Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Lucas Herman
This App Makes $25,000/Month
Watch the full episode“I'm building it for people that are in a 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?”
Validate On A Hidden Niche Subreddit With A Free Link And No Price
Lucas validated his timer app by hunting down a small, hidden video-production subreddit and posting a single 'try it out and give feedback' link with no price attached. Removing the pricing signal made it feel like genuine feedback-seeking rather than a sales pitch, and his rule was always one post per subreddit, never spam.
“my first MVP it had like basically just one feature which was click on a button here and a timer starts counting over there I'm use all the technologies I already know I use JavaScript I use Vue.js I use NodeJS... 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 and it was good because I could I could ship my MVP in 3 days”
Ship The MVP In 3 Days By Using Only Tech You Already Know
Lucas built the first version of Stage Timer in three days by deliberately sticking to JavaScript, Vue.js, and Node.js — tools he already knew. He skipped trendy new tech because learning unknowns would have cost weeks of side-project evenings.
“I was in my friend's studio and he used this very old flash app on a on an old laptop and he remote controls everything from his nice table and then to start a timer he has to get up walk into the other room and hit a button and walk back and my web developer mind immediately says surely there's a better way... you find that they waste hours and they do things in the most awkward ways that you would have automated long ago these are the really the simple ideas that you can turn into a lot of money”
Find Million-Dollar SaaS Ideas By Watching People Do Their Job Awkwardly
The stage timer idea came from watching a friend in a studio physically walk into another room to press start on an old flash app. Lucas's framework for finding more million-dollar niches: go observe non-developers doing their jobs and look for the awkward manual workarounds they've never thought to automate.
“we have a niche tool right very niche a niche small enough that most big companies wouldn't really bother with it but for us as solarpreneurs perfect and I decided we will see if we can grab stuff that people are already doing in our niche and then combine our tool with it so if you uh look for countdown timer stream deck companions we uh created a documentation page that shows very precisely how you use our tool together with this integration for this physical device we also created a video and put it on YouTube”
Win Hyper-Specific SEO By Combining Your Tool With Tools Your Niche Already Uses
Lucas drives 50% of his traffic from Google by writing documentation pages and YouTube videos that combine his tool with adjacent products people in his niche already use, like Stream Deck. These hyper-specific keywords have low search volume but extremely high purchase intent because searchers have a concrete problem and want a solution.
“this is a a super niche keyword the way we find these keywords is we put up documentation put up articles and then we look with a sense for what do people actually click on and then double down”
Publish Documentation Broadly, Then Double Down On Whatever Actually Gets Clicked
Rather than upfront keyword research, Lucas publishes documentation and articles broadly, then watches which pages get clicks and doubles down on those topics. This let-the-data-speak approach surfaces the high-intent niche queries that big competitors ignore.
“I wanted to be like Dropbox you know Dropbox you create it and then it says oh you want to have 5 GB more space you know share share the link with a friend have them sign up and I thought how can I integrate this into my own app it's called product le growth and I just made sure every single link that people share my logo is on it and not only is my logo just like a picture it's it has the name stage timer.io in the logo it's like literally written there and it's a name easy enough to remember that people often just see it even tell us oh I saw it on an event”
Bake Your Full Domain Into The Logo On Every Shared Artifact
About a third of Lucas's customers come from word of mouth because he engineered every shareable artifact to carry his brand. His logo appears on every shared link, and crucially the logo itself contains the full domain 'stagetimer.io' as readable text, so even passive viewers at events remember the name and look it up later.
“we make it a premium model by doing this we capture a lot of freelancers that work in this space and they bring it along to the events that they invited and somebody says ah we need a timer so they say ah let me just pull up stage timer they pull it up it works so well people are really excited eventually they want to use it for the next event hit some kind of limit and say ah it's it's worth it let's let's purchase it happens very often so having a free tier works really well for us”
Freemium Wedges Freelancers In Live At Events Until They Hit A Limit
Lucas runs a freemium model where freelancers pull up the free tool on-site at events, get excited, hit a limit on the next event, and then upgrade. The free tier doubles as a distribution wedge into a niche where the tool gets demoed live.
“I could ship my MVP in 3 days and then build upon it slowly and 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 business a side project it took me 224 days to actually get my first dollar and that's totally okay it grew from there”
224 Days To Your First Dollar Is Totally Fine For A Side Project
After shipping in three days, Lucas grew the product in one-hour evening sessions while keeping his day job. It took 224 days to earn his first dollar — a timeline he frames as completely fine for a side project compounding into a real business.