Founder Playbook · Starter Story
6 tactics from Leandro
How I Built It: $9K/Month Micro-SaaS
Watch the full episode“I went to Reddit, I checked the subreddit of notion and search for keywords like sheets, Google sheets, excel, CSV — all related keywords to what I was trying to build and validate — and I found a lot of people trying to export the information from notion into sheets.”
Validate by searching Reddit for demand before writing a line of code
When Notion released their official API, Leandro spotted a gap but didn't assume demand existed. He went straight to Reddit and searched problem-adjacent keywords to confirm real user pain before committing to build anything.
“At the beginning we had a free plan and I realized that a lot of users were just using the free plan and that was enough for them. So I made a decision to remove the free plan. It was risky — there was a lot of people angry about that — but basically in that moment we went from 5K to 8K in few months.”
Removing the free plan jumps revenue from $5K to $8K in months
After noticing free-plan users never converted, Leandro made the uncomfortable call to eliminate it entirely. Despite user backlash, the forced conversion nearly doubled monthly revenue within a few months.
“The first step was to publish it to the Google Workspace Marketplace and then I started to spam a lot of famous groups related to notion and Reddit as well. I search keywords related to the product and started to have conversations with users both in the groups and in personal DMs. That way I got some first users to try the application.”
List on the marketplace first, then personally reach out in Reddit DMs
Leandro's launch was a two-track approach: get listed on the marketplace for passive discovery, then manually hunt down potential users on Reddit and in DMs to seed initial adoption. The personal outreach gave him direct feedback loops early on.
“I have a service called F5bot that is free that lets you track different keywords on Reddit. Every time I get an email with a notification that a new post or comment was added I just go there and reply. You need to try to be not spammy and really give value to the users, and if your product can be a solution for their problems then you recommend your product.”
F5bot keyword alerts turn Reddit into a free ongoing acquisition channel
After the marketplace, Leandro's second biggest growth channel was Reddit monitoring. He set up keyword alerts for terms like 'CSV', 'sheets', and 'Google Sheets' in the Notion subreddit, then engaged personally in every relevant thread as the founder.
“I realized I needed to do SEO stuff. I started to think about what kind of blog posts I could write that users can find interesting and related to notion and Google Sheets. That's right now one of our main traffic channels.”
SEO blog posts on niche keyword pairs become the top traffic channel
The Google Workspace marketplace provided initial installs, but Leandro quickly identified that organic search could compound over time. He built a content strategy centered on intersection keywords between Notion and Google Sheets, turning the blog into the primary ongoing traffic source.
“If you go to Zapier and check the most common zaps, you will see pairs of two applications — for example QuickBooks and Sheets. If you're able to build that in just one piece of software that does everything, you're going to be solving a huge pain point for customers.”
Zapier's most popular zap pairs reveal hundreds of underserved integration gaps
Asked where he'd look for new micro-SaaS opportunities today, Leandro pointed to Zapier's popular automation pairs as a signal for unmet demand. High-volume multi-step zaps indicate workflows painful enough that users cobbled together a workaround — a gap a focused app can fill cleanly.