How a Solo Founder Built SaaS Selling to Dog Daycares

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, there are about 15,000 dog daycares in the United States. That's not a huge market, but it's big enough to build a nice, quiet, seven-figure SaaS business on, which is exactly what today's founder did.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:15)
Dog daycare. That's one we haven't covered. How did someone end up in that niche?

**Fexingo** (0:21)
The founder's name is Matt. He was a software engineer at a mid-sized company, and he had a golden retriever named Gus.
He took Gus to a local daycare, and he noticed the owner was still using a whiteboard and a paper calendar to track reservations. Dogs in, dogs out, vaccination records, billing, all manual.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:42)
The whiteboard approach. I've seen it at my own dog's daycare. It looks chaotic.

**Fexingo** (0:48)
It is. And Matt saw an opportunity.
He asked the owner if she'd be interested in a simple web app to manage it all. She said yes, and he built version one in about three weeks using a basic stack, Ruby on Rails, a simple database, Stripe for payments.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
Three weeks?
That's fast. Was it any good?

**Fexingo** (1:08)
It was minimal. Basically, a calendar where you could add a dog for a day, mark vaccination status, and generate an invoice. No mobile app, no fancy reporting. But it solved the core problem.
The owner could see at a glance who was coming in and whether their shots were up to date.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:27)
And that first customer, she actually paid for it?

**Fexingo** (1:31)
She paid $30 a month. And after three months, Matt realized there might be a real business here. So he quit his job. He had about six months of runway saved up and started reaching out to other daycares.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:45)
How did he find them? There's no Yelp category for dog daycare software buyers.

**Fexingo** (1:51)
He used Google Maps. He searched dog daycare near me in 50 different cities, visited their websites, and if they didn't have online booking, he sent a cold email.
Short, personal, referencing their specific location. He sent about 200 emails and got 12 replies. Six signed up.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:11)
Six new customers at 30 bucks a month. That's not a lot, but it's a start.

**Fexingo** (2:17)
Exactly. And those six became his first case studies.
He then raised his price to $49 a month for new customers, grandfathering the early ones and started getting referrals. One daycare owner posted in a Facebook group for pet care businesses and that drove about 30 signups over the next two months.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:38)
So the Facebook group was his real marketing channel. That's a pattern we've seen before. Find where your customers already hang out.

**Fexingo** (2:46)
Right. He never spent a dollar on ads.
He just participated in those groups, answered questions, and sometimes people would ask what software he used. He'd say, I built this thing and share a link. It was that organic.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:01)
What about the actual product? Did he keep building features?

**Fexingo** (3:05)
He added a few things based on requests.
A simple customer portal where owners could see their dogs photos from the day, and a waitlist feature for peak days like holidays. But he was careful not to overbuild. He said no to feature requests that only one customer wanted. The philosophy was, if 10 customers ask for it, I'll build it. If one asks, I'll listen but probably won't code.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:32)
That's hard for a lot of founders. The temptation to please every customer is strong.

**Fexingo** (3:38)
It is, but Matt knew his limits. He was a solo founder with no employees. If he added too many features, he'd drown in support.
So he kept the product simple and the scope tight.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:51)
And the revenue? Where did it settle?

**Fexingo** (3:54)
By the end of year two, he had about 400 customers. At $49 a month average, that's roughly $20,000 a month in recurring revenue.
Not life-changing for a Silicon Valley founder, but more than enough for a solo developer living in a Midwestern city.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:12)
240,000 a year, and he's the only employee. That's a great lifestyle business.

**Fexingo** (4:19)
And he's still solo.
He told me he gets the occasional email from venture capitalists who find him through Crunchbase, but he's not interested. He said, and I quote, I don't want to manage a team. I want to write code and talk to customers. That's my happy place.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:37)
There's something refreshing about that. Not every business needs to be a unicorn, a sustainable, profitable business that serves a real need. That's a win.

**Fexingo** (4:47)
A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps shows like this and tools like Matt's going. If you've gotten something out of hearing these stories, buy me at coffee.com/fexingohelpsuskeep the lights on, no ads, just listener support.