dashp

I Built A $100K ARR SaaS For Pest Control Companies

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About
Business

Isaac Z Tai

Founder, dashp

$8.33K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

dashp

dashp.io

from

started October 2022

$8,333

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Monthly Revenue

$8.33K

Starting Costs

$50

Built in

60 days

Founders

Employees

0 (est.)

Monthly Traffic

1,000

Days To Build

Year Started

2022

Revenue Per Visitor

$8.33

Founders

Employees

0 (est.)

Monthly Traffic

1,000

Days To Build

Year Started

2022

Revenue Per Visitor

$8.33

Who are you and what business did you start?

Hey!! I'm Isaac and I'm a software engineer turned business owner.

DASHP, is software for sales teams in the Pest Control industry. Our core customers are typically Pest Control companies that find new customers primarily through door-to-door sales. We help teams manage commission, track performance and communicate.

I love this business because it's a peak niche product. Everything I've ever read about building for a specific customer, I've gotten to apply. Most importantly, our users love us and there's no end in what they want us to build!

We're doing just over 100k ARR (:

How do you come up with the idea for dashp?

A friend of mine who worked in the industry called me asking me whether it was possible to build a tool that helped him calculate commissions for team. Their existing solution was built on spreadsheets and emails.

I quickly learned more about this real problem--pay anxiety. These salespeople knocked doors 10+ hours a day, being paid commission-only. Many were students, looking to save for a car, tuition or a wedding. Not knowing their pay in real-time was terrifying.

I built a simple demo with no-code tools. The aha moment came when my friend's bosses asked me "what is your company called, and how much does it cost?"

At the time, I was full-time at my second struggling AI startup. This was pre-chatGPT, but I was already burning out from the hype. It was refreshing to hear someone tell me that they'd pay for a "boring", simple software solution.

A few more meetings with people in the industry confirmed to me that this pain was universal and that the market was hungry for a solution.

How did you build the initial version of dashp?

Here's the exact timeline of that first year in business

2022 October -> Built the no-code prototype, was asked how much it would cost November -> Started writing a mobile app when I kept hearing that's what they wanted December -> Quit my job to go full-time (at zero revenue) January - March -> Fumbling around first attempts at sales and trying to close my first deal. Finished the app. April -> Signed my first contract May -> Signed second customer June - August -> Lot's of bug-fixing and customer support through the first sales season August -> Joined a startup accelerator program

I built the initial prototype on Retool. It cost me nothing, since I applied for startup credits and got them. I believe they even have a generous free tier now.

When I started to rewrite it into a native app, my only cost was the domain ($12), google workspace ($6 / month) and supabase ($25 / month). I have never exceeded the free tiers of Vercel or Expo Application Services.

I did and continue to design, code and sell every single inch of this business myself. It's not a flex, it's just what it took to make this company work. I don't think I would have succeeded if I took on any headcount burn. I didn't raise or borrow any money.

(Heading) The Revenue Model:

We've gone through lots of different models and are still iterating. But recent contracts have looked something like this:

A seat-based contract, with "standard" and "flex" licenses.

Standard license -> $10 ~ $30 / month, committed for at least 12 months Flex licenses -> 2x the price of Standard, month-to-month contract Flex licenses cannot make up more than 30% of the total seats

This pricing model has come out of a need to balance predictable revenue and the seasonality of users in the industry. Since salespeople are typically active for up to half of the year, it's hard for clients to justify paying for the full year.

How did you launch dashp and get initial traction?

In the beginning I only had one focus: to acquire a single customer and do whatever it took to make them happy.

It took me five months from my customers telling me they'd buy my software to actually having a signed contract in place. During this time I learned about how difficult B2B sales actually was and what it took to get these relationships in place.

The first year was mostly trial and error. But one thing I did right was develop strong trust with my first customer. This relationship has been crucial in being able to grow the contract and finding more opportunities to solve problems for them.

This business involves balancing the needs of three groups of people: the owners of the pest control business, the sales managers and the salespeople.

Initially, I thought that I could sell to all three. So tried reaching them at where each group "lived"

Business owners -> Visiting physical offices Managers -> Offices + Instagram Salespeople -> Instagram

I've learned now that the product needs to be sold the owners directly. Since the software requires a lot of access to private information such as their CRM etc. To this day, the most successful form of customer acquisition is still knocking on physical offices or getting a referral.

What was the growth strategy for dashp and how did you scale?

Since I have a tiny, specific niche, the number of clients that fit my ICP is numbered in the hundreds. This too small an amount to run any effective performance marketing on or to just "dial" from a list on.

Instead every potential lead is treated more like a dedicated, long-term business development effort.

New customers are shiny and exciting. But for us, a surprising amount of revenue actually comes from upselling existing clients into larger contracts. Once trust is built, we've found that customers shift quickly away from getting the best price to begging us to solve as many problems as possible. Each of these conversations are an opportunity to increase the scope, and therefore the price of the contract.

The key to our success has been world-class account management and support. I drop everything to tend to a customer complaint, or request. I'm available at all hours of the day. My personal phone number is proudly plastered all over the app for direct help.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building dashp?

I'm someone that gets easily distracted. I worked for a different company every year in the first four years of my career. And I've always had side hustles.

I would attribute 90% of the success so far in simply not giving up and continuing to show up. Efforts compound and so much of reputation and trust is simply based on time.

B2B solo businesses are underrated. Often, indiehackers get trapped in building small tools for other creators or build consumer applications. These products tend to accumulate a lot of free or low-quality users that are expensive to support. Churn is also brutal.

In B2B, I can focus sales efforts into one or two opportunities and predictably secure significant increases in revenue. Customer support also yields more returns in the long-term because I'm interacting and delighting a smaller, but more impactful group of stakeholders. The total number of users compared to a B2C app is tiny, and that's a good thing. It helps me keep costs low and stay within the free tier of many SaaS offerings.

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