Growing a payments SaaS to $13k MRR as digital nomads on opposite sides of the world

After years of slow revenue growth, indie hacker Sander Visser considered quitting his payments SaaS, Checkout Page.

Then he met digital nomad Andy Nelson on a hike in Spain. Convinced the product had potential, Andy persuaded Sander to team up, shift gears, and focus on customer engagement.

The pair went from hustling (and pet sitting) to hitting $13,000 MRR. Here's how they did it👇.

Becoming an indie hacker

Sander: I freelanced as a developer and designer at university. I would try and build products on free weekends. Initially, I was very unsuccessful.

Then I started Checkout Page 6 years ago as a side project. At the time, Stripe had become a really popular way to accept payments on your website. But there wasn’t a way to use it without code.

I built an MVP to take payments into your Stripe account. It was kind of like Stripe Checkout, before Stripe Checkout existed.

I launched it on Product Hunt and got about 750 upvotes. There was a lot of excitement in the beginning, before a long, slow growth phase.

It took me about three years to get to $1,000 MRR. At that point I was starting to think I should build something else.

Then Andy reached out. Together, we turned Checkout Page into this big platform that does payments, subscriptions and even event ticketing.

Spotting potential

Andy: I'm from the UK. I'm 47. I started my career at a startup which grew into a huge company building a social intranet. I worked as a product manager for about seven years, then I ended up getting pushed out. 

After that, I wanted to do something completely different and have much more ownership.

I could see that the product Sander had built had potential. There were paying customers already.

A chance meeting

Andy: We've both been digital nomads for a long time. We happened to meet in Gran Canaria on this hike. We met a whole bunch of people there who all became friends for years.

Sander: We spent a couple of months with that group, moving around Europe and living together. We knew each other really well way before we actually started working together.

Andy: I ended up having to hassle Sander for ages to get him to work with me. There’s this strong impulse to do everything on your own in the indie hacking community.

But I think it's great to work with teams and to get influence from other people and share different strengths.

Talk to customers

Andy: I was keen to really start talking to customers. Sander had been trying, but it’s quite difficult. People often don't want to talk to you.

We had this moment where we switched our live chat client over to Crisp. The icon looked more like a chat icon and we started getting more conversations.

Now, we've had tons. We’ve slowly built up much more information about what people want and why.

Charge to build features

Sander: When we talk to customers or leads, we often build new functions they need. And we give them a quote. If you pay X amount, we’ll give you a yearly subscription and build this feature for you in two weeks.

It’s been a great way to fund our runway, work closely with customers to understand what they want and get them invested in the product. To give customers a sense of ownership. 

Today, the product itself is like 100 or more features coupled together and our customers can pick and choose.

A highly flexible product

Sander: The platform itself is built in JavaScript, Node.js, and React. We don't spend loads of time using the newest tools or improving the stack itself.

The core functionality of Checkout Page is being able to add it to any site very easily.

You can use it on WordPress, you can use it on your custom website, or Next.js. You can add an embedded checkout in a couple of minutes. You can even change the entire design in CSS. You can use a custom domain. You can send emails after payment. You can make one-click upsells. You can set up trials, payment plans, and license keys and offer bulk discounts.

Andy: Sometimes we see people using it and we don't even recognize the checkout.

Simple pricing and SEO

Sander: We used to have a transaction fee model. Then we had a subscription plan based on usage. But to be honest it was confusing. People didn’t really understand it.

Then in March last year, we switched to just regular subscriptions. We stopped charging transaction fees on payments and moved to a classic SaaS pricing.

We also started investing in SEO. Andy and I had already written some articles on and off. But we started publishing consistently.

By that point, Checkout Page had also reached a point where it did most of the things people need. Now, we have around 250 customers and process $1.5m a month in payments.

Andy: Over that period, we also massively invested in the user experience and design of the product. 

It’s important that a product is easy to use and looks nice. If you saw Checkout Page where it was two years ago compared to now, it's night and day.

Running a business as digital nomads

 Sander: Our digital nomad lifestyles can be a challenge.

The last time we saw each other in person was two years ago. Then we worked with a 14-hour time zone difference for about a year.

Our overlap was about two hours a day, which maybe wasn’t so good for the business. But it was good for our lives. We both prioritize what we want to do in our personal life.

Andy: We’ve recently tried to introduce more structure to our planning, and that has really helped.

To make long distances and time differences work, you need a lot of trust in the other person. You need to be chill with them and their decisions.

For me, the hardest thing is just to keep going at the business, every day. If you don't feel like things are moving at pace, you can get frustrated.

I take a lot of inspiration from Sander because he is like a machine. He just keeps going. He never waivers. He's f***ing impressive.

Revenue takes time

Sander: People underestimate how long it takes to get to revenue and to profitability. You need to be financially and mentally prepared for that.

Time in the market is an important asset. It will take a while for customers to trust you. In SaaS, people often don't make an instant buying decision.

Andy: If you're trying to build a business online, I would recommend removing influencers that say you can make $10k in a month from your social media diet. This messes with your expectations and can make you feel like a failure.

Hustle and collaborate

Andy: You have to hustle. I did loads of pet sitting when we were starting out. I looked after more than 150 dogs and 100 cats in places like Canada and in New Zealand.

Even if it looks like they're crushing it, lots of nomads are really just scraping by in my experience.

I’d also say just get out of the idea that you need to do everything on your own.

What big company has ever been built by a person on their own? Literally none. Ever. In the entire history of all business.