Introduction
how to grow a SaaS to $25,000 per month — In this Q&A, Lucas Herman shares how he built StageTimer.io into a $25,000/month SaaS with a simple countdown timer, validated on Reddit, shipped an MVP in 3 days, and scaled through niche SEO and product-led growth.
Founder Success Story QnA
Tell me about who you are and what’s your story.
I’m Lucas Herman. I’m a software developer from Germany. I turned a simple idea into a SaaS business and eventually was able to quit my job and work full-time. I’m a solopreneur and I built this business with my wife and a child. We have reached 25,000 revenue per month and we have a total of 20,000 users that are using our app. 4,400 of those are paying or have paid at any point in time. And we’re getting 86,000 unique visitors per month.
Before we get into what your app does, how did you validate the idea and get your first customers?
So, I did it on Reddit. I’m building something for people that I don’t know. I’m building it for people that are in the video production industry. Where are they? Where do they hang out? I’m looking for a subreddit. It took me quite a while to actually find one. These are quite hidden. These are very small niche stuff. And I think, you know what? Let me post it here. So, I put a link in here and I say, “Hey, try it out. Give me some feedback. What do you think? Is this useful to you?” And you can see people make literally lists that they tell me, “No, do this. Do this. I’ve been waiting for such an app.” Because there’s no price attached to it on the website, it’s also not he just wants to have our money. It works really well. And then the other thing is I don’t spam it. So, one post per subreddit.
Let’s talk about the MVP. What did you build first and what tools did you use?
My first MVP had basically just one feature which was click on a button here and a timer starts counting over there. I use all the technologies I already know. I use JavaScript, Vue.js, Node.js. Vercel was new at the time and I just didn’t know it and I didn’t use it. If I would have used new unknown technologies, I would have had to learn them, understand them, find out they have limitations I didn’t know before. It was good because I could ship my MVP in 3 days and then build upon it slowly and comfortably in the 1 hour that I had in the evening, instead of building on it for 3 months just to have something that is usable. And then because it was a side project, it took me 224 days to actually get my first dollar. And that’s totally okay. It grew from there.
How did the family business aspect come together?
After I earned the first dollar and we had our first customers, I thought, well, there’s also marketing we need to do and we need to answer these customer service emails. My wife didn’t want to do her old job anymore, teaching. I said, why don’t you join me? Why don’t you learn marketing and take over these parts of the business? She was really excited about it. She learned quickly. Now she does Google Ads, all the sales emails, all the customer support emails, and we have amazing support. People are really happy with it. And I do the product, the finances, the development and kind of the overall direction, like CEO work. Sometimes we walk over the street and talk about how we grow StageTimer, or we just look at any business and think about these business terms together. It’s really fun and makes for a lot of great conversations.
Tell us about your background and timeline to going full-time.
My first development job was in 2007. I was in high school and built HTML pages. In 2017, I started studying. My father really wanted me to have a paper, so I did. At the same time, I started freelancing. I wanted to know how it is to have your own business as a developer. I got into a startup. In 2020 I had my degree, but my mind was like how can I build my own product. Shortly after November 2020, first commit for StageTimer. I built the MVP and a few days later I posted on Reddit. By 2022 my wife encouraged me, hey why don’t you quit because StageTimer was already making enough money to get by, about 3,000 a month. So I did quit, thanks to her. By September 2023, we reached a 10K monthly revenue mark.
How have you driven signups and grown to over $25,000 MRR?
We have about 50% of our traffic from Google and then a third from people recommending our tool to others. We did a lot of work so people want to talk about us or inadvertently share our tool. We have a niche tool, small enough that most big companies wouldn’t bother. We grabbed stuff people already do in our niche and combined our tool with it. For example, for “countdown timer stream deck companions” we created a documentation page that shows precisely how to use our tool with this integration for this physical device. We also created a video and put it on YouTube. It doesn’t have many views, but people who search have a concrete problem and want a solution. They find you and are much more likely to purchase. It’s a super niche keyword. We put up documentation and articles, then look at what people click on and double down.
About a third of customers come from word of mouth. How?
From the beginning I wanted to be like Dropbox. I thought, how can I integrate this into my own app? It’s called product-led growth. I made sure every single link that people share my logo is on it. Not only is my logo just a picture—it’s the name stagetimer.io in the logo. It’s easy to remember. People tell us, “I saw it at an event and used it.” The other way is the freemium model. We capture a lot of freelancers in this space and they bring it to events. Somebody says we need a timer; they pull up StageTimer. It works so well, people are excited, then they hit a limit and say it’s worth it. Let’s purchase. It happens very often. The free tier works really well for us.
What tools and languages do you use to build and run the business?
As a developer I use JavaScript, Vue.js, Node.js. For coding, copy-pasting into cloud and generating code there is literally faster than integrated IDEs like Cursor or Copilot for me. One tool I love is Airtable. We use it as a CRM. It works incredibly well. It’s like a big Excel sheet with all our customers in it, and you can do automations on top. On top of this, we use Postmark to send out emails. I’m a big fan of Postmark. It’s an email sending platform made for solopreneurs. These are really the bread-and-butter tools that I’m using for StageTimer.
Your business makes $25,000 MRR. What does it cost to run?
SaaS businesses are very cheap to run. We have server and infrastructure cost of 280 a month. Then we spend 250 on tools and services—Airtable, Postmark, all of this together. Then we spend 1,400 on paid ads. The profit margin is 80% or higher, like between 80 and 90%.
What does your app do and why do people pay for it?
This is the app. Imagine you are on a TED talk and you have the speaker on stage and they want to know how much time is left. You put this in front of them. On my computer I have the control interface and I can click start and it starts counting. I can also show messages like, “Hold your microphone closer.” It’s much easier to communicate than holding up a paper sign. People ask, “Why would I pay for this? I can use a timer on my iPhone.” When I built it I thought no way this is going to make a lot of money. Then people started paying and we understood that in real-life events and video productions, people need this all the time. TV broadcasts time every speaker. We had horse races buy it. Almost everybody needs a timer and the iPhone timer won’t cut it. You need something where one person clicks start and five other people can see it.
How did you find the idea to create a timer app?
It was a bit of an accident. I was in my friend’s studio and he used a very old Flash app on an old laptop. He remote-controls everything from his table, and to start a timer he has to get up, walk into the other room, hit a button, and walk back. My web developer mind immediately says surely there’s a better way. If you go to any other business and observe people doing their job, you find they waste hours and do things in awkward ways you would have automated long ago. These are the simple ideas you can turn into a lot of money.
What’s a key lesson you learned building this?
There’s more opportunities out there than we think. There are so many solutions that still have interfaces from 1999. Ugly to use. People complain about it all the time, especially outside the developer bubble. I believe there are so many $1 million niches with little apps you can build. The only hard thing is to find them. Once you find them, it’s a great opportunity to build a simple app.
If you could go back to when you shipped the MVP, what advice would you give yourself?
I would tell myself, Lucas, you’re a German. You’re scared of regulation. You’re scared of the tax man coming to you and saying you’ve done everything wrong. But I would tell him this is not the case. Just get started. There’s a way even in this country to build a simple business, scale it up, and understand how it works. Everybody is just getting by somewhere and you can do it too.
Lucas Herman Method
Here’s how Lucas Herman did it, step-by-step, focusing on shipping fast, validating with users, and compounding with product-led growth.
- Validated in niche subreddits with a feedback-first, no-pricing approach.
- Shipped a 3-day MVP using familiar stack: JavaScript, Vue.js, Node.js.
- Used freemium and shareable links with embedded StageTimer.io branding for virality.
Lucas Herman Tools
He keeps the stack simple to move fast: build with known web tech, run operations with a lightweight CRM, and automate communications. Below are the core tools and why he uses them.
- Airtable as CRM for customers plus automations to streamline ops.
- Postmark for reliable transactional emails suited for solopreneurs.
- Google Ads for targeted acquisition to complement SEO and word of mouth.
Key Notes
Focusing on a niche, solving a concrete workflow pain, and doubling down on integrations and documentation created a steady stream of high-intent users.
- Niche SEO: integration guides and docs for high-intent keywords.
- Freelancer-led adoption via freemium drives event-based virality.
- Lean costs: 80–90% profit margins with minimal infrastructure.
Get Started in Just 5 Steps
Apply Lucas’s playbook to your own idea by validating where users hang out and shipping a minimal version fast.
- Find niche communities (Reddit, forums) and ask for feedback with a free prototype.
- Ship an MVP in days using tech you already know.
- Create integration docs and videos targeting super-niche keywords.
- Embed brand cues in shareable links to power product-led growth.
- Layer freemium limits to convert high-intent, recurring use cases.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering how to grow a SaaS to $25,000 per month, Lucas Herman shows that a simple tool, validated in a niche, shipped fast, and supported by product-led growth and targeted SEO, can scale profitably with a tiny team.