u/Traditional-Stay3091

I’m feeling a little lost.

Have a product users are joining every day. Currently averaging on one new free user per day since our public launch in April. Prior to that, was building for a year and we continue to build each day.

My question is geared towards solo founders building SaaS products since 2023-to date.

As a tech founder - I’d like to understand your exact path to paying customers if you had no funding?

We have no funding and have been bootstrapping everything by using personal savings, which has obviously slowed our growth.

I’d like to know
1: The year you started building
2: when it went live
3: when did you get first free customers
4: first paid customer
5: when did you see hockey stick upwards growth (pre or post funding)

This is a lot to ask of you, but it will be greatly appreciated us new founders buried in early stage startups and need a bit of clarity around what to expect ahead.

Thank you in advance to anyone that takes the time to respond.

Friendly founder.

Has anyone gotten funding with zero paying customers, but DO have customers on free tier?

I know it’s a weird question but our product is pulling in a lot of real customers at the free tier, and we have a solid experience. We only launched in April and have been building in stealth for a year. We have a public global launch in September, but first check for funding our GTM and improvements on our product would be great.

Would love your feedback.