

**Fexingo** (2:16)
He focused on the pain of managing unlimited wash memberships. A lot of car washes offer a $20 to $30 monthly unlimited plan, but they have no way to enforce it.
People share cards or the attendant just waves them through if they recognize the face. Mark system tied each membership to a license plate, so the attendant just types in the plate, and the system shows whether the membership is active.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:42)
So it solved fraud and also gave the owner data on how often members actually come.

**Fexingo** (2:48)
Exactly, that data turned out to be really valuable. Owners discovered that heavy users, people who came more than four times a month, were only about 15% of members, but they accounted for a disproportionate amount of wear and tear. So Mark added a feature.
You could set a limit on washes per month or offer a tiered membership where a higher price gets you unlimited, while a lower one gives you, say, two washes a month.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:15)
So he gave them the tools to segment their customer base without needing a CRM.
Smart. What about pricing for his own product?

**Fexingo** (3:23)
He went with a flat monthly fee of $99 per location, regardless of how many cars go through. He considered per wash transaction fees like how square charges per swipe, but he decided that would make his customers nervous. They don't want to feel like they're being nickel and dimed. Flat fee feels predictable and it aligns his incentive with theirs.
He only wins if they stay subscribed, so he has to keep delivering value.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:49)
That makes sense for a niche SaaS where the total addressable market is small. You don't want to scare off customers with variable costs. Did he ever consider other pricing models?

**Fexingo** (4:00)
He did. He tested a per location plus per member fee, but found it complicated his sales pitch. Owners would ask, how much if I have 200 members versus 50?
And the conversation got bogged down. The flat fee lets him say, it's $99 a month. That's it. And for a car wash doing maybe 30 to 50 cars a day, $99 is less than the cost of one wash package.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:27)
Which brings up an interesting point.
He's selling to businesses that often have low tech literacy.