Today we're looking back at one of our greatest hits - Taggun.

Taggun is a simple OCR API SaaS making $19k/month.

The biggest lesson from it’s success?

Your startup doesn’t need to be fancy.

You just need to build a simple solution to a painful problem.

Taggun is a simple API app that other apps can use to extract accurate information from invoices and receipts.

Taggun has a wide range of features, and you read how it works in the detailed case studies on their website. But a few things stand out -

• They automate the menial boring work for big companies.
• They offer custom models for their larger customers.
• The customizations they build for one customer, end up being re-used by other customers.

These are the custom AI models Taggun built for a financial company Ramp.

Pretty sure they can re-use these models for other customers as well, while still offering them a customized experience.

I like to call this Standardized Personalization.

Where on the backend, you're implementation of a solution is standard and repeatable, but on the frontend you’re able to offer a truly personalized experience.

When you offer a personalized experience, you can charge a lot more, because it’s not a cookie-cutter experience anymore.

I’ve written more about standardized personalization here.

My favorite lesson from Taggun’s success is the founder’s hustle -

He didn’t get any traction.

For 1 year…

But he kept going and kept trying different channels before starting to see some traction.

After reading so many of these stories, I’ve come to accept that all of us are going to have that year or 2 of pure struggle and failure. So it’s best to start taking action and dive deep into it instead of trying to avoid it.

Top Lessons

• You don’t need a fancy idea, you just need a simple solution to a painful problem
• The value in SaaS is to automate the tedious work for businesses
• Provide personalization and customizations. Can’t charge a lot more for that
• The struggle is part of the game, don’t be turned off by it.
• Be prepared for at least a year or 2 of challenges.

You can read the initial Taggun journey in the 6 public posts the founder has written on Indie Hackers.​

Thanks for reading

Here's a web version of this post to bookmark and share.

Let Time Work for You

If you know something will benefit from compounding, it’s better to get started earlier than later

Even if you don’t think you’re ready yet

Stuff like -

• Doing Customer Interviews
• Picking 1 idea out of many
• Releasing an MVP
• Kickstarting SEO

Delaying only makes time work against you in the long term.

More in this tweet.​

From the vault -

3 random post from the Superframeworks archives -

• ​$704K MRR - Solo Founder SaaS​
• ​$8K MRR SaaS with THIS framework​
• ​How find your “Niche”​

🔗 Super Links

Useful links you don’t want to miss -

• ​How I Bypass Zoom's Upload Limit and Save $480 / yr On Storage Costs - Mike Cardona
• ​Awesome free Google Looker Studio template for SEO analysis - Brodie Clark
• ​How I accidentally became a solopreneur living the 4h workday - Niharikaa Sodhi
• ​You are not your customer - Jason Cohen
• ​AI Productivity tools market map by A16Z - Olivia Moore

Last week’s top link -

• ​Free SEO tools from Konigle - h/t Jatin Khosla for sharing

🤗 How can I help?

“You are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with”

Surround yourself with better people 🤷🏻

Whenever you’re ready, consider joining the Indie Masterminds community.

The goal of this newsletter is to inspire and motivate you, but the goal of the community is to help you take action and go to the next level in your journey.

So if you’re at that stage where you don’t need more inspiration, but you do need to take the right action, then come join us!​

We’re here to help 🫂

Thanks,

Ayush 🙏