Show IH: $50 MRR, 19 signups, 8 weeks in. I built a tax planning tool 4 freelancers after years in bookkeeping, finally had AI tools for it
I'll be honest — $50 MRR feels embarrassing to share publicly. But it's real and this community deserves the real version.
I'm Crystal Harrison. Professional bookkeeper for almost 25 years now. Owner of BookKeepXperts LLC in Austin, Texas. I still work full time, so SnapTax was built in the evenings and on weekends. I am not a developer, so I built this on Lovable, an AI-powered dev tool that finally made it possible for someone who knows taxes inside and out but can't write code to actually ship something real. I waited years to start building. It wasn't until AI tools got good enough that I finally had the confidence to try.
Two problems drove me to build this. First, the April surprise, I would get new small business clients that would come to me blindsided by tax bills that were completely avoidable. It wasn't complicated stuff, they just didn't know about self-employment tax or quarterly taxes, they didn't realize they had to pay 15.3% tax on top of federal taxes until it was too late. I saw so many people get penalties for missing Quarterly deadlines and having to dip into savings to pay big tax bills.
Second, was the QuickBooks overkill. I watched freelancer after freelancer try it, get overwhelmed, give up, and go back to guessing. It's accounting software with so many bells and whistles the little guys just didn't need, which made it very hard to navigate and keep up with. The complexity wasn't just inconvenient, it was driving people away from tracking their finances at all.
I wanted to solve both problems, real-time tax awareness AND radical simplicity. That's SnapTax.
The honest numbers 6 weeks in
19 signups
3 converted to paid
$50 MRR
90-day free trial so most people are still in trial
Google Ads running: in the learning phase
Filed a trademark , two weeks after launch a copycat appeared with the same name targeting the same audience. That was a fun morning.
What surprised me as I built this for traditional freelancers, was the audience that is converting the fastest and that was tech professionals with a W2 job and a side hustle who have no idea their employer withholding covers zero of their 1099 tax liability. That realization hits them hard and they move fast.
I am really struggling with visibility. I'm competing with QuickBooks and TurboTax for search real estate and AI citations. Both have years of content authority I'm building from scratch. I'm doing everything right , content clusters, LLM optimization, calculator pages, directory listings, press placements, but it all takes time and I'm impatient. Also doing this while working full time is genuinely hard, some weeks I have more energy for it than others.
What's next for SnapTax? May 15, I'm launching $49 personal setup sessions, each is 30 minutes with me personally to calculate their tax estimate and configure their account. Starting it myself then handing to contracted bookkeepers if it takes off. I feel like giving people personal attention, even though its a self serve easy to use SaaS platform with tons of training video's, gives them the extra confidence to be successful and keep up with it.
I am posting today partly for accountability and partly because I genuinely believe the product solves a real problem and I want people to know it exists. And partly because Indie Hackers taught me that the early stage is worth documenting even when the numbers are small.
If you're a freelancer, contractor, or have any side income, SnapTax is free for 90 days and I'd genuinely love your feedback. And if you've built something in a space dominated by established players, I'd love to hear how you approached the visibility problem.
saw a lot of myself in this post, the freelancer tax mess is exactly what pushed me to automate my books. been on Aikount for that side and the part that won me over is pricing tied to your turnover, not per feature, so the 303/130/347 and unlimited invoices all come included instead of being paid add-ons. a planning layer like yours would sit really well on top. rooting for you!
0 MRR on 19 signups at week 8 is actually a healthy ratio - most tax tools get signups and never monetize. The bookkeeping background shows.
The interesting challenge ahead: at this stage, your paying users probably don't have clean income data to feed into the tool. Freelancers notoriously track revenue in spreadsheets, bank statements, or nothing at all.
I've been building a Notion OS for solopreneurs with a Revenue Dashboard database specifically because the data hygiene problem comes before the tax optimization problem. You can't plan taxes on income you haven't categorized.
What's the most common data mess your users show up with?
Hi, i have been heads down building again, sorry for the delay in getting back to you! yes i would agree, i think getting users to actually bring data over is the important part. Tolls are only as good as the person who actually uses them. I like the concept of your Revenue dashboard. Maybe a collab would be interesting. I do expense tracking in SnapTax, but it does require a user to import data and then let AI categorize in my Builder plan. the Starter plan doesnt do that, the user has to manually enter monthly income totals and expenses, but I can build Starter so it can import data from other tools like Quickbooks or even yours and use that for the Net income calculations that feeds into my Tax engine which is what the secret sauce is for SnapTax....would love to have a conversation!
I totally get how tough it is competing with established players. If it helps, I have a few peer founders who've built products in dominated spaces in my circle who'd probably be open to answering some questions for free about visibility and marketing challenges. Let me know if you want me to pass them along.
Hi Merc, i would love to connect! I have been monitoring my AI visibility and i went form zero/last place to #4 in 4 short weeks.....so all the work i have been putting in is starting to compound! But i know i can always do more!
The part about competing with established players for visibility really resonates. There's something daunting about building something genuinely useful and then realizing the biggest challenge isn't the product at all — it's being seen next to names that have had years to dominate the space. The $49 personal setup session idea is smart though — it turns a disadvantage (you're small) into an advantage (you're actually there).
thank you!!! that part is actually working! Its only been live a couple weeks and I have already had a couple takers! I am really excited about that because it gets the users off to a great start and they get that personal touch!