He is a quiet French developer, a parent of two, and not the type who loves sales calls. Yet over the last few years, he has taken four different SaaS apps past $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue, with total revenue around $700,000 MRR across video tools, SEO tools, and social media tools.
He did it while juggling family life and a market where AI news drops daily and entire products can become obsolete overnight.
This article breaks down his exact 12‑step style startup playbook, written in plain language. It is the same pattern he used for:
- An AI video editor that grew to roughly $400K MRR
- An SEO content platform that went from a blog generator to a full SEO suite
- Social growth tools for X
- A Notion‑powered blogging platform
Most builders stall because they code too much and talk too little. They spend months shipping features no one asked for, then wonder why churn is high and growth flatlines.
His approach flips that:
- Tiny MVPs built in days
- Constant user conversations
- Treating each SaaS as a media company, not just a product
By the end of this guide, a reader will know how to go from idea to $100K MRR, and how to repeat the process across multiple products, instead of betting everything on a single fragile startup.
Why This SaaS Playbook Works When Most Startups Stall
The core mindset shift is simple: the job is not to ship features, it is to remove daily pain from real users as fast as possible.
Most technical founders hide in code. They breathe new features into existence and hope users show up. This founder does the opposite. He talks to users every day, ships tiny changes in minutes, and uses those reactions to guide what to build next.
The result speaks for itself: four separate apps crossed $100K MRR, with roughly 50,000 paying customers in total and growth compounding around 20 percent month over month for a long stretch. Other founders have reached similar levels with lean products, as shown in this analysis of 5 micro SaaS founders proving $100K MRR is possible.
He also thinks in portfolios, not single bets. In a world where OpenAI can ship a feature that kills a product overnight or a platform like X can change policies and nuke a social tool, one app is a fragile business. Several independent apps, all grown with the same playbook, give real safety. That pattern of repeatable wins also appears in Loïc’s repeatable SaaS growth playbook, where another French founder reused one system across three B2B products.
From years of failure to repeatable wins
He did not start with a golden touch. For about five years, he built apps that went nowhere. Zero revenue, zero users who cared, and a lot of time spent polishing things that no one had asked for.
What changed was not his coding skill. It was his learning loop.
He forced himself to ship minimum viable products in days or weeks, not months. Instead of guessing, he found 5 to 10 people living the pain and talked to them constantly. He routed support into his own DMs and shipped fixes the same day. The failure rate stayed high, but since each attempt was cheap and fast, he found winners sooner.
That pattern mirrors advice from indie founders who explain how they would push to $10K MRR in 2025 by focusing on tight feedback loops and clear customer profiles.
Why a portfolio of SaaS startups beats one “big bet”
His portfolio mindset is honest: it is driven partly by fear.
He sees how quickly AI shifts. A single API change or a new built‑in feature can wipe out a startup segment in days. It already happened once when changes to X nearly killed a social tool that was making around $200K MRR.
So he spread risk. Today, if an AI platform ships a clone of one app, three others still pay salaries and support his family.
There is another advantage. Each new product starts on third base. He reuses code, infrastructure, and growth playbooks. The same way Kickserv, Baremetrics, and other micro SaaS founders compound know‑how across projects, he moves faster on each new build.
Phase 1: Turn Startup Ideas Into MVPs In Days, Not Months
Phase 1 is about getting from idea to something real that users can touch, in the shortest possible time.
He treats perfect architecture as a luxury for later. Right now the only question is: “Will anyone care enough to use this at all?”
Find problems worth solving before writing real code
Before he writes a backend, he tests demand in the open.
He posts on X, joins Reddit threads, and shares short videos about problems he sees in workflows like video editing, SEO content, or social scheduling. He watches which problems trigger replies, DMs, and “I need this yesterday” comments.
Sometimes he spins up a simple landing page with a single promise and a “Join the waitlist” or “Get early access” form. That mirrors strategies like making money before launch that are used in pre‑sell your SaaS idea and secure early revenue.
He is not looking for vanity signals. Signups, replies, and people willing to jump on a quick call are the only “votes” that matter.
Build the MVP fast using shortcuts and no code
Once there is a real problem and clear interest, he builds an MVP in days or weeks.
He mixes no‑code tools like Bubble with AI‑assisted coding and Backend‑as‑a‑Service platforms such as Supabase or Firebase. Hosted auth, billing, and emails replace custom stacks. Guides like How To Build A No-Code SaaS MVP (+ 5 Top Tools in 2025) show many of the same tools founders now use to cut build time.
The goal is simple: a usable product that solves one narrow job.
- The AI video tool started as “paste a script and get a short cut video.”
- The SEO app began as a basic blog post generator.
- The social tool first shipped with a single schedule queue.
He ignores edge cases, perfect scaling, and fancy dashboards. Since he accepts that about 90 percent of ideas will fail, it makes no sense to overbuild.
Other founders have shown how a rough weekend product can win, like the fast MVP SaaS case study: Cursor Directory, which hit five figures in MRR after a three‑hour build.
Find 5 to 10 real users who live the problem
Next, he finds 5 to 10 people who feel the pain every day.
He reaches out to creators, marketers, or founders through DMs, replies on social threads, or email. Friends and family do not count unless they are in the exact target group.
This small group becomes a live test bed. They get access to the MVP, and he asks blunt questions:
- What part of your day does this replace?
- When do you actually open it?
- What is annoying or confusing?
Their behavior, not their compliments, decides if the product deserves another week of his time.
Photo by Ivan S
Phase 2: Talk To Users Daily And Build A Product They Cannot Quit
Most startups fail in Phase 2. They chase more traffic while their existing users quietly leave.
This founder does the opposite. Once a few people are using the product, he focuses almost obsessively on retention and stickiness.
Build real relationships and become your own best user
In the early days, the support link in each app simply opened his DMs on X.
He answered every message himself. That constant chat gave him a live stream of confused users, bug reports, and “this would save me so much time if you added X” requests. It also created a feeling for customers that a real person cared.
He also uses each product as a daily power user. By running his own social accounts through his tools and publishing his own blog with his CMS, he spots annoying friction faster than any survey could.
This habit lines up with modern no‑code and AI trends described in 12 No-Code Tools to Build a SaaS MVP Without Coding, where founders are encouraged to stay close to their own workflows.
Fix user problems, not founder problems
Feature ideas come from pain, not from ego.
When a user complains, he treats it as a gift. Only people who care bother to complain. He keeps a list of these pain points and solves the most common or intense ones first.
Many changes are tiny. A better default, a clearer label, a new preset. When someone messages him about an issue and sees it fixed within an hour, they often become vocal fans who tell others.
Every new feature has to connect back to the core job. For the SEO tool, that is “drive more organic traffic.” For the video tool, that is “ship engaging clips faster.” Anything that does not move those goals forward gets cut.
Measure stickiness before pushing hard on growth
He uses simple checks to judge stickiness:
- Are users logging in daily or weekly without prompts?
- Do they complain loudly when something breaks?
- Do they say “I would be very upset if you shut this down”?
If those signals are weak, he returns to Phase 2 instead of buying traffic.
Scaling a leaky product with ads is like pouring water into a cracked bucket. It looks busy, but nothing builds. Founders who hit strong numbers with lean teams, like those in From AI Idea to $100K Exit, share the same focus on strong product use before serious growth.
Phase 3: Turn A SaaS Into A Media Company And Scale Growth To $100K MRR
Once retention is solid, he treats each SaaS not just as a product, but as a media engine for its niche.
At this stage, the question shifts from “Does this work?” to “How can more of the right people discover it every day?”
Become a media company for your niche
Every app builds its own content pipeline.
For the SEO tool, that means educational blog posts, case studies, and practical SEO breakdowns. For the video app, it is tutorials, before‑and‑after clips, and creator success stories. For social tools, it is threads explaining what worked this week.
This content serves several jobs at once:
- It feeds SEO and ranks for queries that ideal customers search.
- It creates social posts that bring in followers and DMs.
- It provides proof that the product works through real case studies.
Over time, the app’s site starts to look more like a niche publication than a static landing page. That pattern also appears in 6 AI-powered micro SaaS ideas for small businesses, where content and product are tightly linked.
Go broad on acquisition, then pick 1 or 2 winning channels
With stickiness in place, he experiments broadly:
- Product Hunt launches
- Social threads and “building in public” posts
- Guest spots on podcasts and YouTube
- SEO content
- Lightweight paid ads
He does not try to perfect each channel. The goal is to see which ones move the numbers with reasonable effort.
For the SEO tool, organic content and affiliates started driving most signups. For the AI video app, short videos on X and partnerships with creators worked best. This mirrors other founders who mix SEO and product ties, like those growing micro SaaS with strong search and partnership strategies in How to Actually Hit $10K MRR in 2025.
Once two channels clearly outperform, he cuts the rest and goes all in.
Use scalable channels: SEO, ads, and affiliates
He sees three growth channels as the most scalable once the numbers work:
- SEO compounding through more content, better internal linking, and new keywords. Month after month, the library grows and traffic stacks.
- Paid ads that start at $1,000 per month. If a campaign works at that level, there is a good chance it will still work at $10,000 or $50,000 with tuning.
- Affiliates who get a simple dashboard, good commissions, and swipe copy, so recommending the tool feels easy.
His SEO tool, for example, went from about $20K MRR to $200K MRR by combining stronger search content, focused ads, and a friendly affiliate program.
Micro SaaS founders who scaled single tools to strong revenue, like the team behind Cuppa in this AI micro-SaaS growth story, use the same pattern of nailing unit economics first, then ramping scalable channels.
Personal Experience: What It Really Feels Like To Build 4 Startups To $100K MRR
From the outside, a $700K MRR portfolio looks like a straight success story. From the inside, it feels more like controlled chaos.
He remembers the sting of his first five years, when every startup he shipped fizzled. That period felt like pushing code into a void. There were no user complaints, no bugs, just silence, which was far worse.
The first time one app crossed $100K MRR, the main feeling was not joy, but relief. Bills would get paid. His family would be safe for a while. Then platform news hit, AI changed again, and he realized how fragile a single win could be.
That fear pushed him toward multiple apps. He built an AI video editor that kept growing at around 10 percent per month. He launched an SEO tool that jumped from side project to serious revenue in months. He tried different social helpers, killed the ones that stalled, and kept the ones that people used daily.
He knows he is not a “genius founder.” What sets him apart is a boring rhythm: ship fast, listen hard, adjust, and repeat. That rhythm is the same kind of repeatable system seen in B2B SaaS strategies from a three‑product founder, not a one‑time lucky shot.
Daily habits that quietly compound into big wins
His days are not glamorous. They look more like this:
- Shipping one tiny improvement per app, almost every day
- Answering support DMs within minutes whenever possible
- Posting short updates about product progress and mistakes
- Reviewing core metrics like MRR, churn, and activation daily
- Reusing code, onboarding flows, and marketing assets across products
Each action is small. Over months, they turn into loyal users, strong word of mouth, and stable MRR. The compounding effect feels slow in the moment and huge when he zooms out over a year.
How to apply this playbook to a first or next startup
A reader does not need a big audience or funding to copy this system. A simple starting checklist looks like this:
- Pick one narrow problem for a clear user, like “solo YouTube editor who needs faster clips.”
- Talk to 10 people in that group this week and write down their exact words.
- Ship an MVP in two weeks using no‑code and AI tools.
- Find 5 to 10 real users, onboard them by hand, and talk to them daily.
- Fix one thing every day based on their behavior and messages.
- Once they use it without nudges and would miss it if it died, test 2 or 3 growth channels.
- Repeat the cycle over several years and think in terms of a portfolio of small bets, not one perfect startup.
Resources like 8 Best No-Code SaaS Tools in 2025 make the tech side easier so founders can focus on the hard part: real conversations.
Conclusion
This playbook comes down to a few simple moves done well: fast MVPs, direct user conversations, treating every product like a media company, and scaling only the channels that clearly work.
Success stops looking like a lucky strike and starts looking like a repeatable system that turns ideas into revenue. Other founders have already shown that pattern can work across many markets, from e‑commerce tools to content platforms and tiny utilities.
A reader who wants to follow the same path can start small. This week, they can pick one painful problem, ship a tiny MVP, and commit to talking with users every single day for the next month. That is how a real startup playbook begins, one fast experiment at a time.
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