Indie Founder Breaks Down How He Got 22k Users and $1M+ Revenue, Starting With 7 Pre-Sales
kylegawley · x · 2026-09-15
Kyle Gawley, with 15 years building software and $1M+ revenue from 22,000 users, shares his customer acquisition playbook:
- Pre-sold 7 paying users before writing a line of code.
- A DM opener that gets a 90% response rate.
- Landed Jason Calacanis as a customer; a magazine article brought 100 users overnight.
- Packages it in a free 5-day email playbook on going from 0 to 22,000 users.
His closing observation cuts against indie SaaS pricing: "Everyone will pay $200/mo for Claude to avoid paying $19/mo for a SaaS" — a useful signal on how developers position products against AI subscriptions.
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