The Reality of Building a Slow Burn SaaS Business

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Michael Kansky is the founder of LiveHelpNow, a customer support platform that provides small businesses with help desk, live chat, and more.

In 1997 Michael immigrated to the United States from Ukraine as a refugee. To help himself get a job, he signed up for a computer programming course.

As a final project, he built a dating website. And people started using the site. At one point, he had around 1,000 users.

When a user asked for an easier way to communicate with other users, Michael built a basic chat feature, which he also started using to support end-users.

In 2005, he realized there was a growing opportunity with live chat, so he took what he'd learned and launched a new product.

But it was a complete hobby. Michael had no business plan or customers. But he loved building the product and seeing people use it.

Eventually, in 2009 in started charging for his live chat product. About a third of his customers switched to a paid plan – which generated around $10K MRR.

Today, Michael has bootstrapped his business to over $3 million ARR, but it took him 12 years to get there. And for the last 4 years, revenue has been flat.

We often hear stories of entrepreneurs who launch a product, spend no money on marketing, and hit their first million dollars almost overnight.

But that's not the experience for the majority of SaaS founders. Michael's story is about the reality and the long hard slog that most founders have to go through to find success.

In this interview, we talk about the realities of building a SaaS business, the big lessons Michael's learned, and what he's doing to start growing again.

I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is part of our Bootstrapping series.

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The Reality of Building a Slow Burn SaaS Business

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