How I Built and Sold a $6M SaaS (Complete Story)

The Phone Call That Changed Everything

"We'd like to buy your company for $6 million."

I was standing in a Walmart parking lot when I got the call. My 3-year-old SaaS that started as a weekend project to help my church send text reminders was being acquired.

I said I'd think about it. Then I sat in my car for 20 minutes, hands shaking, trying to process what just happened.

This is the complete, unfiltered story of how I built RemindRight—a mass texting platform that went from $0 to $6M exit in 3 years. No VC funding. No technical co-founder. Just a lot of mistakes, some lucky breaks, and lessons that cost me hundreds of thousands to learn.

If you're building a SaaS, this story might save you years of pain. Or inspire you to keep going when everything seems impossible.

Year 0: The Problem That Started Everything

October 2019: The Church Volunteer Coordinator Problem

My wife was drowning. As volunteer coordinator at our church, she spent 10+ hours every week calling and texting volunteers. Sunday school teachers forgetting their schedule. Youth group helpers not showing up. Sound team arriving late.

One Sunday, after yet another no-show left her scrambling, she came home frustrated: "There has to be a better way to remind people!"

That night, I started googling. The existing solutions were either:

Too expensive: $500+/month for church management software
Too complex: Required training sessions and IT support
Too limited: Basic SMS tools with no scheduling or groups

November 2019: The First Prototype

I spent Thanksgiving weekend building a simple prototype:

Google Sheets for the database (I know, I know)
Twilio for sending texts
A basic web interface using Bootstrap
Total cost: $8 for the domain

The MVP did exactly three things:

Import a list of phone numbers
Schedule a text message
Send it at the scheduled time

That's it. No user accounts. No payment processing. No fancy features.

December 2019: The First Users

I showed it to my wife. She used it to remind 50 volunteers about the Christmas service.

Result: 100% attendance for the first time ever.

Word spread. By January, five other churches were asking to use it.

Year 1: From Side Project to Real Business

Q1 2020: Going Legitimate ($0 → $1,000 MRR)

January: The Pivot to SaaS

I realized I had something when churches started offering to pay. Time to turn this into a real product:

Technical Stack Decisions:

Backend: Node.js + PostgreSQL (moved off Google Sheets)
Frontend: React (rebuilt from scratch)
Infrastructure: Heroku (mistake #1 - more on this later)
Payments: Stripe
SMS: Twilio

The First Pricing Model:

Starter: $29/month (500 texts)
Growth: $99/month (2,500 texts)
Pro: $299/month (10,000 texts)

February: First Paying Customer

Grace Community Church in Dallas. $99/month. I literally printed out the Stripe notification and framed it.

March: COVID Changes Everything

Suddenly, every organization needed remote communication. What was a "nice to have" became mission-critical.

New customers started flooding in:

Churches doing virtual services
Schools coordinating remote learning
Businesses managing remote teams
Healthcare clinics sending appointment reminders

Month-by-month growth:

January: $99 MRR (1 customer)
February: $327 MRR (4 customers)
March: $1,247 MRR (18 customers)

Q2 2020: The First Big Mistake ($1K → $5K MRR)

April: The Heroku Disaster

We hit 50 customers and Heroku started choking. Page loads took 10+ seconds. Text messages delayed by hours.

One morning, the entire platform went down for 6 hours. I lost 8 customers that day and refunded $3,000.

Emergency Migration:

Moved to AWS in 48 hours without sleep
Learned DevOps the hard way
Set up proper monitoring (finally)
Cost went from $200/month to $2,000/month

Lesson learned: Infrastructure isn't where you save money.

May: The Feature Creep Trap

Customers kept asking for features:

"Can you add email too?"
"We need voice calls!"
"What about WhatsApp?"
"Can it integrate with our CRM?"

I said yes to everything. The product became a Frankenstein monster. Development slowed to a crawl. Bugs multiplied.

June: The Reset

I made a hard decision: RemindRight would do ONE thing excellently—scheduled SMS for groups. That's it.

I sunset half the features, refunded some customers, and focused on making the core product bulletproof.

Result: Churn dropped from 15% to 3%.

Q3 2020: Finding Product-Market Fit ($5K → $15K MRR)

July: The Breakthrough Feature

One feature changed everything: Smart Send Times.

Instead of blasting everyone at once, the system would:

Analyze when each recipient typically responds
Send messages at optimal times for each person
Increase response rates by 3x

This feature alone tripled our close rate.

August: The First Big Client

A national retail chain with 200 stores wanted to use RemindRight for shift reminders. Contract value: $2,500/month.

But they needed:

SOC 2 compliance
SLA guarantees
Dedicated support
Custom integrations

I had none of these. I said yes anyway and figured it out:

SOC 2: Hired a consultant, got certified in 90 days
SLA: Set up redundancy, achieved 99.9% uptime
Support: Hired my first employee (customer success)
Integrations: Built a Zapier app

September: The Numbers Start Making Sense

MRR: $15,000
Customers: 127
Churn: 2.8%
CAC: $180
LTV: $2,100
Burn: -$5,000/month (profitable!)

Q4 2020: Scaling Challenges ($15K → $35K MRR)

October: The Competition Heats Up

Three VC-funded competitors launched, offering similar products at lower prices. They had:

Slick marketing sites
Big sales teams
Aggressive pricing
Feature parity

I couldn't compete on price or features. So I competed on:

Speed: 24-hour support response (I never slept)
Reliability: 99.95% uptime
Simplicity: Onboarding in 5 minutes
Relationships: I called every customer monthly

November: The Hiring Dilemma

I was drowning:

16-hour days, 7 days a week
Support tickets piling up
Development basically stopped
My family never saw me

First hire: Sarah, customer success. Freed up 20 hours/week. Second hire: Marcus, junior developer. Doubled development speed. Third hire: Jennifer, growth marketing. This changed everything.

December: The First Marketing Win

Jennifer implemented one strategy that 5x'd our growth: Partner Program.

We gave agencies and consultants:

30% lifetime commission
White-label option
Training and support
Marketing materials

Result: 50 partners brought in 300+ customers in 60 days.

Year 2: Hypergrowth and Near Disaster

Q1 2021: The Hockey Stick ($35K → $85K MRR)

January: The Perfect Storm

Everything clicked at once:

Product was stable
Partners were selling
Word-of-mouth exploded
Churn hit record low (1.8%)

We were adding $15-20K MRR monthly without increasing burn.

February: The Enterprise Play

Fortune 500 company reached out. They wanted RemindRight for internal communications across 50,000 employees.

Contract value: $25,000/month.

Problem: We weren't ready for enterprise.

The 30-Day Enterprise Sprint:

HIPAA compliance
SSO integration
Advanced permissions
Audit logs
99.99% SLA
24/7 support

We pulled it off. Signed the contract March 1st.

March: The Inflection Point

MRR: $85,000
ARR: $1,020,000
Team: 8 people
Customers: 450
Enterprise clients: 3

We hit $1M ARR. I bought a Tesla to celebrate. (Returned it 3 weeks later—felt too flashy.)

Q2 2021: The Scaling Crisis ($85K → $140K MRR)

April: Everything Breaks

Success nearly killed us:

Database couldn't handle the load
Twilio bill hit $40,000/month
Customer support overwhelmed
Technical debt crushing development
Team burned out

The Emergency Fixes:

Migrated to Aurora (48-hour marathon)
Negotiated Twilio rates (saved 40%)
Hired 3 support agents
Instituted "Fix-it Fridays" for tech debt
Mandatory vacation policy

May: The Competitor Acquisition Offer

Our biggest competitor offered to acquire us for $2M.

I turned it down. We were growing too fast to sell.

(This haunted me later.)

June: The Product Evolution

We launched RemindRight 2.0:

Complete UI redesign
API for developers
Advanced analytics
Two-way conversations
AI-powered send time optimization

Launch week: 100 new signups, $25K in new MRR.

Q3 2021: The Plateau ($140K → $165K MRR)

July: Growth Stalls

For the first time, growth flatlined:

Competition intensified
CAC doubled
Churn increased to 4%
Enterprise sales cycle lengthened

The Diagnosis:

Market was saturating
Product wasn't differentiated enough
Sales process was broken
Marketing was unfocused

August: The Strategic Pivot

Instead of being everything to everyone, we nicheed down: RemindRight: The SMS Platform for Healthcare

We focused exclusively on:

Medical appointment reminders
Prescription refill alerts
Health screening reminders
HIPAA-compliant messaging

September: The Turnaround

The niche focus worked:

CAC dropped 50%
Close rate doubled
Churn back to 2%
Added $30K MRR from healthcare clients

Q4 2021: Preparing for Exit ($165K → $220K MRR)

October: The Second Acquisition Offer

Private equity firm offered $4M.

This time, I listened.

Why I Considered Selling:

Burned out after 2 years of grinding
Market becoming commoditized
Needed capital to compete with VC-funded players
Family needed me present

November: The Bidding War

Once word got out, three more buyers appeared:

PE Firm #1: $4M
Strategic Buyer: $4.5M
PE Firm #2: $5.2M
Competitor: $6M (mostly stock)

December: The Due Diligence Hell

60 days of:

Financial audits
Technical reviews
Customer interviews
Legal documentation
Contract assignments

I aged 5 years in 2 months.

Year 3: The Exit

Q1 2022: Closing the Deal

January: The Final Negotiations

Went with PE Firm #2's offer of $5.2M cash + $800K earnout based on retention.

Why this deal:

All cash (no risky stock)
They'd keep the team
12-month transition period
Additional earnout potential

February: The Paperwork Mountain

300-page purchase agreement
50+ contracts to assign
Employment agreements for team
Escrow arrangements
Tax optimization (saved $400K)

March 15, 2022: Wire Transfer Day

$5.2 million hit my account at 2:47 PM.

I sat in my car in that same Walmart parking lot and cried.

The Final Numbers

RemindRight at Exit:

MRR: $238,000
ARR: $2,856,000
Customers: 1,247
Team: 14 people
Gross Margin: 78%
Growth Rate: 140% YoY
Churn: 2.1%

Financial Breakdown:

Initial wire: $5,200,000
Earnout achieved: $800,000
Total exit: $6,000,000
Taxes paid: $1,400,000
Team bonuses: $500,000
Net to me: $4,100,000

What I'd Do Differently

Technical Decisions

Do Again:

Start with boring, proven tech (Node + Postgres)
Invest in infrastructure early
Hire senior developers first
Build for scale from day one

Skip:

Fancy JavaScript frameworks
Microservices (unnecessary complexity)
Building our own analytics (just use Mixpanel)
Custom billing system (use Stripe Billing)

Business Decisions

Do Earlier:

Hire customer success immediately
Focus on one niche from the start
Build channel partnerships
Implement annual contracts

Avoid:

Feature creep
Competing on price
Saying yes to bad-fit customers
Optimizing for vanity metrics

Personal Decisions

What I Sacrificed:

Family time (missed too many bedtimes)
Health (gained 40 pounds)
Friendships (disappeared for 3 years)
Hobbies (what hobbies?)

What I Learned:

No exit is worth destroying your family
Set boundaries from day one
Your health is your wealth
Success is empty without people to share it with

The Uncomfortable Truths

Truth #1: Luck Played a Huge Role

COVID created massive demand
Competitor made critical mistakes
Key enterprise client found us randomly
Acquisition timing was perfect

Truth #2: I Almost Quit 10 Times

Month 3: No customers
Month 8: Platform crashed
Month 14: Cofounder quit (didn't mention I had one)
Month 18: Almost bankrupt
Month 24: Complete burnout

Truth #3: The Money Didn't Fix Everything

Still struggle with anxiety
Relationships need rebuilding
Purpose feels unclear
Imposter syndrome intensified

Truth #4: Most Advice Is Wrong

"Move fast and break things" → Nearly killed us
"Raise VC funding" → Would've diluted us to nothing
"Hire fast" → Wrong hires cost us $200K
"Focus on growth at all costs" → Almost went bankrupt

The Playbook: If I Built Another SaaS

Week 1-4: Validation

Find 10 people with the problem
Get 3 to pay upfront
Build the simplest possible solution
Deliver value immediately

Month 2-6: Foundation

Get to 10 paying customers
Achieve product-market fit
Document everything
Automate operations

Month 7-12: Growth

Hire customer success first
Build channel partnerships
Focus on annual contracts
Optimize for profitability

Year 2: Scale

Raise prices 2x
Expand into adjacent markets
Build defensive moats
Prepare for acquisition

Lessons That Made Millions

Lesson 1: Charge More

We were always too cheap. When we doubled prices, we lost 10% of customers but increased revenue 80%.

Lesson 2: Fire Bad Customers

20% of customers caused 80% of support tickets. Firing them improved team morale and margins.

Lesson 3: Annual Contracts Change Everything

Moving from monthly to annual:

Reduced churn 70%
Improved cash flow 12x
Increased valuation 2x

Lesson 4: Distribution Beats Product

Our competitor had better features. We had better distribution through partners. We won.

Lesson 5: Profitable Growth > Hypergrowth

We grew 140% while profitable. VCs grow 300% losing millions. Guess who sleeps better?

What's Next?

After the earnout period ended, I took 6 months off. Traveled with family. Got healthy again. Rediscovered reading.

Now I'm building again, but differently:

Max 40 hours/week
Profit from day one
Remote team only
No venture capital
Family dinner every night

The new product? An AI tool that helps people build and sell their own SaaS products. Meta, I know.

But this time, I'm building it right. Sustainable. Balanced. Human.

Your Turn

If you're thinking about building a SaaS, here's my advice:

Start today. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Today.

Start small. Smaller than you think. One feature. Ten customers.

Start with revenue. Get someone to pay before you build.

Start with boundaries. Your family matters more than any exit.

Start with the end in mind. Know what success looks like for YOU.

The SaaS dream is real. I'm living proof. But it's also harder, longer, and more painful than anyone tells you.

Is it worth it?

Ask me in 10 years when I see what kind of father and husband I was during those years. The money is nice. The freedom is nice. But if I lost my family to gain $6M, I lost everything.

Build your SaaS. Chase your dream. But don't lose yourself in the process.

You can have both success and soul. It just takes intention, boundaries, and remembering what actually matters.

Now stop reading and go build something. The world needs what you're creating.

Just remember to go home for dinner.

P.S. - RemindRight was acquired by TextFlow Inc. They've grown it to $10M ARR. I'm genuinely happy for them and still use the product.

P.P.S. - If you're building a SaaS and want to connect, I do monthly office hours for founders. No pitch decks, just real talk about real problems. Join here.