Bootstrapped SaaS: How Carrd Hit $1M ARR with Just 2 People

Introduction and what Carrd does

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AJ started Carrd as a vanity project to pay for his lattes. He didn't expect anyone to care about yet another website builder.

By the time we recorded this interview, Carrd had grown to over $100K in monthly recurring revenue and was hosting over 4 million websites—all with just two people. AJ bootstrapped his way from $0 to $30K MRR before raising $2M, not because he needed the money, but because he needed the expertise.

AJ is the founder of Carrd, a SaaS platform for building simple and fully responsive one-page websites.

After years of building and selling website templates, AJ created Carrd as a side project—a simple one-page website builder that he hoped would pay for his coffee habit.

He launched with a freemium model and $19/year pricing, expecting modest results. By 2020, he had bootstrapped to $30K in monthly recurring revenue without any marketing spend beyond building in public on Twitter.

Then 2020 happened. COVID drove people online. Political activists discovered Carrd. Kim Kardashian tweeted a Carrd site. Growth exploded.

Suddenly, AJ's side project was hosting millions of websites and facing infrastructure that would collapse within months. He had two choices: keep treating it like a side project, or get serious about building a real company.

He chose the latter. But there was a problem: AJ had never run a company at this scale. He didn't know how to hire, how to manage infrastructure for millions of users, or how to handle the legal complexity of a platform used by activists.

That's when he made the unconventional decision to raise $2M—not because Carrd needed the money (it was profitable), but because he needed a network of advisors who had been there before.

In this interview, AJ shares how he scaled from $30K to over $100K in monthly recurring revenue while keeping the team at just 2 people, why he finally decided to hire his first developer, and the lessons he learned about staying lean while growing a bootstrapped SaaS business.

This episode is part of our Bootstrapping series.

Key Insight

AJ bootstrapped Carrd from a side project to $1M ARR with just 2 people by keeping pricing radically simple ($19/year), staying lean to avoid premature scaling, and raising $2M only after becoming profitable—not for capital, but for access to expertise he didn't have.

Key Ideas

Keep pricing low enough that conversion becomes a no-brainer: $19/year drove massive freemium-to-paid conversion, especially during Black Friday sales at 40-50% off
Stay radically lean to preserve profitability: 2 people supported $1M ARR by focusing ruthlessly on product, not marketing or hiring
Raise funding for expertise, not capital: AJ raised $2M while profitable to access AWS engineers, hiring advice, and a network of advisors who had scaled platforms before
Let users define your roadmap: open-ended products should listen to feature requests and generalize them to benefit the entire user base
Freemium virality compounds over time: 'Made with Carrd' links on every free site created a network effect that drove growth without marketing

Key Lessons

🎯 Keep pricing stupid simple for freemium conversion: Carrd's $19/year pricing is counterintuitively low, but it makes the decision to upgrade a no-brainer—especially during Black Friday sales when conversion rates skyrocket with 40-50% discounts.
💰 Bootstrapped SaaS can stay lean at $1M ARR: AJ and his co-founder Doni run a $100K MRR business with just 2 people by ruthlessly focusing on product over marketing, hiring only when there's a clear bottleneck, not because investors suggest it.
🚀 Freemium virality compounds over time: Every free Carrd site includes a "Made with Carrd" link, creating a built-in viral loop that drove growth from 0 to 4 million sites without marketing spend—the community became the growth engine.
🤝 Raise funding for expertise, not capital: AJ raised $2M while Carrd was already profitable because he needed access to AWS engineers, hiring advice, and a network of advisors who had scaled platforms before—the money was secondary to the expertise.
🧠 Listen to users, but generalize feature requests: AJ implemented "virtual pages" when users asked for multi-page support, but did it in a way that preserved Carrd's one-page philosophy while solving the problem for a much wider audience than just the requester.
📉 Side projects can become real businesses accidentally: AJ spent years in denial that Carrd was more than a side project, until 2020's explosive growth forced him to accept that millions of people relied on it—shifting his mindset from "latte money" to "real responsibility" was the hardest transition.
⚡ Explosive growth can be dangerous for bootstrapped SaaS: Carrd's 2020 hockey stick growth made AJ "extremely uncomfortable" because it could have forced rash decisions—bringing in advisors helped him avoid panic-driven mistakes and stabilize growth.
🛠️ Technical debt is bearable until it's not: AJ ran Carrd on bare metal IBM servers for years despite people telling him to move to AWS—it only became urgent when growth cut his infrastructure runway from "years" to "6 months," forcing a migration of 2.5M sites.

Chapters

00:00Introduction and what Carrd does

01:51Welcome back AJ

02:24What problem does Carrd solve

03:29Current revenue and growth metrics

03:52Why AJ raised $2M despite being profitable

09:39How Doni became co-founder

10:56What drove growth in 2020 and 2021

12:11Twitter's role in early growth

14:38Freemium and the Made with Carrd link

15:38Product-first approach over marketing

18:16Lessons on building a great product

19:42The virtual pages feature request

22:37How AJ prioritizes feature requests

24:23Hiring the first developer

25:34Investor alignment on hiring philosophy

28:27Choosing the right investors

30:22Transition from side project to business

33:08Why AJ resisted accepting Carrd as a business

34:33How AJ thinks about customer segments

36:49Pricing strategy and the $19/year plan

40:35Tech stack and the AWS migration

42:29Migrating 2.5M sites without downtime

43:40AWS credits through the accelerator program

44:55Lightning round questions

Episode Q&A

How did AJ bootstrap Carrd from $0 to $30K MRR before raising funding?

AJ built Carrd as a side project with freemium pricing ($19/year) and grew organically through building in public on Twitter and viral "Made with Carrd" links on every free site, reaching $30K MRR by 2020 without any marketing spend.

Why did AJ raise $2M for Carrd if it was already profitable?

AJ raised funding not for capital, but for expertise and network access—he needed advisors who could help with infrastructure scaling, hiring, and managing a platform used by millions when his original AWS setup would have collapsed within months.

How does Carrd generate revenue with only $19/year pricing?

Carrd's freemium model drives massive volume through viral free-tier usage (millions of sites), and the $19/year price point is low enough that conversion becomes a no-brainer, especially during Black Friday sales when conversion rates "shoot through the roof."

What convinced AJ to stop treating Carrd as a side project and build a real company?

In 2020, COVID drove explosive growth, activists adopted Carrd at scale, and Kim Kardashian tweeted a Carrd site—suddenly AJ was supporting millions of users on infrastructure that would fail within 6 months, forcing him to accept Carrd needed to be a real company.

How does AJ decide which feature requests to build for Carrd?

AJ looks for feature requests that can be generalized to benefit the entire user base rather than just one niche, asking "Can we solve this in a way that doesn't compromise the product but helps more people than just the requester?"

Why does Carrd's 2-person team work when most $1M ARR companies have 10+ employees?

AJ focuses 100% of his time on product development while his co-founder Doni handles support, moderation, and community—they avoid hiring until they feel a clear bottleneck, and investors aligned with this lean philosophy rather than pushing premature scaling.

How did AJ migrate Carrd's 2.5 million sites to AWS without downtime?

AJ spent a month planning the migration, used the opportunity to fix poor early design choices, and executed the move in one shot—he had one hiccup that required staying up until 4 AM to fix, but pulled off a zero-downtime migration.

What role does Twitter play in Carrd's growth today compared to early days?

Twitter was critical early on when AJ built in public and shared his journey, but as the product matured, it gained its own momentum through network effects—the community perpetuates growth more than anything AJ does directly on social media.

Why hasn't AJ raised Carrd's prices despite advisors saying he's "too cheap"?

AJ believes raising prices too high would reduce conversions more than it increases revenue—Black Friday sales at 40-50% off prove that lower prices drive "nuts" conversion rates, so he focuses on volume through better product rather than higher pricing.

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