When Mac Martine quit his job to start a SaaS company, he had no funding or team supporting him. His SaaS company Castanet, was a LinkedIn automated outreach tool that Mac bootstrapped as a solo founder.
Launching a successful automated messaging business seemed impossible. But rather than get overwhelmed, Mac broke his journey down into three manageable stages:
- Stage 1: Get the First 5 Customers
- Stage 2: Grow to 50 Customers
- Stage 3: Scale from $10k to $60 000 MRR
By relentlessly focusing on customer conversations and product-market fit, he grew Castanet to $60 000 in monthly recurring revenue with only $3k in expenses. After just two years, Mac sold Castanet for a life-changing sum.
This article tells Mac's story, providing a blueprint for SaaS success in three stages. Let's examine how he did it.
Mac Martine, founder of The SaaS Bootstrapper
Stage 1: Get the first 5 customers
When starting out, Mac leveraged his existing personal network to set up coffees with friends, acquaintances, and former colleagues. During these informal chats, he asked questions to understand their work processes and pain points. He took pages of notes, identifying customer problems to potentially solve.
These meetings served a dual purpose: learning about customer needs while organically strengthening personal relationships through one-on-one conversations. Mac finished each coffee by asking who else he should talk to. His attendees were happy to make introductions to colleagues and contacts.
This created a snowball effect, giving Mac warm introductions to set up further discovery conversations. Each new connection expanded his network. Within a few weeks, Mac had discussed his business ideas with over 50 warm leads without any cold outreach required. He identified the top customer pain points to target with his new product.
Mac spent the next four weeks rapidly building an MVP specifically designed to address the problems his conversations uncovered. This gave him something tangible to demo to prospective customers.
He re-engaged the most promising leads, giving personalized product demos tailored to their needs. By consistently providing value, Mac built enough trust and credibility to convert five paying customers from relationships started in earlier conversations.
Key takeaway: Use your existing network for warm introductions to have conversations uncovering customer needs. Build an MVP to address them and convert warm leads into initial customers.
Stage 2: Grow to 50 customers
The first five customers validated Mac's business model. Now it was time to refine product-market fit and build processes to scale. Mac expanded conversations to cold outreach, framing his messages as requests for product feedback rather than sales pitches. He offered free demos to anyone open to giving him advice.
This opened up conversations with strangers who became warmer leads after engaging. Mac continued having dozens of calls per week, gathering qualitative insights around messaging, positioning, pricing, and feature priorities.
He stayed fully hands-on with every new customer, onboarding them personally. This allowed Mac to observe how they actually used the product versus what they claimed was important. He optimized accordingly.
Mac ignored vanity metrics, focusing only on what customers paid for during this optimization phase. He sharpened his positioning and sales skills with every new conversation.
By customer 50, Mac had a clear product-market fit and an effective sales process documented. The SaaS was making approximately $10 000 per month and was ready to scale.
Key takeaway: Stay hands-on through customer 50 to refine product-market fit before scaling. Cold outreach and free demos help expand your market.
Stage 3: Scaling from $10,000 to $60,000 MRR
The first two stages were successful — Mac had a proven product and business model. Revenue grew steadily thanks to his hustle. But to truly scale, he needed leverage. As a solo founder, there were only so many hours in the day.
Mac realized he could massively grow distribution by enlisting partners to sell his product for him in return for commissions. He created affiliate and reseller programs, providing anyone interested with marketing collateral, demo access, and discounted product tiers to sell to their network.
This incentivized partners to close deals on Mac's behalf, operating essentially as freelance salespeople. They had a financial upside without any salary expense for Mac.
Soon he had an army of resellers and affiliates actively promoting his SaaS product across the internet. His job became supporting them rather than doing all the selling himself. When Mac eventually sold his business two years later, affiliate sales drove a staggering 76% of his $60 000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Key takeaway: Affiliate programs and reseller partnerships provide exponential growth through leveraged distribution. They minimize staffing costs while maximizing revenue.
Mac's results: 0 to $60,000 MRR in 3 Stages
By breaking his journey into three stages, Mac Martine was able to bootstrap a $60 000/month SaaS business as a solo founder and sold it for 7 figures in 2 years. Here are the 3 key stages he went through:
- Stage 1: Got first 5 customers through relationships
- Stage 2: Grew to 50 customers by optimizing product-market fit
- Stage 3: Scaled to $60 000 MRR with affiliates/resellers
Now Mac didn't get this right out of the gate, he had to figure it out as he was building. He started with no connections in his target space. Through consistent relationship building and customer conversations, Mac built a successful business from scratch. You can adopt this same three-stage framework to grow your own SaaS company. Focus on genuinely solving customer problems — the rest will follow.
