Indie Maker With 22K Users and $1M+ Revenue Shares His First-100-Customers Playbook
kylegawley · x · 2026-09-22
Responding to "Claude killed SaaS", veteran founder Kyle Gawley says he owns products with 22,000 users and $1M+ revenue — "I own a brush but we still pay a maid." He launched a free 5-day email playbook, Get Your First 100 Paid Users, drawing on 15 years of building VC-funded and bootstrapped companies:
- Pre-selling 7 users before writing a single line of code
- A DM opener with a 90% response rate
- How he landed Jason Calacanis as a customer
- A magazine article that brought 100 users overnight
- The growth channels that scaled his products from 0 to 22,000 users
His takeaway: demand for software persists even in the AI era — the challenge is reaching your first 100 paying users.
Related event: Indie Developer Shares 15 Years of SaaS Growth, Rebuts "AI Killed SaaS"(3 posts)→
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