Aplano is an employee time tracking app.

Helps businesses with -

• Schedule shifts
• Manage employee absences
• Tracks “punched-in” time

Simple app doing $145K MRR

I know a dozen people who’ll say - “I could build this in a weekend”

But will they?

And then will they market it?

We often wait for a golden ticket idea to smack us in our heads.

While, the most profitable ideas are hiding in plane sight.

Aplano’s founder Tadeus Gregorian, got the idea for the product when working in a pharmacy -

Top lessons -

• The best SaaS businesses emerge out of excel sheets.
• Even if you’re entering a crowded market, you can win on price + UI/UX
• If most players in the market are old companies with 20 year old UX, then it makes total sense to disrupt them.
• Scratching your own itch works. (if you can find enough people with the same itch!)
• There’s big money in B2B 🤷‍♂️

Initial Growth

Aplano’s initial growth was counter intuitive.

They started with a free product. Got a bunch of users, let them use the product, got feedback and insights from them.

Then launched with 3 pricing plans.

All of this took them about 2 years - that’s a long time.

Starting with a free product is NOT recommended.

It may have worked for Aplano, because there was existing demand and many competitors. But in most cases, your goal should be to get to revenue as soon as you can.

Traffic

Aplano has 3 major traffic channels -

• Google Ads
• Meta Ads
• SEO

They serve the German market, so their website and content is all German. According to Ubersuggest, they rank for these keywords -

These keywords, roughly translate to -

• Hostpital shift schedule example
• Online shift schedule
• Roster app
• Overtime reduction
• Create work plans

The ideal keywords in their niche.

You can also check out their ads from these links -

• ​Aplano Google Ads​
• ​Aplano Meta Ads​

Someone can easily build a similar product in a different geography and see good results.

Final Lesson

Don’t be a perfectionist!

This is the lesson Tadeus shares with us -

Also - “there is no low-effort way leading to major success”.

So stop looking for shortcuts, instead, learn to enjoy the hard work.

It’s taken Aplano 3 years to get here.

The business may be simple, but it definitely isn’t easy.

Cheers 🙌

Read Tadeus’ full interview on the Failory website -

• ​Growing an Employee Scheduling Tool to Five-Figures a Month​

Thanks for reading.

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

From the vault -

3 random post from the Superframeworks archives -

• ​$31K MRR - Simple chatbot builder tool​
• ​$19K MRR with a simple OCR app​
• ​Solopreneur Skill Stack​

🔗 Super Links

Useful links you don’t want to miss -

• ​How i run a $500K/yr business with 4 contractors - Alex West
• ​SEO strategy to build a Product Hunt competitor - me
• ​What VCs think of founders - Steph from OpenVC
• ​99% of startups fail... buy Veed survived - Sabba
• ​Retention in the age of AI - Olivia Moore

🤗 How can I help?

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help you -

• ​Join the tiny community for your big dreams - We support, inform, educate and inspire each other every day. We are a tight knit group of indie hackers and solopreneurs working on our projects. We would love to have you. Entrepreneurship is hard, don’t do it alone. Come join us!

Thanks,

Ayush 🙏