Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Thomas
I Make $60K/Month From the Most Boring SaaS on the Internet
Watch the full episode“We launched the product completely free. It gained a lot of traction quickly and some loved the product, some gave us really good feedback and there were some people that were just downright rude”
Launch Free on Reddit First to Turn Skeptics Into Product Designers
Rather than a polished paid launch, Thomas dropped Packager on Reddit for free to get real-world signal fast. The harsh comments stung but surfaced genuine product gaps; the positive feedback confirmed the pain was real. This zero-cost Reddit launch crowdsourced a QA cycle and generated early word-of-mouth in the tightly-knit IT admin community where trust travels through peer recommendations.
“Step four is to charge early even if the price is low. We charged during the beta and I guess that really validated that customers were willing to pay. There's no point chasing that idea if in the early stages no one's willing to pay for it.”
Charge During Beta to Prove Willingness to Pay Early
Rather than running a long free beta and hoping for eventual conversion, Thomas introduced a $25/month subscription right after stabilizing the MVP. The first paid notification on his phone was a concrete signal that the product solved a real problem worth money. Charging early filters tire-kickers and surfaces the truth about demand before you invest months of further development.
“Partnering with people who specialize in the product. So for us that was Microsoft MVPs. They would create demos of the product which was a highly targeted audience. Someone could stumble across it 2 years later and become a customer.”
Partner With Niche Influencers to Plant Long-Tail Marketing Seeds
Instead of broad advertising, Thomas seeded product demos through Microsoft MVPs — credible insiders whose content surfaces in niche search results years later. Each demo video functions as a long-lived acquisition channel that keeps paying back long after the collaboration cost. This 'plant seeds' framing reframes marketing spend as an investment with compounding ROI rather than a recurring expense.
“I started looking on forums and I noticed there were a lot of other IT admins that had the exact same problem.”
Look for Pain Points in Forums Before Building Anything
Thomas didn't start with a clever idea — he started with a real complaint he personally experienced at work, then cross-referenced it against forum conversations to confirm he wasn't alone. This community-based validation gave him confidence that a market existed before he wrote a single line of code. The pattern: live inside the problem, then find others who share it.
“While they fight over the huge markets there's always an opportunity to target the smaller audiences that want something different.”
Target the Overlooked Niche Your Competitors Are Ignoring
Thomas deliberately avoided competing for enterprise customers with millions of devices and instead focused on smaller businesses with 100 to 500 devices. This niche was large enough to build a full-time business but small enough that bigger vendors ignored it, leaving him with low competition and loyal customers. The enterprise-vs-SMB gap is a reliable place to find underserved buyers.
“to the outside world it's really boring, but I was living and breathing Microsoft Intune”
Scratch Your Own Itch in the Domain You Already Live and Breathe
Thomas found his idea not by browsing trend lists but by noticing a recurring pain he experienced daily as an IT admin — application packaging taking up to an hour per app. Because he had deep domain credibility, he could see exactly what competitors were missing and build something that felt right to practitioners. Building in an area you already inhabit removes the need to fake expertise and lets product intuition replace guesswork.
“I assume it's really low churn. It's IT admins and people using this stuff inside of companies is extremely low churn.”
Build for Boring B2B Niches to Guarantee Structurally Low Churn
The founder observes that IT admin tooling sold to companies has structural retention advantages: procurement inertia, workflow dependency, and the absence of casual users means churn is inherently low. Choosing a niche where the product becomes embedded in a company's daily operations is itself a retention strategy before a single customer churns. B2B boring beats B2C exciting for retention.
“We focused on running things with small costs. That means that the income that we make is ours and we've been able to work from home and we've been able to have work life balance.”
Optimize for Freedom and Low Costs Rather Than Blitzscaling
Instead of chasing VC-scale growth, Thomas deliberately kept the team tiny and overhead minimal so that gross revenue closely matched take-home income. At $60K/month with a small team, the business funds a lifestyle rather than feeding a machine. This 'optimize for freedom' framing reframes success away from headcount and valuation toward personal agency — a mental model that often produces more durable, profitable companies.