From $0 to $15k MRR by taking a product from a crowded Web2 market and building it for Web3

Wilson Bright took an established product idea that had already been validated by a crowded market, and he built it for privacy-focused Web3 companies.

Since this niche was completely unserved, he was able to build BlockSurveys to $15k MRR. And he says others can do the same because Web3 is still an underserved niche.

I caught up with him to get the details. Here's what he had to say. 👇

Seeing the need for digital privacy

I started my indie hacking journey by participating in a hackathon called 'Can't Be Evil' by Stacks Blockchain in 2020. The theme of the hackathon was: “Society 3.0 / Reimagining ownership of data in the digital space.”

My passion for privacy and data security was born during this hackathon.

While searching for available domain names on popular registrars like Google Domains and GoDaddy. I noticed that a .com domain that was initially available suddenly became unavailable just a few minutes after I saw it. This raised concerns about potential front-running practices, either by the registrars themselves or by intermediaries, and I found that this had happened to others as well.

It really highlighted the critical importance of privacy and made me realize that it is a fundamental digital right.

Finding a Web3 gap

My experience at the hackathon inspired me to create BlockSurvey. At the time, I was using a survey tool to validate assumptions and ideas, and I discovered that no tool offered end-to-end encryption. So I decided to fill the gap.

I have always had a talent for identifying gaps and issues. Whenever I feel a strong intuition about something, I investigate and try to solve it by creating small prototypes in a cost-effective way, usually by asking around or conducting interviews.

So, I created a prototype of BlockSurvey that would fill the gap and launched it on Product Hunt.

Building a Web3 MVP

Before founding BlockSurvey, I worked with Fidelity Investments as a Quality Assurance Engineer and Wells Fargo Securities as a Business Systems Consultant. I knew I wanted to build something, so I saved up a couple of years of runway.

Since it was built during the hackathon, BlockSurvey was a lean and focused effort that took me three days.

Our tech stack includes the Stacks Blockchain for identity, auth, and storage management. This is anchored to Bitcoin, providing end-to-end encryption and ensuring data privacy.

We also utilize other web technologies for the front-end and back-end development to create a seamless user experience — Angular for frontend and NodeJS in the backend. For serverless, we use Cloudflare Workers.

On the third day, I launched on Product Hunt.

BlockSurvey's business model

BlockSurvey is a privacy-focused survey tool. We help companies run surveys that need data protection and privacy for the audience without any ads, trackers, or cookies. We built BlockSurvey on the foundation of privacy and security using Web3 wallet for identity; with this, the end customers are in the custody of their encryption keys, thus enabling data ownership in a zero-knowledge way.

Additionally, BlockSurvey solves data collection problems unique to Web3 companies, such as token-gating and collecting Web3 identities for use cases like building whitelists, allowlists, airdrops, and holder surveys. And we adhere to compliance standards such as SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA.

Our business model is subscription-based. We cater to two main segments:

1. Individual users and small businesses: We offer self-service access to BlockSurvey. Pricing starts as low as $29 per month for individual plans up to $69 for team plans.

2. Enterprise clients: We offer a done-for-you service for larger organizations that require SSO, custom integrations, and higher security compliance standards. The pricing is custom, based on the requirements and the work involved to get it done.

We serve over 500 customers and have facilitated more than 10 million submissions so far. Our MRR is $15k. Approximately 40% of that comes from Enterprise clients, while 60% comes from Individual users and small businesses

Usage is not validation

Shortly after launching BlockSurvey, the Black Lives Matter rallies occurred, and the public used BlockSurvey to RSVP for the rallies.

It was a complete surprise. It was humbling and inspiring to see how my simple MVP could be put to use for good. It validated the importance of our mission and showed the real-world impact our product could have in enabling people to safely engage in important causes.

This gave the heart to take it seriously and keep building, but it didn't validate the product. I was offering the product for free at the time, and validation comes from a willingness to pay.

I found that privacy-first surveys resonated most with sensitive domains like mental health, sexual health, activism, coaching for relationship, spirituality, and other small sensitive niches. And soon, I monetized and validated the idea.

From there, I bootstrapped the project with personal savings. I spent about $30k of my personal savings, then got some grants from the community to build further for about a year’s time.

Why Web3 is important

Data privacy should not be an optional feature or an upsell in digital products; it should be the default. At least, that's what I believe.

So to me, Web3 represents the next evolution of the internet, focusing on decentralization, privacy, and user control.

For indie hackers, Web3 opens up new opportunities to build innovative applications that prioritize user privacy, data ownership, and censorship resistance.

Beside reimagining the user-owned internet, I see it is a niche you can go after by building solutions for Web3 companies that are already solved for Web2, be it for operations, communications, marketing, or anything else.

Challenges with building a Web3 product

But there are challenges inherent to Web3 as well.

One of the main challenges in building privacy-centric apps with Web3 technology is the limited acceptance and understanding of blockchain among non-Web3 businesses. Many traditional businesses are hesitant to adopt Web3 solutions due to the perceived complexity and unfamiliarity with the underlying technologies.

To overcome this challenge, it's crucial to prioritize abstraction and focus on showcasing the tangible value that Web3 brings to the table. You don’t even have to say you are using Web3 if your customer's decision makers aren't tech enthusiasts; just emphasize the benefits they can derive from using a privacy-centric solution.

Another downside is that, since Web3 is relatively new, it is constantly changing. That makes it difficult to keep up.

And there can be high churn too due to a lot of Web3 businesses – our customers — having short lifespans. Those short lifespans are due to competition, market cycles, and fluctuations in the broader sentiment of Bitcoin. During bull markets, there tends to be a surge in user activity and interest in Web3 projects. However, during bear markets, user engagement often declines, leading to a decrease in daily active users.

To stay ahead of this, I’m continuously learning through online courses, participating in hackathons, and collaborating with the community, which have all been instrumental in the development of BlockSurvey.

How to build in Web3

Here are a few steps you can apply to build a vertical SaaS in the Web3 niche.

1. Identify a specific problem or inefficiency within the Web3 ecosystem. Usually this can be identified from hanging out on Discord servers of large communities. You’ll get to see the tools they use, and if you notice that they are not built for Web3 , there is an opportunity. Ask the community manager if they are in lookout for a tool that helps them.

2. Design your solution to integrate seamlessly with various blockchain networks. Go multichain from the start so that you can have chain-agnostic for growth.

3. Prioritize user privacy, security, and data ownership in your product architecture. This will help you to expand to other niches once your Web3 opportunities are done.

4. Try building partnerships and integrations with key players in the Web3 space to expand your reach and credibility.

5. Try to get grants to build.

Beyond that, if you are looking into building privacy-focused apps, check out Secret and Arcana. If you are interested in building on Bitcoin, check out Stacks.

Growing a Web3 product

Initially, I offered the platform for free to attract users. And I requested reviews and case studies from these users to build social proof.

About 2 to 3% of these users upgraded to a paid plan. At that time, I had about 5k emails.

Once I got to 1k in MRR. I removed the free tier so that I could filter the noise and focus on the customers who saw real value in the product.

Later, BlockSurvey organically grew through product-led SEO.

Product-led SEO

I picked up the idea of product-led SEO from the book, Product-led SEO, by Eli Schwartz. It's like traditional product-led growth, but more geared toward using the product to drive traffic, be it building domain authority through backlinks or driving organic traffic through programmatic SEO.

Since surveys have a link-sharing capability, there is a natural flywheel already built in — as more people share our product links, it increases our brand visibility and drives organic traffic to our website.

And once the traffic comes in, the users are put through the funnel for conversion.

The conversion funnel starts with users signing up for a free account. We then nurture them with educational content and case studies showcasing the value of BlockSurvey through an Academy within the platform.

Once done, the goal is to help the users create their first survey and collect their first 3 responses. The first twenty responses are free, then we nudge the users upgrade to a paid plan to collect further.

This product-led approach accounts for 10-15% of traffic comes through product-led growth. That’s our main channel now.

Traditional SEO

I also created 1,000+ survey templates as an SEO play.

The process started with finding low-search-volume keywords with zero competition from Ahrefs and then using LLMs to generate the survey templates at scale. Once these pages go live, we measure whether they are ranking in the top three for any given keyword. If yes, we take those pages and refactor them by adding more valuable content to them. We rinse and repeat until we get a good conversion. 

You can find examples here.

Newsletter sponsorships

I got some customers from a newsletter sponsorship. My cap for sponsorship was $100 per issue. So I supported a few early indie newsletters with audiences of 1,000 to 10,000.

This can be a good channel if the product is niche focused and segmented well.

Cold outreach

Additionally, we do cold outreach through email, Linkedin, and Twitter for the niches we target. This is more of a high-touch flow, but it has higher conversion rates of 20%.

Prospects book a demo, I jump on a call to help them out.

Don't forget about sales

My advice is to stay focused on sales. I didn’t. It was a mistake and I learned the hard way.

If you don't know how to sell, don’t be afraid to learn the skill. I hired a consultant to work alongside to learn sales. I still review my sales calls and get feedback month after month to improve.

Check out books like Founding Sales and Sales Acceleration Formula — these books are where my sales ideas come from.

Becoming the go-to Web3 product

Moving forward, we aim to become the go-to platform for secure data collection. We're also looking to reimagine how surveys can be conducted, whether it's through the use of AI for efficiency or through the use of AR and VR to create new experiences.

You can follow along my X, Linkedin, BlockSurvey's X, or check out BlockSurvey.io.