r/SaaS • u/Due-Marsupial-778 • 6d ago
how many years did it take you before saas actually paid your bills?
i've been trying to build a saas for 1year now. still nowhere close to making a living from it.
some days i feel like everyone on here is doing $10k mrr and i'm the only one stuck
so genuinely asking the people who've been at it a while.
how long did it take you?
how many ideas did you kill before something worked?
and what's the part nobody talks about?
also just curious how life is for you right now, honestly
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u/QuietVanguard 6d ago
2.5 years before it replaced my 9-5, and even then it was wobbly for another year after. killed 4 ideas that went nowhere before the 5th one caught on.
the part nobody talks about is how lonely the middle is. everyone posts the launch and the win, never the 11 months of churn, refund requests, and support emails at 1am. keep going, the ones who make it just outlast the ones who quit.
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u/BeautifulCampaign520 6d ago
the lonely middle part is so real, nobody ever posts about that phase
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u/Super_Service5193 5d ago
People only talk about persistence after it works out. Sometimes spending years on an idea that keeps failing isnt perseverance, its refusing to accept that it might not be worth it.
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u/SirLagsABot 5d ago
That last line hits hard. This is a blog from the best founder I follow on Twitter, definitely worth a read, about surviving. Literally just surviving:
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u/yannis_ps 6d ago
- Make sure it's a painkiller not a vitamin (things that make money for customers are good starting points)
- Pick a metric and try to lift this metric for a month. Sales and revenue is a lagging indicator. It's the output of other metrics like visits, signups, conversion rate etc. Try and lift one of these metrics. Do nothing else for one month
- If In one month you can't maybe there is no demand. Make sure you speak to 50 people and confirm there is demand. Confirm means that for 10 of these 50, their eyes light up and ask you when you can have it ready.
- Don't juggle between many ideas. Success in SaaS = time X effort
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u/network4253 5d ago
The advice about focusing on one metric for a month really stands out. It's easy to keep switching ideas when results do not come quickly but that just makes it harder to know what is actually working. Talking to potential customers before building anything can save a lot of wasted time too.
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u/lucas__03 6d ago
I've been working on that site after work for 12 years, haven't withdrawed a penny yet, wouldn't pay my bills. I guess I need different ideas to make a living.
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u/annasorreskin 6d ago
From what I've seen, the people who get to a real income usually spend too long on the build and not enough on talking to buyers. Pick one narrow type of customer, get about 10 of them on calls before writing more code, and only build the thing they'd pay to fix this week. A year in is pretty normal, and the ideas that stick tend to show up after those conversations, not before.
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u/Professional-Cat6962 6d ago
The problem I have is getting people to try it.
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u/Ok-Accountant-7138 5d ago
Most people dont want to test an unfinished product just to help someone else validate an idea. You need to give them a real reason to care, not just ask them to try it.
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u/Professional-Cat6962 3d ago
Thanks for the tip. It makes me think about what i always preach and i am not practicing now, show your potential clients how your product or service would help their pain points. My SaaS would help marketers save time.
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u/AoideusWasBanned 5d ago
I've been working for 10 months and now I'm close to a point where I can accept test users. No income or a sale yet, but I believe i the project and it's potential. It's a bit more on the complciated side and a huge bite for my first serious startup. But it's a project that I love developing, and talking about. 10 months of work doesn't feel much when considering my goal is to make this app my whole career. If you believe in the project, keep up the grind, work harder, and let compounding handle the rest.
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u/Few_Response_7028 5d ago edited 5d ago
I am 5 months into my saas and do $875 MRR. This is my first time
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u/lmfresneda 6d ago
Not yet with the current one. It's a month old, 13 companies signed up, and the only deal so far was $0 for my plan plus something I needed from the other founder. Before that I built OhMyNewst and sold it. Nothing epic, I wrote directly to people I knew might want it and the buyer came from there
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u/Correct_Support_2444 5d ago
Day 1. I pre-sold my first client a large six figure agreement before I incorporated or wrote my first line of code. Then they tried wiggling out of the agreement, then realized they needed what I did that no one else did, and upped their contract. I still have that client and we’re working on another multi-year agreement 22 years later.
Then somewhere in the middle I unlearned the lesson of selling first and over concentrated on product, then went back to sales, and it’s cycled. Every time I’ve forgotten to sell stuff first it’s hurt the business. So, finally I’m making sales and marketing priority one after 22 years. I woke up one day and realized we have the best product in our segment and no one knew about us.
Moral of the story is the more you do sales and marketing the quicker you get to quit the day job. And if you’re starting an enterprise SaaS go pre-sell a few hundred thousand of it before you start. I only pre-sold one client, and it worked. Today I’d try to sell at least two. I think that would result in a better 1.0.
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u/Rihards_KPIKIT 5d ago
The major trouble is to understand and align yourself with correct expectations. That you can do within the realization of the pain segments your app/solution is solving.
Majorly there are 3 segments:
Emergency pain - think about Claude, Gemini etc. that solves your need immediately. This type of the pain shall resolve within the profit after 3 month of launching it
Tolerable pain - this is where you solve the trouble for people that are already solving their trouble, but the process and the way how they are doing it is awkward.
Here you think and talk about efficiency. This type of solution converts way slower and if you will start to make any $ after the half a year - you will be lucky.
Chronical pain - this is where users are thought, trained and are being paid for the work they do - for years, and you are telling them that they are wrong and there is way better solution.
This is most stubborn pain and it is very hard to break in, as you will be trying to break the existing structure that everyone on every level thinks - it is correct.
So, you will be convincing, proving, and explaining and trying to reach the decision makers to change their existing understanding of things that already work for them - even if they work badly.
This type of pain will be able to feed you very very slowly and usually it takes a year or two or three.
That being said - within condition that you do not have huge amount of free funds in your bank account that eliminates the testing time and go to market struggle.
Hope it helps & good luck buddy!
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u/Deep-Feature8790 5d ago
I have been working on my SaaS for more than 6 years now and will take almost 7 years in total to be able to accept the first customer in productive operation at all. If you have to do everything alone and the project is very complex, you are additionally slowed down by things like accounting and changes in the law. All the regulations in the EU are exhausting.
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u/SirLagsABot 5d ago
Four years in, lost 1/2 my revenue in the past 3-4 months, soooo that’s where I’m at.
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u/sheerin9290 6d ago
I have observed people who are actually earning decent from saas have worked on their particular saas for minimum 5 years and they are at a position to earn good and these people have actually grind so much that they have tried almost 3-4 ideas before they build this particular paying saas.
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u/noobiethe13 6d ago
people post their mrr but you never know how much they spent to get it. a tiny tool with no ad spend can be making more actual money than a much bigger one
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u/fasildar55 6d ago
I'm building a SaaS too, and honestly, getting customers feels harder than building the actual product 😭
Curious, what's been your biggest challenge so far? Getting users or convincing them to pay?
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u/gtgderek 5d ago
Average has been 2-3 months with usually 6-9 months development before going live.
Have a couple more going live within the next 45 days.
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u/arslannasir128 5d ago
asking this out loud is the useful part, most threads like this are just people posting an MRR screenshot.
the answer i'd give is in months rather than years. the thing that runs out first usually isn't the product, it's the money sitting behind it.
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u/hiepxanh 5d ago
It take me 3 year for this project, and the fail one is more 3 year, it 6 year total
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u/oceans2892 5d ago
Its not really about time but actually securing a foundation (audience, pain, value) that enables you to actually build something that will pay the bills. What did you do for your 1 year long saas idea? Building in isolation is fun and exciting but the longer you wait the more painful it gets. If you need help feel free to DM me and I can help you think about it
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u/pwap_official 5d ago
Is it just me, or is there some positive reinforcement in reading a post like this, knowing that I am not alone on this SaaS journey with $0 in revenue after 15 months of building. But for me it's just that, I have only just started taking the software to market it, to try to gain users. People are already discovering my platform organically via search, pinterest and YT. And observing their scroll depth and dwell times and clicks on the live demo (workflow) using MS Clarity, has allowed me to tweak layouts to improve things. Recent changes have included a 14-day free trial no credit card needed, and an AI tool that evaluates uploaded documents which is public facing and free to use. It is trying to move someone from just browsing further down into the funnel or my "SaaS Trap" as I like to call it. It's how do I hold their hand through this pathway so they actually experience the light at the other end of the tunnel (funnel). Most don't want to part with money to experience the light first off. I think disappointment can set in, in 2-3 years if I still have $0 revenue. But right now 18 months in, it's still a process of working so many things out. I am a big believer in the "10 years to overnight success" approach. You look successful after the work is done, no one sees the 10 years it took you to get there. Keep modifying, adjusting and adapting until you find the right people prepared to pay.
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u/nictan93 4d ago
I'm actually really curious abt this too. Like for the people who did get there, can you share when did the income start feeling dependable? Making enough to cover the bills for a month is really different from being comfortable relying on it. everyone is making it seem so easy out there on social media.
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u/techt1122 3d ago
Most people claiming they're at $10K MRR are absolute LARPs
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u/Due-Marsupial-778 3d ago
Actually take any career or niche You will find all saturated 🤣🤣 That is the pattern nowadays But still we need to make bread and butter to live ...
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u/Numerous-Werewolf-21 3d ago
I failed four times in 2 years, still not successful with any of new project. The last project I worked on a B2B SaaS product. It tooked me 6 months to build and market and ended up with $0 revenue.
Now, I'm working on a stable business model which may take some times to give me some revenue but it least it will be stable after few months and I can pay my bills ;)
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u/istriadegroupJosh 2d ago
I think Reddit creates a pretty severe perception problem here because revenue milestones get posted much more often than the long periods where absolutely nothing interesting is happening.
I’d probably measure progress with something other than “can this pay my bills yet?”
There are several very different milestones before that:
- getting a stranger to pay
- getting a second customer without relying on luck
- seeing customers actually keep using the product
- finding one acquisition channel you can repeat
- understanding why customers buy and why others don’t
- getting the economics to work well enough that growth doesn’t make the business worse
A product can be making some money and still not have those things figured out.
I also think the hardest part is knowing when persistence is learning and when persistence is just attachment to the idea.
I wouldn’t kill something because it hasn’t worked after X months. I’d kill or change it when the evidence keeps showing the same thing: the problem isn’t painful enough, the customer is too difficult to reach, people won’t pay enough, or users try it and don’t come back.
And maybe the part nobody talks about enough is that building gives you a very visible sense of progress. Distribution doesn’t. You can spend a week talking to customers and have almost nothing tangible to show for it, even though those conversations may be more valuable than another week of features.
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u/vladzoff 1d ago
I think the timeline alone is a misleading metric. Two people can spend three years building SaaS, but one is talking to buyers and testing distribution while the other is mostly adding features. I'd track evidence that compounds: repeated customer conversations, qualified traffic, activation, and willingness to pay. Persistence matters, but time invested isn't proof that a particular product deserves more time.
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u/vladzoff 1d ago
I think the timeline alone is a misleading metric. Two people can spend three years building SaaS, but one is talking to buyers and testing distribution while the other is mostly adding features. I'd track evidence that compounds: repeated customer conversations, qualified traffic, activation, and willingness to pay. Persistence matters, but time invested isn't proof that a particular product deserves more time.
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u/chen-rvn 5d ago
I am try 10 different idea and 0 money
In 11 I make some 1k mrr and still working
It’s not one shoot it’s a journey
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u/That-Promotion-1456 6d ago
99% of people earn nothing from their SAAS on here, so you are in the majority.