After five failed products, this founder quit his job and hit $7.5k/mo in 12 months

After five failed projects, Filip Panoski quit his job and started a new one. He applied all of his learnings from his failed attempts. And now, Bazzly is bringing in $7.5k/mo.

Here's Filip on how he did it. 👇

Learning from failure

I'm a self-taught software developer. After 7 years of building on the side, shipping 5+ projects, and only making $100 total revenue, I decided to quit my $7k/mo dev job and go all-in on chasing my indie hacker dream.

I learned from those failed projects. One was a B2C productivity tool. Bootstrapping a B2C tool is hard because LTV is lower, churn is higher, and acquisition channels are more expensive. So this time around, I chose a B2B tool. Another failed project was a B2B launch platform with one-time payments.

The one-time-payment revenue model is also difficult to bootstrap, especially without large distribution, because you start from scratch every day. So I wanted to start a B2B recurring revenue model that solved a recurring pain point.

At the time, I noticed some Reddit marketing tools making money, validating the demand. I was interested in the space because I used Reddit to distribute my previous projects, and there weren't any giant competitors making competition difficult.

So, I started testing customer acquisition for this niche by building a waitlist landing page. And I started DMing people. If I could get people on the waitlist, it meant that once launched, I could continue acquiring customers the same way. I managed to get 30 people on the waitlist and began building the MVP.

I had no income and was running on savings, so this bet had to succeed.

This became Bazzly, a Reddit marketing tool for SaaS founders. I grew it from $0 to $7.5k/mo in 12 months. MRR is $5k, but one-time payments within the platform drive $2.5k in monthly expansion revenue.

Building the product

After quitting my job to go all-in on this, I dedicated all my time to building and growing the product.

I've spent months and years building MVPs for previous projects. This time, I made sure not to make the same mistake. I shipped the MVP within one month. Being a technical founder, AI gave me a big advantage to ship fast and build quality software.

Initially, the running costs were low. I used free Supabase and Vercel plans to host my server, and cheap or free plans for other tools like email.

Time was the biggest resource drain. Quitting my job helped me focus all my efforts on growing this, building in public, and gaining traction. As the product grew, I also had revenue to reinvest in tools and operating costs.

As far as the stack, I believe people should use the tech stack they're most comfortable with. For me, it was JavaScript and React, so I used Next.js to build the frontend, Supabase for my DB, and Node.js for my backend.

Simplify your pricing

We use a subscription model with one-time payment top-ups. Users can also pay to add more project seats to grow their other projects.

When I first started, I offered three plans: $19, $39, and $99. Then, we eliminated our cheaper plans, repositioned with a single $99 plan, and our revenue increased significantly.

Users can also top up credits for more usage. These one-time payments within the app have surprisingly become a strong revenue lever.

For B2B products, I advise starting with a single plan that includes everything. Expand revenue through top-ups for more usage or if a user wants to add more seats/projects. If your MVP is simple, I'd start at a minimum of $39/month. As you make your core offer more valuable, increase the price and reposition. I used this playbook twice to grow from $100 to $1k, and from $1k to $5k.

Three growth phases

Here were the growth phases:

• $0 → $100: I acquired my first customers through DMs, but churn was high. For the next six months, I focused on minimum viable marketing and reducing churn. I talked to users daily to understand why they signed up, didn't convert, or canceled. After six months of iteration, I launched a new core offer that lowered churn from 43% to 25% and pushed me past $100 MRR.

• $100 → $1k: Once I launched the new offer, I doubled down on marketing, growing from $100 to $1k in just two months. I used Reddit (dogfooding Bazzly), X, and Indie Hackers as distribution channels.

• $1k → $5k: Once I hit $1k MRR, I realized current growth would take me about eight months to reach $3k MRR. Still running on savings from my job and handling everything myself, I realized being solo was my biggest bottleneck. To grow faster, I needed help. I reached out to a bigger name in the space and offered a 50% partnership. We'll make the official announcement soon. We then spent the next month repositioning Bazzly and developing a new offer. Our new positioning transformed Bazzly from a tool that helps you get customers from Reddit into an acquisition system that runs your Reddit marketing on full autopilot. After launching this new offer, we grew from $1k to $5k MRR in two months, using the same distribution channels I had used to reach $1k MRR.

Starting with DMs

Let's dig deeper into my marketing channels.

I attracted my first customers by sending DMs on X and Reddit. I found people who described problems my product solves or explicitly asked for a product like mine, then sent them a personalized DM using this template:

“Hey, saw you’re [summary from post/comment]. I built a tool that [tie value to their problem]. Want to try it out?”

DMs are the best early-stage channel because they open 1:1 conversations with your target audience, allowing you to get qualitative feedback and build relationships. They are the easiest way to get someone to try your product when you have zero social proof.

Next, I found high-intent posts on Reddit and left helpful replies mentioning my product. Interested users would Google my product name and land on my landing page. This channel compounded well because Reddit posts can also rank on Google, and the comments brought me monthly traffic effortlessly. I also started seeing AI mentions from ChatGPT and Perplexity, all originating from those Reddit comments. This channel was easy because I used Bazzly to grow Bazzly.

Once I achieved real wins and had proven strategies, I started building in public on X, Indie Hackers, and Reddit. Since these strategies came from real experiences, the content resonated with my target audience and kept driving organic traffic to Bazzly. During this time, I continued using the previous distribution channels. I systematized every working channel and then added new ones.

Now, we continue to use our proven distribution channels, Reddit and X. At one point, Reddit brought in 50% of our signups. Now, as my X audience grows, it is also becoming a strong channel for us. We also started investing in SEO and will continue adding new channels.

The importance of tracking

Overall, I believe expanding distribution is overrated. The highest leverage move for growth was not adding new distribution channels, but improving my product funnel to convert existing channels better.

For example, in January, my funnel was:
visitor → signup: 10.68%
signup → trial: 29.55%
trial → paid: 30.77%

and in June:
visitor → signup: 6.99%
signup → trial: 35.85%
trial → paid: 52.63%

With the same marketing effort, I almost doubled my growth. That's why my top growth advice is to track your funnel metrics. Specifically:

• Visitors

• Visitor → signup

• Signup → trial

• Trial → paid

• Churn

Find the biggest bottleneck and fix it first.

Four unfair advantages

Here are some things I found useful:

1. Optimize your life around your goal. This is a years-long game, so the real skill is keeping a productive pace without burning out. Prioritize sleep, diet, and fitness. Just as important: saying no to the people and activities that don't move you closer to your goal.

2. Build in public. As an introvert, I avoided X and social media for years, and it cost me seven years of failing side projects. The moment I started building in public, everything changed. I learned more about the SaaS market and distribution in a few months than in all the time prior. I only wish I'd started earlier.

3. Think in systems, not events. A Product Hunt launch is a one-time spike, not reproducible. A distribution system you run every day compounds. So I stopped chasing launches and built repeatable engines instead: daily Reddit, a weekly X pipeline, consistent posting on Indie Hackers. Bazzly itself productizes that idea - a Reddit acquisition system that runs on autopilot instead of a one-off campaign. Build the systems that build the business.

4. Never stop learning. Three books that shaped how I think: Software as a Science (made me finally understand how to run a SaaS business), Traction (helped me understand marketing and distribution), and $100M Offers (helped me understand how to build offers).

Don't give up

Entrepreneurship is over-romanticized. It's hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. It brought me so much stress and made me sacrifice so much. It's not for everyone.

But if it calls to you, as it called to me, it will be the most fulfilling journey you'll ever experience. It will change your life and turn you into a better version of you. So if you decide to walk it, no matter how long and hard it gets, do not give up.

Stay consistent and never stop iterating.

And a few more pieces of advice:

• Solve a recurring pain point. If your tool solves a one-time problem, you'll need new customers forever just to stay flat.

• Validate distribution before you build. Most founders build first, then figure out how to reach people. That's backwards. If you can't get people to sign up for a waitlist, you won't get them to sign up for your MVP either. I gained 30 waitlist signups through DMs before writing a line of code, and I acquired my first paying customers through the same channel.

• Launch fast, but nail onboarding. If users have to figure out how to get value on their own, they won't. In Bazzly, users enter their product URL and AI pre-fills everything. Set up email notifications to re-engage users. Most people will never open your app again unless you give them a reason.

• Talk to users 1:1. Not surveys. Not analytics. Ask why they signed up, what confused them, and why they canceled. Every conversation sharpens your product and positioning in ways no dashboard will.

• Fix churn before scaling. If users leave as fast as you bring them in, more marketing = more waste. Make your tool more valuable. Get users to experience that value faster. Churn is your most important metric.

• Find your funnel bottlenecks. Map where you lose people. Find the biggest drop-off. Fix that first. Then move to the next one.

• Stack channels on top of what works. Start with one channel. Only add more once your funnel is healthy. New channels on top of a broken funnel = wasted effort. New channels on top of a working funnel = compounding growth.

What's next?

I'm all-in on Bazzly. My next goal is to reach $10k MRR and build the best Reddit marketing tool on the market. There's still so much untapped potential in the Reddit niche alone that I wouldn't be surprised if we blow past $10k pretty fast.

Beyond that, I can see Bazzly expanding from a Reddit tool into an AI system that brings qualified traffic to SaaS companies.

To check out Bazzly, go to: https://www.bazzly.ai/.

And you can follow my journey as I build in public on X.