Hitting $144k ARR within 5 months

Arjun Jain started building pre.dev on August 1, then began sales in mid-September. By mid-November, he hit the $100k ARR milestone and now, he's at $144k ARR.

I caught up with him to understand how he grew his product so quickly. 👇

Price aggressively

James: The growth of your product has been explosive. How are you doing it?

Arjun: Aggressive pricing.

James: How so?

Arjun: We understood that the value we were offering could be directly measured by the number of hours we were saving our clients each week. We decided to work closely with clients who priced their own time aggressively and were willing to pay money to save time.

James: So you specifically targeted customers who charged higher rates?

Arjun: Yeah, we managed to target clients who publicly listed what their minimum rate was via Clutch.co.

And as a whole, we found the customers who would benefit from it the most.

James: So you niched down?

Arjun: Yes. Don't go after the biggest market. Almost all great businesses started off by catering to a niche audience with a niche product offering and grew from there.

James: How did you find the right niche?

Arjun: When we first built pre.dev, we thought we would solely focus on founders who were looking to build their MVPs. While there is an abundance of such founders, the likelihood of them using pre.dev on a daily basis was low. They were great for getting us one-time build payments, but not the recurring revenue we wanted.

We then decided to reach out to agencies and changed the pitch to using pre.dev as a way to drastically reduce their own client onboarding time. This pitch hit well, and inspired us to quickly build out our enterprise interface.

James: So they had a greater need and deeper pockets. Any tips for finding the right niche?

Arjun: Work on something you know a lot about or are happy to learn about. Finding happiness/satisfaction is a huge boost to productivity and pace of innovation.

James: Makes sense.

Arjun: And while it's important to niche down, keep an open mind. We decided to reach out to some potential clients who we thought would find our product interesting but weren't necessarily our ICP (ideal customer profile).

One of them ended up being a hackathon organizer that wanted to use our product to allow their hackers to quickly plan out their projects and gain real-time feedback on how to incorporate the technologies of the sponsors of the hackathon. That specific request led to a feature that forced us to create the infrastructure to help reinforce and improve our existing models in a simpler and more scalable manner. It ended up being a great value add for agencies that wanted to fine-tune our AI to fit their needs.

James: How did you decide on your "aggressive" price point?

Arjun: Pricing is super hard. Originally we did it on a case-by-case basis and played around with multiple price points to see what clients were willing to pay based on their usage requirements.

As time went on and feedback accrued, we decided upon a price that would be sustainable for us, but also ensure savings for our clients in the long-term.

James: What was your biggest takeaway from the process?

Arjun: It's definitely better to start too high rather than too low.

Sales > marketing

James: Okay, so you found your niche and nailed pricing. But there's gotta be more to your growth.

Arjun: Sales. And this ended up being a bit easier for us due to the fact that every single agency is listed on Clutch.co.

James: Just sales? Or are you doing general marketing as well?

Arjun: For now it’s been purely sales and outreach, besides a few social media posts.

James: Why?

Arjun: Honestly, we have been purely focused on making the product better for our existing clients and the clients coming through our sales funnel.

We wanted to get to a point where the product was totally self-serve and any marketing we would directly lead to subscriptions. We just reached that point this week and will begin a marketing campaign shortly.

James: Tell me how you're handling sales.

Arjun: Once we had a list of agencies from Clutch.co, we had to find a way to get them on a call with us. The best way we found was to go on their website, fill out a contact form, and be very clear about what we were offering.

James: As opposed to being vague?

Arjun: We tried skirting the offering at first to get more calls, but we realized the more transparent we were about our offering, the more quality leads we would get who were actually interested in trying out the product.

James: Makes sense.

Arjun: Once we're on a call with them, we discuss their processes at the agency and then dive into how we can help optimize them, increase sales, and save time with pre.dev. All while showing the product.

James: And after the call?

Arjun: Once the call is done, we send up a follow-up email instructing them on how to sign up and try out the software. We then follow up with emails and continue the conversation whether or not they’ve signed up.

James: Sounds like it's working. Any tips?

Arjun: You definitely want to keep the conversation going, have them actively try out your product and give feedback, and be very clear that you’ll be charging them the moment the trial period is over.

And automate it. We are now in the process of creating an automated system to stay in touch with prospective clients and reach out to new ones.

Rapid planning, automation, and iteration

James: Okay, so we've covered how you grew your product so quickly. How did you build it so quickly?

Arjun: Rapid iteration. Both Adam and I have worked on all kinds of projects in a variety of industries, allowing us to build a mental model of how applications of any kind could be built. For each project we've built, we've become that much faster at building the next one.

James: And what do you do with this mental model?

Arjun: The similarities that we were seeing can then be automated, allowing you as the developer to focus on the actual nuances of the product instead of wasting time on stuff like Authentication, API structure, State Management, etc.

Whether it's products or features, our team is dedicated to ensuring time is not wasted. The process typically starts from having a proper plan laid out first.

James: A plan? That's no fun.

Arjun: It's definitely frustrating to have to plan instead of jumping into the code, but ultimately it’s the only way to get products and features out in a timely manner without hiccups. And now with pre.dev, the planning stage is exponentially fast.

James: What's your planning process?

Arjun: Let’s start off with an idea. Assuming it’s software, we need to determine what modules it will contain. Will there be a frontend? Will there be a dedicated backend? Will there be APIs to interact with? Basically, you ask yourself a bunch of questions that ultimately answer the question, "What will be required to build this out?"

Once that is mapped, we start to further modularize all the major components into individual tasks and then tackle them one by one.

James: And it sounds like you've been dogfooding this pretty heavily.

Arjun: Yes, we use pre.dev itself. It’s been invaluable for not only scoping out potential customer projects, but also scoping out features that we are building internally for pre.dev. It’s cool to see the AI being used to improve the AI itself.

Fail (and validate) fast

James: Anything else we need to know about how you built and grew it so fast?

Arjun: I am a big fan of failing fast. It's important to validate ideas and products as soon as possible. Waiting for the product to be perfect is a huge mistake.

Most ideas will fail, but if you build enough of them, one of them is bound to succeed.

So instead of hoping that the first idea you've ever worked on is going to succeed, focus on validating ideas as quickly as possible. Build an MVP in less than a few weeks and get it in the hands of users, then track feedback.

James: What's the best way to quickly validate a product?

Arjun: Talk to potential customers.

James: Do you view affirmative feedback as validation?

Arjun: No, you have to get them to pay.

Inputting credit card information indicates a strong chance that they'll use your product — even if you offer them a promo code.

James: So you take a card but offer a discount.

Arjun: I think a short-term promo code is a great way to make the pricing clear from the start, while easing their concerns. It ensures that if the product does indeed solve their problem, they will stay and continue paying the stated price. Of course, this assumes that your product is subscription-based.

James: Makes sense. "Failing fast" is meant to reduce the risk of failure. How else can indie hackers reduce this risk?

Arjun: Build something that you'll use internally even if no one buys it. We lucked out with that.

James: Where can people find you?

Arjun: Check out pre.dev or find us on X or LinkedIn. And we'll be launching on Product Hunt January 8!