Issue#49: Building $1K - $10K MRR Micro SaaS around CRM, Product Roadmap and Issue Tracking tools
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Issue#49: Building $1K - $10K MRR Micro SaaS around CRM, Product Roadmap and Issue Tracking tools
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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
Let’s see some of the profitable products around CRM, Product Roadmap & Issue tracking tools. CRM tools might be saturated. But there is revenue here. Pick niche markets and build CRM to that specific segment. Issue tracking software could be a tough one to sell but ‘Issue tracking/Bug tracking’ tools are sticky in nature. Once a company/startup starts using these Issue tracking tools, it’s usually tough to move out and thus churn less and gives constant revenue. The same is the case with Product Roadmap tools (though not fully sticky)
Below are some of the profitable products around CRM, Product Roadmap & Issue tracking tools.
Streak: CRM that runs on Gmail. A CRM for Gmail to manage everything inside Gmail.
Streak makes [[🔒 👉 Revenue data available in Pro reports]] in revenue.
Upvoty: Create product roadmaps and get user feedback. Turn user feedback into actionable product optimizations.
Crossed [[🔒 👉 MRR available in Pro reports]] in 2020.
LeadDelta: CRM-view for LinkedIn connections. Add tags, filters, and notes for LinkedIn data and use as CRM solution.
Current revenue is at [[🔒 👉 MRR available in Pro reports]]
CrowdFox: The only CRM for Twitter. CrowdFox will help you find new followers and track and convert them into actual customers by using a CRM-based solution.
CompanyHub: NoCode CRM.Fully customizable CRM. As easy as Excel. Trusted by 2000 paying customers.
The estimated revenue is [[🔒 👉 Revenue info available in Pro reports]]
TryPigeon: CRM for Gmail. Get more replies, close more deals, and automate the rest. Got acquired in 2021.
NetHunt: NetHunt CRM is a sales automation tool that helps you manage leads, nurture customer relations, monitor sales progress, and close more deals. Fully integrated with GSuite and LinkedIn.
KarmaCRM: Fully customizable solution for building better customer relationships through clarity and efficiency.
The estimated revenue is [[🔒 👉 Revenue details available in Pro reports]]
EngageBay: Award winning all-in-one CRM software for marketing, sales, & customer support.
The estimated revenue is $1.6M/year.
HeadwayApp: Easiest way to keep your customers in the loop about your product. Profitable with paying customers.
ProductFeed: Retain users and keep them updated. ProductFeed is a product change log that notifies users of new updates, improves retention, and gets more of your product used.
Savannah: Savannah is a Community CRM that gives you the insights and understanding you need to manage your community at the top of the funnel, complimenting your sales CRM at the bottom of the funnel.
Currently at [[🔒 👉 ARR details available in Pro reports]] ARR.
Crew: CRM for recruiters. Speeds up your hiring process by never having to switch between tools again. Crew is your ATS and recruiting CRM combined in one powerful tool.
Prosoftly: Prosoftly CRM Software. Boost your sales, enhance your marketing capabilities and improve your customer services on a single cloud-based platform.
Codify LMS CRM: CRM system with a built-in platform for training, online payments, and convenient connection.
SuiteCRM: Feature-rich enterprise-ready alternative to Salesforce CRM. Provides all the benefits of CRM at substantially lower costs with the freedoms and flexibility of open source.
Profitable with an estimated profit of more than [[🔒 👉 Revenue details available in Pro reports]].
KaptureCRM: All-in-one Customer Service platform has all the tools your teams need to deliver better and intelligent customer service.
Estimated revenue is $9M/year.
LessAnnoyingCRM: Thousands of small businesses use Less Annoying CRM to manage contacts, track leads, and stay on top of follow-ups.
Estimated revenue is $3.2M/year.
Roadmunk: The end-to-end road-mapping tool. Capture customer feedback. Prioritize what to build next. And use boardroom-ready roadmaps to communicate your strategy. Estimated revenue is $10M/year.
ToyboxSystems: Bug reporting made easy. Collect visual feedback from your team and clients directly on your site. Toybox is the fastest way to inspect, collaborate, and manage ideas on any website.
Profitable product making a few thousands of dollars in revenue per month.
BirdEatsBug: Create bug reports that developers love. Bird Eats Bug is a technology company that develops a SaaS tool allowing to create data-rich bug reports to save companies engineering time.
Raised [[🔒 👉 Funding details available in Pro reports]] in funding.
Linear: Linear helps streamline software projects, sprints, tasks, and bug tracking. It's built for high-performance teams.
Raised [[🔒 👉 Funding details available in Pro reports]] in funding.
Kitemaker: Kitemaker’s collaborative work items will change the way your team works. Not another issue tracker - a better way of working together.
Estimated revenue is $400K/year.
Bugasura: Bug Tracker for Modern Teams Simple, Fast and Collaborative Bug Reporting and Management Platform.
BugHerd: BugHerd is the best tool to collect, organize and act on website feedback. It's bug-tracking software that's like sticky notes on a webpage.
Raised $1.5M in funding.
Negative Nancy says - “CRM tools are saturated in the market. Issue tracking tools are a tough sell.”
Me - CRM tools might be saturated. But there is revenue here. Pick niche markets and build CRM to that specific segment. Issue tracking software could be a tough one to sell but ‘Issue tracking/Bug tracking’ tools are sticky in nature. Once a company/startup starts using these Issue tracking tools, it’s usually tough to move out and thus churn less and gives constant revenue.
Negative Nancy says - “Product Roadmap can be just put in a simple web page or a public Trello board and that just works. ”
Me - Agreed. But better tools around this can further automate this to a much better customer experience and help deliver more sales and build the confidence for paying users. See more in the next sections.
Deep-dive & Some niches
CRM tools for a specific niche: Build a CRM tool but for a specific niche. By picking a specific niche, it’s much easier to target the distribution. You could pick any industry. Some examples are - CRM for the Music industry, CRM for the Real estate industry, CRM for freelancers, etc. By targeting a specific niche, it makes it easy for the audience to pick your product. As you are niching down, the total number of users and the total addressable market becomes less but targeting becomes easy. Another advantage with niche-based tools is that you can integrate third-party tools related to the specific niche you are targeting at. LeadDelta, a CRM solution build for LinkedIn is currently at $2600/month revenue. Pick your niche and build a CRM SaaS tool for that niche. CrowdFox is working on building a CRM platform for Twitter contacts to drive more sales via Twitter audience.
Notion-styled CRM tools: If you have never heard of Notion, see here. Notion is getting increasingly popular because of its different format and input style. For example, Typedream built a website builder in Notion’s style and is profitable. Tally built form solution in Notion’s style and is profitable. Create a CRM solution either for a generic use case or a niche segment in Notion style. Before you attempt this, make sure you understand the beauty and simplicity of Notion. Notion really made complex doc into simple stuff. Create a Notion-styled CRM tool that is as easy as Notion doc. (Prediction: You will be seeing more Notion based/Notion styled tools in the next coming years)
CRM tools for community: If you ever managed a community, you would understand the difficulty in managing the members. Sometimes you need to segment members and add more information about members. For example, private communities with less than 1000 users often need more information to be added for each user either for follow-up or for better targeting. Create a CRM tool-based solution for communities. Before you attempt this, create just a landing page and reach out to founders who handle communities and try to presell your solution. Once you have enough traction, start building the solution. Savannah started something around this and is currently at $2000 ARR.
Issue Tracking tools: One of the biggest advantages of issue tracking tools is that the churn for these kinds of products is extremely low because of the sticky nature of the product/business. Once a customer moves all the issues and integrates the bug tracking system into their process, it is often not so easy to move out of the specific product. This is a great business model to be in. But there are already a lot of issue tracking systems and to beat this, start with an “open-source + commercial model” of the issue tracking system. Create an open-source model where users can host their issue tracking system. Alternatively, provide a hosted option where customers can directly pay you and start using the platform. Building on an open-source model gives some immediate traction and brings in Enterprise customers once you have enough Github stars. Issue tracking tools like BirdEatsBug and Linear are making thousands of dollars in revenue and raised millions in funding.
Product Road Map tools: Product roadmap tools are in great demand with every day thousands of users building new products. Having a product roadmap builds confidence for end customers that the founders have a solid plan to invest time and energy in the product. Also, the founders would like to get feedback on what features the users are looking for. Create a tool where founders can list the features they are planning to work on and let users vote for the product features. With a voting mechanism, founders can understand what features they should work on priority and helps them prioritize the entire product development. Make sure the tool can also send emails to users as soon as a feature is marked completed. Upvoty crossed $4K MRR in less than a year with a product close to this. As an add-on make sure to provide an embeddable widget where the founder can integrate the notifications about the latest features right inside the app by adding the embeddable widget to the app. It’s a kind of small widget notifying about the latest features as soon as the customer logs in to the dashboard. HeadwayApp built something around this and is profitable with happy paying customers.
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