Hitting $125k MRR as a solo founder by doubling down on the right segment - Indie Hackers

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CompanyZigpollFounderJason ZigelbaumRevenue$125K a month

Jason Zigelbaum saw a gap and filled it, funding the build with his savings and revenue from another app. It took two years to get traction, but then, he doubled down on a specific segment. Now, he's at $125k MRR — and he's solo.<br>Here's Jason on how he did it. 👇

The tool he wished he'd built<br>Before building Zigpoll, I built a couple of SaaS products. Shopify absorbed one of them (an app called Metafields Manager), and I sold the other, so I needed a reliable income.<br>I grew up in e-commerce, mostly on the agency side, and for years, I watched brands pour money into ads and analytics to understand what was happening on their stores, then guess at the crucial part — why people did what they did. Analytics could tell them a cart was abandoned, but never why. This gap between measurable data and essential insights bothered me enough that I eventually built the tool I wished we'd had internally.<br>That tool is Zigpoll. It's a survey and customer feedback platform, built initially for e-commerce, but now also used by many SaaS teams. It offers post-purchase, exit-intent, and CRO surveys — questions that capture a customer at the exact moment they will answer honestly. One question on a thank-you page ("What almost stopped you from buying?") can teach more than a $15K CRO audit, and it does so for free, forever.<br>I run the company solo: no cofounder, no funding, no sales team. It took about two years to get traction, but it has doubled in revenue every year since. I started 2026 with about $1.03M ARR and am closing June around $125K MRR, roughly a $1.5M run rate. This represents about a 44% increase in the first half of the year. That's nearly half a million dollars of new annual revenue added in six months, achieved solo.<br>My current goal is $2M ARR, which means adding about $43K more per month.

Funding himself<br>Building Zigpoll cost far more time than money. I'm technical, so I built the first version of Zigpoll myself with a code editor, not a budget. Nights and weekends were the real currency. I've never taken outside money. I took no VC, no angel, and had no cofounder to split equity or decisions with. That was a deliberate choice as much as a circumstance. I'd spent enough time around other people's businesses to know I wanted one that was fully mine, one I could change on a Tuesday afternoon without asking permission.<br>Meanwhile, my other app supported me, requiring only a couple of hours per week. When you're a solo developer, your main cost is the income you're not earning while you build, and I funded that gap myself rather than diluting to cover it. Just a product I thought should exist, and enough runway in my own savings to find out if anyone agreed.

Validating and pivoting<br>The most helpful factor wasn't a tool; it was the vantage point. My agency background meant I'd already watched dozens of e-commerce brands hit the exact same wall, so I wasn't guessing at the problem.<br>I built the tool, then used the tool to validate and iterate. My customers' answers, rather than my own opinion, informed almost every good roadmap decision I've made. That's a cheap way to build when you're one person, because you're not spending months guessing. You ship the small thing forty people asked for, they stick around, and it compounds.<br>In fact, the original idea did not focus on post-purchase surveys, but as demand emerged, I leaned into that use case. The same pattern repeated for exit-intent, conversion rate optimization, and order delivery surveys.

A reliable stack<br>Here's the stack:<br>JavaScript from front to back

Express + Mongo on the backend

React on the frontend

As the scale increased, I leaned into using Redis as a caching layer, but the stack is very stable.

Being a solo developer, it's important to lean into reliable third-party tools whenever you can. These tools save a ton of time, and if you choose your spots well, they can save a ton of money too.

Pricing and expansion<br>Zigpoll is a straightforward SaaS subscription. Customers pay monthly, and plans are tiered by the number of survey responses they collect. Because I run the entire operation solo, without a team, office, or sales floor, margins are what you'd expect from a software business with one employee. Real costs include infrastructure, business tools, and some paid acquisition. That's the quiet advantage of staying solo: the model expands faster than the cost base.<br>Pricing is a product surface, not a one-time launch decision. I redesigned mine several times, and each version taught me something a spreadsheet never would have.<br>But I'd say the biggest unlock wasn't a price increase; instead, I noticed which customers naturally expanded and then deliberately built for them. Find the segment that grows when you serve them well, and pour your energy there.<br>As far as chrun, it exists, as it does for...