Mike Strives, the founder of the Zero to SaaS community is someone who starts and runs multiple businesses. He has been doing this specifically in the software industry for more than 15 years. Throughout his career, he has experienced both successes and failures, and as a result, he has gained a lot of valuable knowledge in validating ideas, launching products, and growing companies.
His most recent project is called Upvoty. Upvoty is a tool that helps product teams manage feedback from users. It allows teams to collect, organize, and take action on the feedback they receive.
Upvoty started as a small project that Mike worked on in his spare time. He tested the idea to make sure it was worth pursuing, then launched an MVP version of the product. By listening to early customers and continuously improving the product, Upvoty quickly gained popularity and grew.
Today, Upvoty is a successful business that generates over $52,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). It has helped hundreds of customers improve their products by providing actionable insights from users.
In this article, we will take a closer look at Mike's journey with Upvoty, starting from the initial idea generation to scaling the business by following customer feedback. If you want to learn how to grow a SaaS tool by listening to user feedback, then this article is for you.
Mike Strives
Backstory
Mike has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. From a young age, he enjoyed taking on creative projects, whether designing websites for local businesses or launching small e-commerce stores. This paved the way for him to pursue a career in software development and starting companies full-time over 15 years ago.
His earliest projects included an online marketplace and a web design agency. Both provided valuable learning experiences, but neither achieved significant revenue or scale. Undeterred, Mike continued experimenting with ideas while sharpening his skills as a coder and business operator.
One product that did find success was a SaaS platform Mike created for managing online membership communities. It allowed users to build custom membership sites with features like profile pages, content libraries, and payment integrations. This appealed strongly to organizations looking for cost-effective digital solutions.
Within a few years, the platform amassed over 10,000 customers. But at this scale, issues began to surface that Mike hadn't anticipated - especially around managing user feedback. Complaints were pouring in via emails, calls, and online reviews at an unsustainable pace for one person. As a result, the customer experience suffered.
The origins of Upvoty
The seed of Upvoty was planted while Mike was working on his previous SaaS business. As that product grew to over 10,000 customers, managing user feedback became progressively more difficult. Feedback was documented in a shared Excel sheet, but this approach did not scale.
Mike realized he needed a purpose-built solution to organize, share, and act on all the input they were receiving from users. However, when searching for existing options, he found most products either did not fit their specific needs or carried excessive price tags.
This presented Mike with an opportunity. If no good solutions existed, perhaps he could build one himself. Given that he was not fully satisfied with the direction of his existing venture, Upvoty seemed like a motivating side project.
Validating the idea
Rather than diving straight into coding, Mike took a customer development approach to validate there was real demand for his proposed product. He quickly designed a logo and prototype landing page explaining Upvoty's value proposition.
The page included a signup form to capture early interest. Mike then promoted this MVP landing page through Facebook groups and platforms like IndieHackers to gather feedback.
Within a few weeks, over 200 people had signed up to learn more about Upvoty once it launched. This initial traction proved there was an audience hungry for a tool to simplify feedback management.
Validating the idea in this manner, before writing any code, gave Mike confidence to proceed with building Upvoty. He had demonstrated real problems his solution aimed to address and generated early subscribers interested in using the product.
Launching the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
With market fit validated, Mike began development of Upvoty's first functioning version. His focus was on quickly releasing an MVP that addressed core pain points, rather than perfecting every feature and design element.
The initial product was, by Mike's own admission, very basic and ugly. But it fulfilled the basic needs of collecting, organizing, and sharing feedback that users had signaled they wanted solved.
Mike invited some of the landing page subscribers to participate in a private beta. This small group of early testers provided invaluable feedback as they used the rough MVP. Their feedback helped him prioritize what to build next.
Within the beta period, most testers wanted to upgrade to a paid plan for Upvoty - despite its primitive state. They found real value in using it to solve key workflow issues, even at this nascent stage.
This allowed Mike to achieve his first $1,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) before a full public launch, showing initial product-market fit and monetization potential.
Public launch and early growth
After testing with an MVP, early customer feedback, and initial paying users, Mike felt ready for a public introduction of Upvoty in March 2019. He launched on Product Hunt to gain exposure and drive traffic.
Mike also wrote a lot of "alternative to" SEO articles targeting customers of competitor tools. This targeted the unhappy customers of their competitors and tried to convince them to switch to our product.
Apart from these "alternative to" SEO articles, content marketing played a big role too. Prior to launch, Mike invested heavily in blog posts, guides, and other educational resources related to Upvoty's target users.
This hard work eventually met with success. Within a few weeks post-launch, Upvoty's monthly revenue grew to $3,000 as new customers were acquired and referred organically. Mike was demonstrating he could scale beyond the MVP.
Listening to customers to build better products
As Upvoty gained more users, Mike remained committed to customer development principles. He made it a priority to understand the pain points and discover new needs by engaging closely with the users.
Mike facilitated a two-way dialogue with the users through various channels, such as direct communication, feedback boards within Upvoty, and social media. This allowed users to share their thoughts, suggestions, and concerns, and Mike actively listened and responded.
The insights gathered from these interactions played a vital role in shaping Upvoty's roadmap decisions and helped the product achieve a better fit in the market.
Here are some examples of improvements that were directly influenced by user input:
- Integrations with common tools: Users expressed their desire for quick integration with tools like GitHub, Jira, and Slack. Responding to this feedback, Upvoty implemented these integrations, enabling users to have deeper workflows and collaborate more efficiently with their preferred tools.
- Customizable permissions and moderation tools: Users with distributed teams highlighted the need for customizable permissions and moderation capabilities. Upvoty addressed this by introducing features that allowed teams to tailor access levels and moderation settings according to their specific requirements.
- Real-time analytics and reporting: Users wanted the ability to analyze feedback trends over time. In response, Upvoty introduced real-time analytics and reporting features, empowering users to track and monitor feedback patterns, leading to more informed decision-making.
- Advanced filtering, searching, and custom views: User feedback emphasized the importance of efficient feedback management and organization. Upvoty addressed this by adding advanced filtering, searching, and custom view options, enabling users to quickly find and organize feedback based on their preferences and needs.
Systems for scale and revenue growth
As Upvoty grew from its first 1,000 customers to 5,000, Mike realized that relying on manual processes would not be sufficient to sustain such rapid growth. He understood the need to invest in systems and automation to free up time and resources for more strategic work.
Here are some examples of the systems and processes that helped Upvoty scale rapidly:
- Knowledge base: Upvoty created a self-service support system where customers could find answers to common questions and troubleshoot issues on their own. This reduced the need for the support team to handle every customer query.
- Customizable templates and workflows: Upvoty developed templates and workflows that could be customized to streamline and standardize processes. This made it easier for the team to handle repetitive tasks efficiently.
- Task management integration: Upvoty implemented a task management system to automate and streamline routine jobs. This ensured that tasks were completed in a timely manner and freed up time for more important work.
- A/B testing: Upvoty used A/B testing to continuously improve conversions. This involved testing different variations of features, designs, or marketing strategies to identify the most effective approaches for attracting and retaining customers.
- Onboarding curriculum: Upvoty developed a structured onboarding curriculum to provide new customers with guidance and training. This helped them get up to speed quickly and make the most of the product.
- Hiring specialized roles: As Upvoty grew, Mike realized the importance of hiring specialized roles. Success managers and developers were brought on board to provide expertise in customer success and product development, respectively.
Today, Mike attributes Upvoty's success in reaching $52,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) to the implementation of these scalable systems. They allowed Upvoty to handle growth effectively while maintaining a high level of service for their expanding customer base.
Tools and resources
Mike says that his SaaS generates over $50,000 per month and it costs just $473 per month to run it. Here are the 10 tools he is using:
- Newsletter (EmailOctopus) — Email marketing is the cornerstone of all his businesses. Whether it's his SaaS or other projects like courses, YouTube, or resources, EmailOctopus allows him to reach his loyal audience and sell to them effectively. Cost: $95 per month.
- Payments (Stripe) —Stripe is a great application programming interface that easily connects with software. It allows Mike to handle payments smoothly. Cost: $0 per month plus a percentage per sale.
- Content Marketing (Hypefury) — Hypefury is Mike's go-to tool for curating, scheduling, and engaging with online content. It helps him with his content marketing efforts. Cost: $49 per month.
- Personal and Business CRM (Notion) — Notion is the tool that runs Mike's personal and business life. He uses it to store and document everything, including roadmaps, internal notes, wikis, and content systems. Cost: $16 per month.
- Meetings (Calendly) — Calendly is the tool Mike uses to book product demos for his SaaS and personal coaching sessions. He also integrates it with Google Meet. Cost: $15 per month.
- Video (Loom) — Loom is the tool Mike relies on for quickly recording explanatory videos and tutorials. He uses it for internal use or sharing with customers. Cost: $0 per month.
- Automation (Zapier) — Mike loves automation as it helps scale his business. He uses Zapier for various automation tasks, including sending emails and coordinating with other tools. Cost: $20 per month.
- Server (AWS) — AWS is the cloud server that Mike uses to run all his apps and projects. It provides reliable and scalable hosting solutions. Cost: $180 per month.
- Messaging (Crisp) — Crisp is the perfect tool for Mike to stay in touch with customers and interact with potential customers on his website. Cost: $95 per month.
- Email (Simplify for Gmail) — Simplify for Gmail is a tool that enhances Mike's email experience by turning Gmail into a clutter-free focused inbox. It makes working on email more enjoyable. Cost: $3 per month.
Lessons learned along the way
Reflecting on Upvoty's journey so far, Mike identified several takeaways that carried the business from an early-stage startup to making a consistent $50,000+ monthly recurring revenue:
- Validate the issue deeply before spending resources on a solution.
- Iterate openly with minimal code to gain feedback faster.
- Start charging as soon as users indicate value to generate buy-in.
- Focus marketing on establishing domain expertise above all else.
- Leverage teams and processes to scale beyond founder constraints.
- Continually build systems and automate mundane tasks.
- Always improve yet operate pragmatically without over-engineering.
- Laser-focus the product benefits towards a specific ideal customer
Mike emphasizes the importance of starting small, proving solutions work, and letting customers guide the product roadmap. This iterative approach maximized the chances of achieving product-market fit and revenue growth.
Mike’s story highlights best practices any founder can follow to validate ideas, showcase initial value, and scale a SaaS business through an ongoing commitment to meeting real customer needs.
He believes that by following that principle, many founders can create profitable SaaS projects and hit high revenue margins.
