As August quickly speeds to it’s end, my time in South Korea draws to a close. The last few weeks have been… strange. August is hell in South Korea. It’s either raining or 35+ degrees (95+) with 90% humidity. The government here warnings people via phone alerts multiple times a day to be careful.

I’ve been spending most of my time either in my Airbnb, or in Starbucks in front of my laptop.

In less than 2 weeks I will be landing in Chiang Mai and I honestly can’t wait. I hope the weather improves over the next 10 days so I can see more of Seoul and take in some of what South Korea has to offer.

The slow grind continues

Over the last few weeks I’ve shifted my focus from developing new features and functionality for Project Echo to marketing the service.

It’s been slow and a grind but there have been some wins.

• I had 3 calls with fellow builders to demo the service and collecting a lot of useful feedback.

• I completely rebuilt the homepage. It does a much better idea of communicating what the service is about and the value it provides.

• I’ve built 10+ secondary public pages which cover key pillars of the platform, and compare Project Echo to some of its competitors. This is important for helping LLMs better understand Project Echo.

• I’ve managed to double traffic to the site in the last 28 days.

• I submitted Project Echo to G2 and other directories. This should help with SEO and improve the likelihood of AI recommending the service.

From the development standpoint I’ve done a lot in August, below are some of the highlights:

• Linear, Notion, and inbound and outbound webhook integrations.

• Deep linking to the feedback portal, vote tab added to request pages, new activity types, bulk editing, and email notifications to end-users.

• I used Cursor to write 20+ support documents and add them to intercom’s knowledgebase. It’s not yet live.

• Lots of UI enhancements, speed improvements, better signup flow for invitees, and many bug fixes.

If you’d like to see the details, I invite you to visit the Project Echo changelog - https://feedback.projectecho.io/changelog.

For now I’m happy with the progress I’ve made on the Project Echo product and will be limiting myself to 1, maximum 2 focused dev sessions a week. Building is so quick and so much fun that it’s hard to hold myself back, but there is enough already and it’s more important to get signups and feedback.

I do feel that my time marketing the service is helping me improve my understanding and skills as a marketer. I feel the more time I put into it, the better I’ll become.

It is frustrating to see so little activity, and to be 4 months into this project with no active users but I know I’ve got to keep pushing. This early phase is the hardest and I just need to keep going.

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Two ways I’m using AI to get more shit done

A lot of the AI-driven automations I’ve been experimenting with this year haven’t stuck. On paper they often seem great but more often than not it’s either unnecessary, or just doesn’t work properly.

I recently found two use cases for AI which provide me with substantial value and I plan to leverage these over the long term.

Use case #1 - Stripe summary email

I had a bad habit of logging into my multiple Stripe accounts throughout the day to see if any new charges had taken place. I used to send myself emails whenever that happened which was a silly distraction.

I recently made a decision to focus more on inputs than outputs, and to stop wasting my energy on looking at numbers so I have more of it to do work.

To help me reduce my time in Stripe, I asked Viktor, my agentic agent that lives in Slack, to create a scheduled task where it visits each of my Stripe accounts and summarizes the activity in each account in the previous 24 hours.

Viktor now sends me a well written, detailed summary each morning.

Viktor’s daily email points out both the positives (new subscriptions, revenue, etc), and negatives (cancelations, failed charges, etc) so I can see if there are any follow up items I need to take care of.

Now that I get the details of the previous 24 hours summarized and sent to me each morning, there really is no need to log into the accounts throughout the day. This simple automation saves me about 15 minutes a day and removes an energy zapping distraction.

Below is the prompt I sent Viktor to create the scheduled task (I modified some of it, for example my email address and the list of accounts to cover).

I'd like you to create a daily summary of my 5 Stripe accounts.

I'd like you to send me an email from your own outbound email address. 
I want the email sent to justin@XYZ each day at 7AM Bangkok time and to include the 
following per account:

*Revenue (per transaction, include amount, name and email of customer)
*New subscriptions
*Cancellations (include name of customer, amount of the subscription canceled (as in which product)
Failed payments and their amounts (include the name of the customer, their email)
*Any useful insights / anomaly's I should know about

The metrics above should all be for the previous full UTC day. This way each email covers the 
previous day's activity across the accounts.

Make sure to clearly break it up per account. I want it in the following order.

Account A
Account B
Account C
Account D
Account E

Don't send the email on Saturday and Sunday but make sure Monday's email covers Friday, 
Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to sending the email, I also want you to send the summary in the admin channel.

Once you've created this scheduled task, run it so I can see the output and send you any 
adjustments.

Even if you have just one account, I’d still suggest setting up this automation. More than once Viktor’s email mentioned something I would have missed otherwise.

Use case #2 - AI-generated draft posts in Buffer based on template

There is a LinkedIn post style which I’ve been experimenting with lately that has done quite well. See an example below.

Notice how the post uses a quote from the Substack post it’s promoting, and includes a link.

The idea is to give the reader a taste of what’s in the post and then hopefully convince him to click through to read the full post. Some that do may end up subscribing which is the end goal of the LinkedIn post.

Now LinkedIn hates link posts since it takes the reader off the platform. The above post did well because it talks about money and acquisitions, which is a topic that disproportionately captures attention on LinkedIn.

My plan moving forward is to sprinkle in these simple, promotion-based posts to help drive traffic to my Substack newsletters.

To help me create posts that match this style, I used Viktor and Buffer.

One really cool benefit I recently learnt about Buffer is that it pulls in posts you publish on social, even if they were published outside of the Buffer platform.

Now since Buffer has an MCP server, Viktor is able to access this library of posts.

I started the process by asking Viktor to show me a table of my most recent posts. I then told him to generate draft posts using the format of my quote posts (I simply pointed to some examples from the table and provided some extra guidance).

I told Viktor to visit my substacks and pick posts at random, to find quotable texts from the posts, and to use an image from each post.

Since Buffer allows you to create the first comment on a post when creating the post, Viktor is able to create an image post and include a link to the post in the first comment.

This allows me to leverage the best performing standard post type (image posts) in LinkedIn, while still providing a link to readers that want to click through.

The end result is 20 draft posts which are almost identical to what I would have written myself manually, created in a matter of minutes.

I then spend 5 to 10 minutes going through the drafts and when no changes are needed, I simply add the post to the queue.

Out of the 20 draft posts, 18 were pushed to the queue without any changes. 1 required some editing, and 1 I decided to delete.

I’d like to identify one more post style similar to the one above that I can use AI to generate at scale. 2 AI assisted post types plus 1 - 2 hours of manual written posts should give me at least 2 weeks of content. '

I’d like to get to the point where I can create two weeks worth of posts for both X and LinkedIn in under 3 hours. The process I shared above gets me one step closer to this goal.

If you’re interested in setting up these automations using Viktor, this link will give you $50 off your first subscription, along with the $100 in free credits you get on signup - https://ref.viktor.com/justin-butlion.

That’s it for this week friends, thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one.

Justin

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As July quickly comes to an end, I decided now was a good time to reflect on the first half of 2026.

Long time readers of this newsletter know that I made a lot of big changes at the start of the year.

Switching from running an agency with employees to focusing on content-based projects and SaaS as a solopreneur has been a very positive change.

Optimizing for happiness

The first big difference this year compared to last is I’ve been a lot happier.

One of the biggest benefits of the changes I made in January has been a significant reduction in doing work that drains me.

The single most impactful change has been the reduction in video calls.

When I was running my agency I had to jump on multiple video calls throughout the week, many of them at odd hours (especially when I was living in Asia). This not only constantly affected my sleep (and energy levels), but generally just drained me.

On average I now have 1 video call every 2 weeks, mostly with fellow entrepreneurs to catch up and discuss our ongoing projects.

The shift to writing as my main output each week has also added more flexibility to my work routine.

I now longer need to sit in a coworking space all day to get through the never ending to-do list. Each week I need to dedicate 2 to 6 hours of focused time to writing which leaves a lot of flexibility in how the rest of my work gets done. I’ve spent a lot of time working in coffee shops the last few months which has been a positive shift.

I spent almost 3 months in Japan recently with minimal work stress and actually allowed myself the space to explore the country and be more of a tourist than a digital nomad. This mode of operating hasn’t been possible for the last 8 years.

After 6 weeks traveling around Japan I started to feel burnt out and itching for longer focused work sessions and more stability. As I recently wrote, I enjoy working and the trick is to find the right balance.

Another factor that has added to my happiness levels is doing more creative work.

Writing has a creative element to it which I enjoy. Writing a 2k word post on an interesting topic, or covering an inspiring growth story in a LinkedIn post is the kind of work that gives me energy rather than taking it.

In a few weeks I’ll be back in Chiang Mai and mostly in “work mode” so it will be interesting to see how I feel being in that environment for the first time without running an agency and managing employees.

Financial Overview

I had real concerns at the start of the year that the changes I was making would end up hurting me financially.

Thankfully things are alright on the financial side.

Here is a quick summary of where things stand:

1. Revenue collected so far in 2026 - $83,298 (down 51% year-over-year)

2. Revenue collected from SaaS - $43,513 (up 10% year-over-year)

3. Revenue collected from services - $39,060 (down 73% year over year)

4. Revenue collected from newsletters - $725

Unfortunately my bookkeeping is a mess since it hasn’t been a focus the last few months so I can’t accurately share the expenses and profit margin numbers.

What I can say is that expenses are down substantially which means that even though revenue is down 51%, the overall affect on net profit is far less.

I’ve also been able to comfortably pay myself enough each month to keep my personal finances in order.

After an expensive period traveling in Japan, I’m now entering a much cheaper period (Seoul, South Korea for a few weeks and then finishing the year in Chiang Mai). This will significantly reduce financial pressure and allow me to finish the year in a strong position.

I’ve also been paying down seller finance debt for my acquisitions which gets me closer to being debt free. In total I owe $23k across two loans which I’ll be paying down over the next 14 months. I’ll have just one loan left at the start of next year which will help improve my cash flow.

The fact that revenue from the SaaS portfolio is up is very positive, especially considering the market pressures the SaaS market is currently facing.

The revenue I’ve collected from my remaining consulting client has made a huge difference. I’ve paid myself from that revenue allowing the SaaS revenue to pay down the debt and slowing build up some runway.

The bottom line: Things are alright financially but there is a lot of risk and growth is not where I want it to be.

I accepted the fact that revenue would drop this year but I haven’t managed to grow SaaS Decoded at the pace I was expecting.

I’ve still got time to work things out and build new, scalable revenue streams from SaaS Decoded and Project Echo but the slow growth has been a heavy weight to carry.

The state of the 4 areas of focus

In my previous post I discussed my 4 areas of focus.

Here’s a quick overview of where things stand with each.

Agency client

Not much to say here other that the client recently requested a discount which I agreed to. The overall work load has diminished since I fired their account manager and the main focus is on maintaining and improving their data infrastructure.

In the long run I expect the client to drop me but for now the switching costs are high for them and the value I provide is aligned with the price they pay for it.

I’m working with them on a new big project which should reduce a lot of infra issues (and frustration). These occassional projects are awesome because it allows me to learn new things and increase the value I can provide the client.

The SaaS portfolio

The SaaS portfolio is in a decent position.

Revenue is up year-over-year mostly as a result of strong performance from my most recent acquisition. Meet Slack’s churn has stabilized and is now more or less flat year-over-year. My work load has increased since the new acquisition but it’s managable.

The big question is how will Meet Slack perform in Q4. It’s the biggest quarter for the app and the concern is a spike in churn like I saw in Q1. If that happens then the portfolio won’t pass 100k in revenue for the year which will be a shame.

For now I’m not planning on doing any additional acquisitions this year.

I want to continue paying down the debt to improve cash flow and build up some cash so I’ve got a buffer.

I see the SaaS portfolio as oxygen for me while I build up SaaS Decoded and Project Echo. Once those two assets start scaling quicker and are generating MRR, I’ll be in a much better place. I’ve got to stick to the game plan and give it enough time.

The newsletters

The best part of my work week is writing new posts for the Substack newsletters. As you can see from the screenshots above the newsletters are now producing a bit of MRR.

I’m happy with ever cent I make through my writing but there’s still a lot of work ahead. This will be the first year I make 4-figures from writing which is a milestone worth celebrating.

I’ve written previously about my surprise in the slow growth of SaaS Decoded. That has been the biggest disappointment I’ve had this year and it weighed heavily on me for many months. I’ve come to accept the reality and realign my expectations but it hasn’t been easy.

I’ll soon be entering a much more productive period which will allow me to triple down on my marketing efforts across the newsletters and Project Echo and I’m very interested to see how the numbers perform.

I need to push super hard on building up SaaS Decoded so it can become a real revenue generating asset next year.

When it comes to Coffee + Revelation, I’m really happy how things are going. I know many of you enjoy reading these posts and I love sharing my journey with you all.

One change I want to make is improving my approach when it comes to free vs. paid content. I want to provide more value to the subscribers that are paying for the subscription.

I have some ideas which I’ll be exploring once I’m in Chiang Mai.

Project Echo

My newest project, Project Echo has been a lot of fun and exciting to work on.

It’s been incredible to vibe-code a fully functioning platform with multiple major features, integrations, a REST API and MCP server, and much more. Each time a new business signs up to the service I get chills and a big smile on my face.

Like SaaS Decoded, Project Echo’s growth has been very slow.

Since launching the service to the public, 14 businesses have signed up. Out of those 14 none would be considered active or retained.

I’ve recently shifted my focus to marketing the service over building new features and it’s been a slog. I just shared my marketing strategy on SaaS Decoded.

SaaS Decoded

[Part 5] $0 to $10k MRR: The Marketing Strategy (+117 ideas to grow traffic)

Hey friends…

Read more

a month ago · 1 like · Justin Butlion

Like SaaS Decoded, Project Echo is a long term project which has high potential to become a cash cow with high MRR. At least on paper it’s a lot more scalable than any other SaaS in my portfolio. The goal is to get it to $10k MRR over the next 18 - 36 months.

I’ve committed to these 4 areas of focus and will give each enough time to reach their potential. These projects will force me to face tough challenges and improve as an entrepreneur.

Thankfully I’m in a position to fight this fight and together we can learn what it takes to scale digital assets from scratch and build significant MRR.

Focus + time is the way forward, no more pivots.

That’s it for now friends, thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one.

Justin

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I hope you had a strong June and are ready for an even better July.

I spent much of June in Kyoto but will be leaving on Friday for Tokyo for my final 2 weeks in Japan. If you happen to live in Tokyo, or will be visiting, let me know, I’d love to meet up.

June was a very strong month for me financially. In total I brought in $26,813 across my numerous businesses. Here is the breakdown:

• SaaS portfolio - $11,201

• Agency - $15,540 (quarterly payment from my final client)

• This newsletter - $60

• SaaS Decoded newsletter - $12

The highlight of June is that for the first time ever my SaaS portfolio brought in over 10k in revenue. The main contributor to this milestone was a double payment from Monday.com for April and May’s revenue from my Monday apps.

Dashboard Formula Widget has been crushing it and Meet Slack saw some growth after a number of down months.

The strong performance in June also resulted in the portfolio finally showing year-over-year growth. By the end of June the portfolio had 12% year-over-year revenue growth.

I expect things to slow down somewhat in July but time will tell. I’m in talks with a new enterprise account for Meet Slack which I’ve quoted $2k for the year. If I close that, I expect July to be another strong month.

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4 areas of focus

I’ve been thinking about a model the last few weeks I’m calling “4 areas of focus”. I’ve tried to illustrate it in the diagram above.

The idea is to commit to no more than 4 areas of focus and to say no to everything else.

I started the year focused on my new newsletter SaaS Decoded and even though growth has been painfully slow, I still see it as a project I want to continue working on over the long term. I enjoy writing this newsletter and don’t plan on stopping. This is the 61st edition of Coffee + Revelation.

The SaaS portfolio and my remaining agency client are responsible for basically all my revenue. Even though I’m out of the agency game, and not planning a new acquisition anytime soon, I still need to look after these revenue streams.

I expect to lose the final agency client sometime over the next 12 - 24 months which will reduce the areas of focus down to 3 which I’m completely fine with.

The final area of focus on the list is Project Echo which I started back in May. The Project Echo initiative serves multiple purposes from helping me reach my long-term goal of $20k MRR from SaaS, to being a source of content for the newsletters. It’s also a way for me to truly test my skills as a SaaS operator, and to actual go through the journey of taking a SaaS from $0 to $10k MRR. This is an important goal for me.

SaaS Decoded

[Part 4] $0 to $10k MRR: Radical transparency, demo video, the switch to marketing

Hey friends…

Read more

2 months ago · Justin Butlion

If we ignore the agency client for a second, we can see that the rest of the areas of focus are all highly scalable, high margin, high leverage initiatives.

For the first time in my career as an entrepreneur I feel I’m working on ideas which not only suit me and my personality, but are good opportunities with high potential.

The next few years will be dedicated to these areas of focus.

A mental model for growing a new SaaS

I’ve been thinking deeply about what it takes to grow a SaaS from scratch, especially a bootstrapped SaaS, and I think I’ve come up with an interesting mental model.

Here’s a thought experiment. Think about 3 - 5 SaaS that you know are very popular and try your hardest to remember a specific marketing campaign these SaaS ran.

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Its been almost 2 months since I landed in Japan and I’ve had an amazing time.

Usually when I land in a new country my focus is on getting the logistics right (coworking, supermarket, gym, etc), but this time my plan was very different.

My plan for Japan was to travel the country, have adventures and emphasize non-work related activities over sitting in front of the computer. I chose this approach because in September through February I will be in extreme work mode in Chiang Mai.

I’m happy to say that for the most part I’ve succeeded in my plans for Japan. I’ve visited Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, Takayama, Osaka and I’m now taking my time getting to know Kyoto. The trip has been one I’ll never forget and I highly recommend you find a way to visit this amazing place.

With all that being said, I’ve also realized a few new things about myself during this trip.

Firstly, it’s tough to balance work and play, especially for an extended period of time.

A lot of my work still requires long, focused sessions and even though I’ve spent more than a few afternoons sitting in a Japanese Starbucks working, it’s far from ideal. My back reminds me almost daily that working from a good chair is no longer a luxury, but a requirement.

The second thing that has been top of mind a lot lately is the fact that I enjoy working.

There are times I’m walking the streets of Japan and instead of taking in the sights, sounds and culture, my mind is on my work. A part of me feels guilty when this happens but I know that I can’t have it all. It’s an ongoing conflict between building the future I want, and enjoying the incredible benefits I have earned for myself.

My original plan was to be in Japan for 8 weeks but I’m leaning towards extending it to the full allowed 90 days. For now I’m taking it slow in Kyoto which so far is my favorite city in Japan.

Project Echo is now live (in alpha)

This past week I decided to open up Project Echo to the individuals that joined the waitlist as part of an alpha launch. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours building the service and I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made.

The alpha version has a ton of features from a fully functioning public portal, to multi-user support. Users can even integrate Project Echo in their own SaaS and collect feedback on auto-pilot from their users.

You can see the full changelog for the alpha version here - https://feedback.projectecho.io/changelog/project-echo-v1-alpha.

I’m actively using Project Echo to build Project Echo which is an awesome experience. “Dogfooding” the product helps me find bugs and constantly improve the user experience.

I estimate that I have another week or two of development work ahead of me to get the service ready for a beta launch, and then I’ll need to shift gears to marketing.

If you run a SaaS and looking for a better way to collect and manage your product feedback, I invite you to Project Echo, you can sign up now at https://app.projectecho.io/pe-app/signup. Early users will be able to use the service for free forever.

The goal at this point is to collect feedback, understand how users are engaging with the product, and to move towards product-market fit.

It’s been an incredible experience using Cursor to build Project Echo. It blows me away how much advanced functionality I’ve been able to add with little trouble. I’m excited to see how users work with the product and how things will be just a few months from now.

What makes the whole Project Echo initiative so important for me is the fact that I can sink my teeth into it for years to come. It also ties beautifully to my Substacks where I can share the journey with you all.

Since Project Echo, and my Substacks are “infinitely” scalable, I just need to stay focused, consistent and give it time. With enough work and time, I’ll reach my goal of $20k MRR.

Bags of cash from the SaaS

June 2026 will be the first month ever where I’ll collect more than $10,000 from my SaaS portfolio.

As you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve already collected $6.2k this month and last month’s payment from Monday.com, which is over $3.8k, was late and will land in about a week.

It’s been a slower start to the year than I expected but this month we’ll finally show year-over-year growth in cash collected. It’s difficult to predict how the year will end but I’m hoping total cash collected will be close to $100k.

June and July are strong months before a bit of a dip at the end of Q3. Q4 is the strongest quarter.

Dashboard Formula Widget, one of the 4 apps I acquired in my last deal, continues to outperform the rest of the portfolio in terms of MRR growth.

On it’s own it’s already at $1,439 MRR. When I acquired it, it’s MRR was under $1,200.

The most disappointing performer in the portfolio has been Meet Slack.

At the start of the year Meet Slack was sitting at $4.15k MRR. The first 3 months of the year were rough with a spike in churn from larger accounts. Thankfully a lot of new smaller accounts subscribed which limited the damage but as you can see in the screenshot above, the recovering has been very slow.

For now I’m not going to change anything. I want to see how the app performs throughout the rest of the year and then I’ll make a decision early next year. That might involve a price change, or even possibly selling the app. The last 8 weeks have been stable so hopefully we’ll see some growth going into Q4.

Anyway friends, that’s it for this week. I hope you are enjoying the summer wherever you are.

Best,

Justin

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Since I acquired my first SaaS in 2022, I’ve had the goal of reaching $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue from SaaS.

At the time of writing this post my MRR across all my SaaS is +-$7.6k. All of the MRR can be attributed to SaaS that I’ve acquired.

The acquisition strategy has worked well and I don’t plan on stopping, but the issue is that it’s slow.

My approach up until now has been to acquire simple, marketplace-based apps like Meet Slack that have slow organic growth. I’ve wanted to keeps things simple and as passive as possible.

Most of the 10 SaaS apps I own are either flat or growing 10 - 20% a year. The outlier is Dashboard Formula Widget, a new Monday app I recently acquired which has grown 50% in the last 6 months. I expect that rate to come down over time but it should remain high this year.

I have 4 options for taking the MRR from $7.6k to $20k:

1. Carry on doing what I’m doing (+-1 acquisition a year) - As I wrote above, this approach is working but it’s slow. The combination of seller financing, slow growth and taxes mean that I don’t yet have the cash flow required to acquire larger SaaS and speed up the “snowball”.

2. Change the acquisition strategy - Buy a SaaS or two with more growth potential and invest in marketing. It’s tough to find such SaaS and I also need the capital to acquire it.

3. Raise capital and do larger acquisitions - This is complex, higher risk and unfamiliar territory. I’ve got no inbound demand from investors, and it’s not even clear I could raise outside capital. I like keeping things simple.

4. Do a combination of acquisitions and new builds - Continue acquiring micro SaaS while also building new SaaS. I start a project once every 6 months until I have something that I can double down on.

I’ve decided to go with door #4.

The Reset

In my previous post I mentioned that I was starting a new series at SaaS Decoded titled $0 to $10k MRR. In that post I introduced the new SaaS I started but mentioned that I wasn’t happy with my decision.

For some reason the idea behind that SaaS entered my brain and wouldn’t leave. It was only after building the MVP that I realized that it was a silly idea and that I had “jumped the gun”.

I’ve had a habit over the last 8 years of starting new projects too quickly without taking my time and being deliberate. It’s a bad habit that has held me back.

I was happy that I realized my mistake quickly and have changed course. The cost is minimal (about 2 working days, under $50 and some “egg on my face”).

I mentioned in my last post that I wasn’t going to stop the series but instead work on a SaaS that checked all the necessary boxes.

I’m happy to report that I’ve decided on a new SaaS and have already started building it.

Introducing Project Echo

The new SaaS I will be building (and sharing in the $0 to $10k MRR series) is Project Echo, a user feedback management tool built for SMB and Midmarket Saas businesses.

Some of you reading this will be saying to yourself, “another user feedback solution?”, and the answer is yes, and that’s the exact point. I’m done building “new” things which require market validation. I’m now a “cloner”.

The user feedback tool market is well established with a lot of players. This means there is an existing market and companies are willing to pay for the value these tools provide.

This time round I ran the idea through a checklist.

I’ve always been a fan of this space. I used UserVoice at my previous company over 10 years ago, and more recently I’ve recommended Canny to my SaaS clients. A few years ago I almost acquired a micro SaaS operating in this market but it just wasn’t a good fit at the time.

I decided on the name Project Echo simply because I already owned the domain and the term “echo” works well.

Long time readers of this newsletter may remember that Project Echo was another SaaS I had a colleague of mine build to serve our agency clients. That SaaS was shutdown in the great “purge” of distractions I eliminated at the start of the year.

So you’re just going to clone Canny / Userjot? How will you differentiate yourself?

In short yes, but I do have three ways I will differentiate Project Echo from the rest of the solutions in this market.

Differentiator #1 - An extreme free plan

The main differentiator is an extreme free plan. I’m adopting the “Tally playbook” by offering unlimited usage and most features for free.

This strategy will help drive word of mouth and a bigger top of funnel while resulting in a lower conversion to paid and more support. I think this is a good trade because it ties into my advantages.

Like Tally, I will be bootstrapping my SaaS so I need to build leverage wherever possible. I can use product-led growth tactics to build a usage-based flywheel that will market the app to more potential users as the user base grows.

Another big advantage I have is that I don’t need Project Echo to pay my bills. I can take my time and enjoy the process building the platform, brand and everything else that goes into taking a SaaS from $0 to $10k MRR.

I’ve already listed the features that will be included in the free and paid plans on the Project Echo landing page since this is the biggest hook I have at this point.

Project Echo’s paid plan (pro plan) will be $25 a month, or $250 a year, a bit below the market average of $29 a month for the first paid tier.

Unlike my competition, I will have just 2 plans, a free and pro plan.

The biggest draw for the paid plan will be removing the branding, custom user and company properties, and MRR attribution.

Differentiator #2 - Implementing the best from the market

When analyzing the different solutions in this market, you’ll notice slight differences in positioning. Canny, Pendo and UserVoice aim for larger businesses and price accordingly. Userjot, Nolt and most the market, target SMBs and price themselves at around $29 a month.

Most of the players in this space offer the same core features but there are examples of more advanced features which haven’t been widely adopted.

One example is user segmentation and reporting. Canny does a great job offering these features but for some reason they haven’t been widely adopted in the market.

I will take the best features I find across the market and implement my favorite in Project Echo.

Differentiator #3 - My own unique spin

The last way Project Echo will be different from the rest of the market is by doing things my own way. I’m taking a lot of inspiration from Userjot and Canny but I have my own ideas which will go into Project Echo’s development.

I have many ideas for Project Echo but I’ll just share two I’m excited about:

1. MRR attribution - Tie feature requests to existing MRR (through an out-of-the-box Stripe integration) and see how much is at “risk”. Canny does this today to some extent but I believe it can be done better.
   

2. Out-of-the-box user and company properties - Adding custom user and company properties is a paid feature among most solutions in this market. I plan to do the same but offer more out-of-the-box properties which free users can leverage on day 1.

I also have some more risky ideas that I may share at a later stage. I don’t want to get too carried away and it’s important that I’m “dogfeeding” my own product and listening closely to users.

The economics behind Project Echo as a business, and other important considerations

Since the immediate goal is to build Project Echo to $10k MRR, let’s run some numbers.

Assumptions:

• Conversion from free to paid - 2.5% (Tally has a conversion rate of 2%, my market is wealthier so I expect it to be higher than 2% but I’m being conservative).

• % of customers on a monthly plan - 80%

• % of customers on an annual plan - 20%

• Cost of a monthly plan - $25 ($25 MRR)

• Cost of an annual plan - $250 ($20.83 MRR)

• Average MRR per customer - $24.16

• Monthly churn rate - Hard to say. I expect a strong cohort (mature SaaS) that basically never cancel, while many newer SaaS that decide to make the leap to paid that stay 2 - 6 months and count for most of the churn.

So in order to hit $10k MRR, I’ll need +-414 concurrent active subscribers. At a 2.5% conversion from free to paid, that means I’ll need 16,500+ users. This assumes zero churn so the real number is quite a bit higher.

These are all assumptions at this point but I can say for sure that I’ll need to support a lot of users in order to grow Project Echo to 5-figures in monthly recurring revenue.

I know this will take years of hard work.

Risk factors

All business ventures have risk. The main risks I see with Project Echo are:

1. Low ticket will make it hard to scale - Ideally when you’re building B2B SaaS, your ARPU is above $50. Mine is less than half of that which will make it tougher to scale. Project Echo’s infrastructure costs will also be higher than most SaaS as the user base scales because much of the product can be exposed to the public (public portal), not to mention the on-site widget embedded within users’ apps.
   

2. Competitors come in and push prices down - Once more people understand what I’m doing, I’ll inevitably spawn my own copycats. As competition in a market grows (supply), the piece of the pie shrinks for everyone operating in that market. There will be little to stop people coming in and offering similar solutions for an even lower price. The way to combat this is just by being better at the competition. I also believe that $25 a month is close to the realistic bottom for running the business profitably at a sustainable rate.
   

3. Technical risk - This is a real risk that I’m taking seriously. I’ve already built around 40% of the basic platform but I’m leaving the most complex pieces (the on-site widget, user tracking, and integrations), to the end of the alpha build. I’ve also made sure that Cursor and I are building the platform for scale from day 1. I imagine that sooner or later I’ll need to bring in someone with actual devops / scaling experience to help me optimize the infrastructure for increased scale.

Overall the risks I see are minimal and there are no major blockers holding me back from starting this journey. The upside is massive and I can now rest easy knowing I’m building a solution in a large market with real demand. Now it’s all about execution and getting it in front of people.

I’ve positioned myself well for learning a ton, sharing an exciting journey, and maybe for building a revenue stream that could change my life.

So what’s next? When does Project Echo launch?

So far I’ve spent about 15 hours vibe-coding Project Echo and I’ve made tramendous progress. Basic functionality for admins is already in place and at my current pace I expect to have an alpha version ready in under two weeks.

The homepage is live and you are welcome to join the waitlist so you’re the first to know when the app is ready for you to sign up.

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one.

Justin

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Earlier today SaaS Decoded hit its first subscriber milestone, 100 subscribers.

It took 144 days (almost 6 months) to hit this milestone which honestly is a lot longer than I thought it would take. In some ways I’m glad growth has been so slow because it’s completely reset my expectations. This needed to happen and the sooner the better.

Before starting SaaS Decoded I spent weeks researching the newsletter space.

During that period I spent 10+ hours researching Lenny Rachitsky, the founder Lenny’s Newsletter, a multi 7-figure newsletter and podcast with over 1M subscribers.

Lenny’s story is amazing and I was able to build a strategy for SaaS Decoded that closely mirrored the approach Lenny took.

Like Lenny I would publish one deep researched post once a week. I would promote the posts on social media and let word of mouth do the rest. I had a game plan and I was excited to build my new media business.

How delusional… The last 6 months have been very humbling.

I made the classic mistake of mapping my expectations based off of the results of a complete outlier.

A much smarter move would have been to connect with other Substack writers who were a year or two a head of me in their journey and learnt from them.

I’ve recently started spending more time on the Substack subreddit to try and connect with other writers as I try and wrap my head around this whole newsletter game.

A turning point for me was when I published my deep dive case study on Tally.

SaaS Decoded

A deep dive into how Tally grew to $5M ARR in 5 years with a small team and no outside funding

Last night I lay in bed scrolling on X when I came across the news that Tally had just reached $5M in annual recurring revenue (ARR…

Read more

4 months ago · 1 like · Justin Butlion

Up until that point I had published 12 posts I was happy with but something was missing. The posts weren’t getting much attention on social media, no comments or shares, and I felt stuck. The new subscriber count barely budged.

While trying to work things out I came across a very useful YouTube video by Chenell Basilio on what it takes to grow a newsletter.

The bottomline: Publish content which is “subscribe-worthy”.

When I came across a social post mentioning that Tally had just reached $4M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), I decided I’d write an in depth case study sharing their journey to this milestone.

When I finally published the Tally post, I had dedicated about 40 hours into its creation. About 15 - 20 hours of research, and the rest writing and editing this massive post. When I finally hit the publish button the post was over 5,000 words long.

The post covered in detail how this bootstrapped startup had built massive leverage through product-led growth to generate millions in ARR. I was really happy with the post and had never put that amount of work into a single piece of writing in my life.

As of now I’ve shared the post more than a dozen times (using different angles each time) across LinkedIn, Reddit and X.

Here are the stats for the post:

Just two individuals have subscribed to SaaS Decoded as a result of reading the Tally post.

This almost broke me. But instead of getting depressed, I got curious. I realized that I was still missing something.

Writing high quality, valuable content is necessary for a newsletter to thrive and grow, but it can’t be the only piece of the puzzle.

In the case of Lenny, he got off to a great start with 2 strong guest posts (which leverage existing huge audiences), and a Medium post which was shared internally by Airbnb’s CEO. He was already writing to hundreds of relevant subscribers from his third or forth post.

I have a number of theories that I’m working through and I’ll report back once I things are clearer to me.

The next milestone for SaaS Decoded: 250 subscribers (that’s also when I start pushing monetization).

I messed up

Last week I announced on SaaS Decoded that I’m starting a new series, $0 to $10k MRR. In this series I would build a new SaaS and grow it to $10k in monthly recurring revenue. I’d share the whole journey on the newsletter.

SaaS Decoded

[Part 1] $0 to $10k MRR: Idea, Foundation, and MVP

Hey friends…

Read more

3 months ago · 1 like · Justin Butlion

In the first post in the series I announced the SaaS I was working on, Project Logbook, and shared the origin of the idea and why I liked it.

A few days after this announcement it hit me that I had made a big mistake.

Project Logbook won’t work and I’m considering shutting it down just 1 week after the announcement.

I had convinced myself that Project Logbook was a good idea because it did something unique that connected with productivity, social dynamics, “building in public”, and had interesting potential as a social network. I also liked the idea of getting a summary of the actual work I did each week shared to me automatically.

So what’s the issue?

Well, there ae a few but let me zoom in on two main issues, both related to risk.

The first risk is obvious but one I completely dismissed which was silly. That risk is providing a solopreneur with sensitive work data.

In order for Project Logbook to log your work activity, the service needs to save all kinds of data related to the tasks you complete, code you commit, the emails you send, the social media posts you publish, and more. This is risky for most and its going to be a major obstical to get around.

I’d need significant social proof, highly secure infrastructure, and clear data policies before anyone other than true early adopters would give the service a real shot.

The second major risk is the fact that Project Logbook is a unique solution. The issue with unique is that there is an assumption that a market exists. This sometimes works but more often than not it doesn’t. You end up building a solution to a non-existing problem.

Project Logbook might end up working for a specific audience but does it have the potential to get to 10k MRR? Unlikely and I’m not willing to find out.

The total lose of shutting it down now: About $40 and 20 hours of my time (sunk costs).

I’m no longer playing these risky games which is why I’ve been buying cash flowing SaaS the last few years. A SaaS with paying customers is validated.

So if I’m going to build SaaS and want to limit my risk, I need to build a solution which serves a clear, existing market.

An example of this would be to clone an existing SaaS that I use and pay for myself but offer a slightly different spin on it. This could be a different pricing model, better UX, targeted to a specific niche, or offer better integrations.

I’ve been closely following the journey of Postiz, a social media scheduling tool built by Nevo David, an indie developer. Postiz just hit 100k in MRR.

Postiz operates in a very crowded space but still hit $100k MRR in less than 2 years.

What was unique about Postiz compared to the competition? Postiz is completely open-source. Nevo saw this gap and decided to fill it.

He made a lot of smart moves which you can read about in his $100k MRR announcement X article, but fundamentally he built another social media scheduler.

Another player in this space is Buffer, who just hit $25M ARR. It’s clear that there is a strong market for social media schedulers.

This process has also taught me that I need to have a clear checklist for building SaaS from scratch. Every box needs to be checked before I move forward.

The silver lining here is that I identified my mistake quickly and willing to cut my losses and move on. The old me would stick around on this idea for months.

Long term readers of Coffee + Revelation know that my goal is to get to $20k MRR across my SaaS portfolio. Right now I’m at $7.6k.

I need another $12.4k in MRR which can come from a combination of the following:

1. Growth of the existing portfolio

2. New acquisitions

3. New SaaS I build

I’m still like the idea of building a SaaS from scratch and sharing the journey of taking it to $10k MRR, I just think I need to do a reset and pick a different idea.

I’m going to take the week to think about it and I’ll let you know what I decide.

Monday.com apps for the win

Now for some positive news. This month I will collect almost $3,000 from my 6 Monday.com apps.

Below is the revenue stats for Dashboard Formula Widget, the best performing Monday app that I own.

When I first started talking to the previous owner of the app, the MRR was $1,109. $230 growth in MRR in less than 3 months for a micro SaaS is great, especially since its on autopilot with zero marketing.

Every one of the 6 Monday apps has either grown its MRR or stayed the same since I acquired it. The MRR from the Monday apps now represents 33% of the total.

Another advantages of the Monday apps is that Monday.com handles all the billing and payment processing which reduces support.

I’m working with the previous owner of some of the Monday apps I acquired to do some dev work and help with support. This should keep conversion to paid high and help boost MRR. Soon I will invest time building better email flows for new installs of the app which should reduce some support work and improve conversion.

Thankfully the growth of the Monday apps has offset some recent churn seen among the Slack apps. I’ll cover this topic in more detail in a future post.

That’s it for this week friends.

Thanks for reading.

Justin

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Since acquiring my first SaaS back in 2022 I’ve had the pleasure of seeing first hand the power of the SaaS business model.

I’ve worked with many SaaS over the years but there’s nothing like owning SaaS and seeing cash land in your bank account week after week.

Fast forward to 2026 and I now own 10 cash flowing SaaS which I’ve acquired through 5 separate deals.

So far this year the SaaS portfolio has generated over $25,000. It takes me less than 5 hours a week to manage this portfolio.

After a slow start to the year, the strong performance of my latest acquisition should push the portfolio into positive year-over-year growth territory before the end of the month.

I’m proud to say that I’ve built a SaaS portfolio that will break 100k in revenue in less than 4 years, completely bootstrapped.

I’m now faced with a question I can no longer ignore: “If this approach is working so well, how do I double down?”.

This is a very complicated question since asking it immediately results in more questions that first need to be answered.

1. Do I need to double down? Can’t I continue doing what I’m doing?

2. What would doubling down look like? Would it mean giving up ownership, result in major changes to my lifestyle, the need to build a team?

3. Does doubling down mean acquiring “marketplace-based SaaS”, or regular SaaS without built-in distribution? Would that mean I need to hire a CMO?

4. What are the legal ramifications of bringing on investors? Do I want to go from no weekly calls to managing investors?

I still need to answer many of these questions but the good news is I do have a potential model for scaling the SaaS using outside funding that checks all my boxes.

A potential model for scaling the SaaS portfolio using outside funding

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In just a few days I’ll be leaving Da Nang for Fukuoka, my first stop in a planned 8 week trip to Japan.

I honestly can’t wait. Da Nang has been great but I’m ready for a change of pace and the experience of visiting a new country. I’ve never been to Japan and plan to make the most from my time there.

If you have any tips for me, feel free to hit reply and share them with me.

In this week’s post I’m going to cover a few different topics:

• Introduce you to my first vibe-coded SaaS

• Share some lessons I learnt from researching a $5M ARR bootstrapped SaaS

• Go over some numbers from the month

My first vibe-coded SaaS - SLA Monitor

Yesterday I submitted my first vibe-coded SaaS, SLA Monitor, to the Slack marketplace.

As an agency owner I wanted my account managers to reply to clients in Slack Connect channels according to a predefined service-level agreement (SLA).

The idea was that when a client sent us a new request that a member of the team would provide a response within a certain number of hours. Slack doesn’t provide such a functioanlity natively so I decided to solve the problem myself in the form of a Slack app.

In about 12 weeks, if everything goes according to plan, SLA Monitor will be listed on the marketplace and available for install.

SLA Monitor isn’t the first SaaS app I’ve creating from scratch, but it is the first one I’ve built myself using AI tools. It’s also the first app I’ve created using a very specific framework which I plan to write about in detail in a future post.

I started building SLA Monitor using Cursor about 6 weeks ago. I had been putting off the whole “vibe-coding” thing and thought to myself, “what the hell, lets see what all the fuss is about”.

After less than an hour using Cursor, I was blown away. I had no idea the AI was so intuitive and strong at thinking through the depencencies, possible pit falls, and coming up with very smart plans of action. Implementation of those plans went smoothly and communicating with the agent felt a lot more natural than I expected.

The fact that I’m very technical, have over a decade of experience working in SaaS, and have some background in coding (mostly early web development and some PHP) means that I have more of an advantage than a less technical “vibe-coder”.

For example, when it came to setting up environment variables, working with Github, understanding the ramifications of certain database schema decisions, and where to host the app and website, I felt confident in the decisions the agent and I were making together. I can imagine someone knew to this world would feel quite overwhelmed and unsure of a lot of what was happening.

A really nice by-product of “vibe coding” is that you end up learning new things. I purposefully picked a simple idea, fixed environment (Slack) and clear goals so I could go through the motions without getting tied up in details.

If you’re on the fence, like I was, about “vibe-coding” then I suggest you give it a try. The barrier to entry and overall costs are extremely low and if you approach it with the right expectations, you’ll not only learn a lot, but also enjoy yourself.

Cursor have built a revolutionary product that is not only magical to use, but also fun and quite addictive.

If you’d like to give SLA Monitor a try, visit sla-monitor.com and click on the “Add to slack” button to install it in your Slack workspace. The app is free to use and fully functional. Any feedback you have for me is greatly appreciated.

I will be sharing more details on this project in future posts of Coffee + Revelation.

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Lessons from researching a $5M ARR bootstrapped SaaS

Late last week I published a 5k deep dive on Tally, a bootstrapped form builder app that recently hit $5M in annual recurring revenue.

I’ve used Tally for years and as a fan of the product, I thought that covering their story would make for a great post for SaaS Decoded.

SaaS Decoded

A deep dive into how Tally grew to $5M ARR in 5 years with a small team and no outside funding

Last night I lay in bed scrolling on X when I came across the news that Tally had just reached $5M in annual recurring revenue (ARR…

Read more

4 months ago · 1 like · Justin Butlion

I spent over 15 hours researching Tally’s journey to $5M ARR and ended up writing a massive 5k word post on the topic. I’ve never put this amount of effort into a piece of content in my life and it felt good to finally hit publish at 4AM on Saturday morning.

Not only did I learn some key business lessons from writing the post, but I also realized that I enjoyed writing this type of post. There’s something special about diving deep into someone’s story and learning the specifics of how they built their brand, product, and multiple 7-figure revenue engine. Business is hard and there’s a lot that can be learnt from studying the few that have succeeded.

It’s still a bit early to tell but I’m hoping people enjoy the post and I can then double down on this type of content.

One key lesson I learnt from the post is that it takes a lot of effort to get flywheels spinning. Tally took 6 months to get their first 1k users. They now add 100,000 new users every month thanks to a powerful usage-based flywheel that is driven by over 1M users.

I need to remember this lesson when I’m feeling down that things are moving slowly. Leverage is built slowly through consistent action. Patience, having the right expectations, and focusing on inputs rather than outputs is the way forward.

April has been a strong month, except for one thing

Overall April has been a strong month. Here’s a quick overview of some numbers from this month.

• SaaS Decoded is slowly moving to the 100 subscriber mark. I’ve already signed up more subscribers in April than I did the whole of March which is positive.

  

• As you can see in the screenshot above, I got my 2nd paid subscriber for SaaS Decoded. This was a real surprise since I’m not actively pushing the paid subscription and all the content is freely available. This generous subscriber paid for a full year becoming my first annual subscriber.

  

• The first revenue from the new SaaS I recently acquired has been collected, and I’m expecting to collect over $6k in total this month from the SaaS portfolio. Almost 2k is landing in the bank account tomorrow and there is still one more week of cash collection before the month is over. This will make April the strongest month so far in 2026 from a cash collected from SaaS perspective.

  

• Coffee + Revelation continues growing slowly. It’s good to see new people finding value from my writing. I’ve got no specific goals for Coffee + Revelation for 2026 so I’m happy with the slow and relatively consistent growth of the newsletter.

  

• I have a love hate relationship with X but I am happy to see that overall my impression count per post seems to be rising. I’m not putting a huge amount of effort into X but my numbers do seem to be improving. Engagement is still low but I’m hoping that improves with time as I gain more relevant, and higher quality followers.

  

  

• The biggest negative so far this month is the fact that I lost one of the largest accounts across the SaaS portfolio, a $1,440 annual renewal. This has resulted in Meet Slack’s MRR dropping under $3.9k which sucks. I was hoping for another 10% - 15% growth in 2026 but that is looking less and less likely. The increase in churn I touched on in my previous post seems to be continuing. Thankfully there has been an increase in new subscriptions which has offset things a bit. Overall I’m not a fan of trading out the large accounts for smaller accounts but it just might be a trend I have to accept. I’m not planning on changing Meet Slack’s pricing but I might have to revisit this decision in a few months if the trend continues.

  

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.

Justin

PS - Do you know someone who might benefit from reading Coffee + Revelation? Hit the share button below and help spread the word.

PSS - Want to help SaaS Decoded hit the 100 subscriber milestone?

Visit saasdecoded.com and enter your best email. SaaS Decoded subscribers get access to The Vault, a curated benefits program for SaaS operators.

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We’re now half way through April and I think it’s a good time to stop and do a review of the first quarter of the year.

A quick reminder of some key points:

1. At the start of the year I decided to pivot away from consulting after 7 long years and focus instead on a brand new venture, SaaS Decoded. I wrote about this pivot in this post - The time has come for a big change.
   

2. Even though my focus has shifted away from consulting, I still had 4 active clients in January, 1 on a very steady retainer.
   

3. I recently wrapped up my 5th SaaS acquisition. I covered the details in this post - My 5th SaaS Acquisition: MRR now at $7.8k across 10 apps
   

4. I decided to spend all of 2026 in Asia to keep my living costs low since I expected my revenue to drop significantly as a result of pivoting away from consulting. I started the year in Thailand and I’m currently in Vietnam.
   

5. Since I decided to focus on content and move away from consulting I’ve fired all full-time team members and have cut costs aggressively.

A mediocre start to the year

Overall it’s been a mediocre start to the year. The image above shows revenue generated from my portfolio of SaaS apps and as you can see in column O, by the end of March the portfolio was 5% behind last year’s number.

The main reason for this is a spike in churn across Meet Slack and Translate Channels in December, January and February. December was a lot weaker this year compared to last year.

A number of large Meet Slack accounts have canceled, and a combination of churn and low activation of new accounts has resulted in Translate Channel’s MRR dropping under $800 a month.

I also recently lost a Meet Slack enterprise account for the first time and I’m a bit worried this trend among the larger accounts may continue.

So far in 2026 Meet Slack is only down 4% year-to-date so the situation is far from critical but at the moment it looks like my growth expectations for Meet Slack for 2026 will need to be dampened.

Across all the lines of business (consulting, content, SaaS), I’ve brought in over $40k so far in 2026 which is decent but a huge drop from last year.

This might look on paper like a disaster but the combination of cutting the team, dropping other expenses, including my salary means that the business is a lot more profitable and in better shape than it may seem.

The first revenue from the apps I acquired as part of my 5th deal will land in a few days which will help boost the overall position of the SaaS portfolio.

Except for the under performance of the SaaS, I’m not too surprised about these numbers. The recent quarterly payment from my steady retainer client provides enough padding, and the war chest will start to accumulate again now that I’ve paid my taxes and some other large annual expenses.

To put things into perspective, I’m paying myself around $3.5k a month on average throughout 2026. The goal is to continue growing the portfolio’s MRR and to give adequate time for SaaS Decoded to grow into a validated, scalable business.

SaaS Decoded after 3.5 months

If you had to say to me back in January that after 3 months of posting and promotion I’d only have 80+ subscribers for SaaS Decoded, I wouldn’t have believed you.

To be honest I’ve been surprised at the slow growth of SaaS Decoded and even though I’ve tried to lower my expectations, it’s been tough to grow at such a slow pace.

I realize part of the issue is the mental framework I’m operating under. For example, when I put in 10+ hours into a post that I’m really proud of, and consider a great piece of work, mentally I expect people to feel the same way and rave about it online.

I’m working really hard to change this way of thinking since I know it’s not going to help me push through the Valley of Despair.

The longer I play this new game the more I’m starting to realize some key aspects about it. For example, gaining attention is really hard. The competition for attention is super high and I’m starting to understand that those that stand out do it through a combination of high quality and consistency.

I also think there is this tipping point where a creator has built up enough authority and evangelism from enough people that their reach expands into new potential audiences on a frequent basis, leading to further growth. This creates a snowball-type effect which is exponential in nature. It’s the reason you often see hockey stick among some content creators. I’ve yet to reach this point so the leverage I have is still minimal which is why it feels so difficult to get any attention for SaaS Decoded.

I’ve only been publishing about SaaS consistently for a few months, and in 2026, with all the noise there is online, I just have to be patient and keep on going.

I was recently tagged in this LinkedIn post which put a smile on my face:)

Another key realization I recently have is that since there is so much competition for attention, when someone does enter their email and subscribe to SaaS Decoded, they are sending a strong signal; “I want to hear what else you have to say so here is my email”. I need to acknowledge this more and be grateful. Every subscriber is a person who trusted me enough to give me their email.

One highlight I do want to mention is the launch of The Vault, a benefits program for SaaS Decoded subscribers. I’ve had the idea for a benefits program since the start of SaaS Decoded and decided I might as well launch it now.

The launch version has 5 perks and my goal is to add a few new perks each month. This concept is also used by Lenny of Lenny’s Newsletter and has helped him maintain a high conversion of free to paid subscribers.

My program will be a bit different but I also plan on launching a paid tier later down the road as a way to add more value to paid subscribers of the newsletter.

Adjusting to a new way of working

The last few years have felt like an absolute rollercoaster. The workload was endless and the stress was high.

Running an agency is rough because you’re constantly trying to get new clients while supporting existing clients. At the same time you’re trying to keep the team motivated and growing, to build systems and leverage, and to find ways to work on the business rather than in the business.

Transitioning away from this reality to one where I have zero video calls, a much shorter to-do list, zero people reporting to me, and a higher focus on creative, deep work has been an extremely positive change. I’m far happier, less stressed and feel a lot freer.

It has taken me some time to make this adjustment and each week has become easier. I’m now done with the vast majority of the start of the year admin work and can now start building systems to help me increase my leverage and focus.

One area I’m investing time into is using agentic AI to help me save time.

I’ve become a big fan of Viktor, a powerful agentic agent for Slack. I’ve written about Viktor on SaaS Decoded.

SaaS Decoded

How to add an AI coworker to your Slack workspace in 5 minutes (+ 12 practical ways to use that coworker)

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

6 months ago · 4 likes · Justin Butlion

I’ve started to use Viktor to help me handle support across my 10 SaaS apps, directly within Slack.

It’s an ongoing project which I’ll write about in a dedicated post sometime in the future.

Now that I’m a “one man show”, I’m constantly thinking about leverage and how I can get more done without spending entire days in front of the computer.

*The above link to Viktor’s website is an affiliate link. If you click it, signup and start paying Vitkor, I’ll earn 15% commission on your spend for the 1st year.

Plans for Q2 and some changes I’m making

In less than 2 weeks I’m wrapping up my time in Da Nang, Vietnam and flying for the first time to Japan. I was originally planning on spending 3 months in Da Nang but I decided to cut the trip short and head to Japan for an 8 week adventure.

I wrote in a previous post that I was approved for Thailand’s DTV visa which means I’ll be in Chiang Mai from September 2026 through February of next year. Even though there is a lot to do in Chiang Mai, I’m mainly in “work mode” when I’m there.

Since I’ve been in “work mode” since the start of the year, and will be again in September until the end of the year, I decided to mix things up and head to Japan for more of a travel-focused period.

The plan in a nutshell is to start in Fukuoka and travel north while trying to avoid the monsoon season and extreme heat experienced a bit later in the year. I’ll be visiting Tokyo, Osaka, and Sapporo in the north of the country. The goal is 8 weeks but if I’m happy and feel like staying longer, I could extend it to 12 weeks.

I also want to use the opportunity to try and connect with the Japanese startup scene and do some research for a post for SaaS Decoded. I’m curious about the work culture in Japan and how that affects their tech startup scene.

I will still be writing during this period but I’m going to do my best to produce as much as I can before the trip so I can limit my time in front of the computer while getting to see Japan.

I’m really excited and it should be a grand adventure.

Other goals, changes in the business and areas of focus for Q2

I don’t have any strict goals or plans for Q2 when it comes to the businesses. My focus is on continuing to publish a weekly post for SaaS Decoded and to continue growing my audiences on social media.

I will continue to scale The Vault and spend time improving as a content creator.

I will continue to experiment with Viktor and AI in general to increase my leverage, and try and systematize my work as much as possible.

I now have 10 SaaS apps to look after so I’m looking at optimizing onboarding flows, support and to reduce churn where possible. AI should be able to help a lot in these areas.

It’s more about keeping things stable and pushing forward with building an audience around SaaS Decoded.

It’s important for my long term plans that I get through the Valley of Despair, learn the necessary skills and mindset to succeed as a content creator, and turn SaaS Decoded into a viable business.

Thankfully I’ve got a 6-figure SaaS portfolio that is generating cash flow to support me while I build up SaaS Decoded.

That’s it for this week friends. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one.

Justin

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Yesterday I wrapped up my 5th SaaS acquisition. This acquisition takes my SaaS portfolio to 10 cash flowing apps and $7.8k MRR ($93.5k ARR).

In this post I’m going to share details of the acquisition, give an update on the portfolio, and cover some of my thoughts for the holdco as it approaches 6-figures in ARR.

If you’re new to Coffee + Revelation, welcome, my name is Justin Butlion and I’m the owner of Hawkeye Ventures, a holding company I formed in 2022.

The posts listed below will get you up to date on the history of the holding company, my previous acquisitions, and my long-term goal of hitting 20k MRR from SaaS.

• The Acquisition

• The Holding Company

• July 23 in Review: Travel, Churn, & $500 Explosions of Joy

• My 3rd SaaS Acquisition: Translate Channels

• My 4th SaaS acquisition

• The Empire In Review #1

The bottom 3rd of this post is only accessible to paying subscribers of Coffee + Revelation (they deserve something extra). To read the full post, you’ll need to upgrade.

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The Acquisition

Just over a month ago I was scrolling on Acquire.com (the marketplace I’ve used for all 5 of my acquisitions) and came across a listing which immediately caught my eye.

The deal was for the purchase of 4 Monday.com apps for $40k USD. The total MRR across the 4 apps came to $1,364.

The multiple was also very attractive at 2.44X current ARR.

$1,364 MRR X 12 = $16,368 ARR

$40,000 / $16,368 = 2.4X

Since I love acquiring apps that exist in an ecosystem with a marketplace, and the fact that I had already acquired Monday.com apps as part of my 4th acquisition, I was very intrigued.

What got me very excited was the fact that the MRR of 3 out of the 4 apps was growing every month!!

A good multiple + clear product-market fit + low churn + high growth = winner!!!

At this point the main boxes were already checked, it was just a matter of learning more and eliminating any possible red flags.

I reached out to the owner with an initial set of questions and his answers didn’t disappoint.

I knew I couldn’t finance the deal entirely using cash so I asked if seller financing was an option and the seller thankfully agreed.

I sent a LOI and after some further negotiating we landed on a deal of $48k with 25k up front and the rest paid over 18 months as seller financing. The fact that I mentioned that I had already purchased Monday.com apps helped move things forward.

After about 10 days of due diligence including getting a demo of each of the apps, walking through the infrastructure and a quick user analysis, I decided to pull the trigger and move forward.

The handover took some time since we needed Monday to make some changes on their end and I requested some minor changes to one of the apps. I was lucky that the original owner was an amazing guy to work with, very responsible, and he went above and beyond throughout the process.

Here’s the amazing thing. Since I started the buying process, the MRR across the 4 apps grew from $1,364 to $1,609. That’s 18% growth in a single month.

Since Monday apps are hosted on Monday’s infrastructure, the total costs to run the apps comes to about $2 a month (domain + hosting for the website).

There is no marketing budget, ongoing dev work, and minimum customer support. Check, check and check!

The biggest negative of this deal is that the portion of the revenue from the apps going towards debt payments (paying down the seller finance) is high. That percentage will however drop as long as growth continues.

Another negative is that the revenue distribution from the apps is quite lob sided.

• Dashboard Formula Widget - $1,198 MRR

• Timeline auto-sync - $348 MRR

• Nexio - $56 MRR

• DocuDraw - $7 MRR

I have zero expectations for Nexio and DocuDraw. I do expect Dashboard Formula Widget and Timeline auto-sync to continue growing. Dashboard Formula Widget has been on the Monday app marketplace the longest of the 4 apps.

The fact that the majority of the MRR is coming from one of the apps makes the deal more risky. It’s still good to now have 2 apps in the portfolio doing over $1k MRR, 3 doing >$500 and 5 doing >$300.

Update On The Portfolio

The Hawkeye Ventures SaaS portfolio is now made up of 10 cash flowing SaaS apps ranging from $7 MRR to $4,025 MRR.

The total ARR is $93,574.

Read more

The last two weeks have been a bit rough.

SaaS Decoded’s growth has grinded to a halt leaving me scratching my head and zapping both my confidence and motivation.

It’s one thing to experience slow growth, but when you’re putting in the hours and nothing moves, it’s a different animal all together.

At this point I’m far behind where I hoped to be in terms of subscriber count and it’s been a tough pill to swallow.

I’ve been publishing a post each week, posting daily on LinkedIn and started being a lot more active on X (2nd traffic channel) yet the subscriber count has barely budged since the start of the month.

The Valley of Despair

One of the most important lessons I’ve learnt as an entrepreneur is the 5 stages an entrepreneur goes through when starting a new venture.

Alex Hormozi helped popularize this framework and it was through his YouTube where I learnt the framework.

When I started SaaS Decoded earlier this year I had done a ton of research and went into it knowing the “rules” to win this “game”.

I was in the “uninformed optimism” stage.

I knew I needed to:

• Be consistent

• Put out high quality content

• Promote that content frequently

• Be patient

A few short weeks after starting I learnt that putting out high quality, long form content every week was tougher than I thought.

It required saying “no” more often to keep my calendar open, and a lot more “deep work”. Making the necessary adjustments was taking a while and I was struggling to adjust to a new but necessary routine.

I was now in the “informed pessimism” stage.

Since the start of the month, when the subscriber count “froze” and my inputs were no longer moving the numbers, I was thrust into the “Valley of Despair”.

Crossing the Valley of Despair

So how do I plan on “crossing the Valley of Despair”?

There is a reason most people quit at this stage, it’s fucking depressing and you feel like you’re wasting your time. In a world of endless options, the temptation to switch to something else is very strong.

This is the trap I knew was waiting for me and one I’ve fallen into many times. The solution is to cross the Valley of Despair, no matter what it takes.

To get through this period I’m deploying multiple tactics.

The first one is honesty.

For starters it’s only been 2.5 months.

2.5 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things and I’ve learnt a lot since I started back in January.

I try and remind myself how much I’ll know and how much better I’ll be in 6, 12, 24 and 36 months from now if I stay on this path.

I might not be winning like I hoped, but I only lose if I quit.

The longer I do this the more I embrace the new identity I’m building for myself; that of a writer and educator.

The more I walk this path, the better I want to become at it. Becoming better takes time and effort and I’m excited to get better.

I also want to become the kind of person that spends years working on a single creative pursuit so I can become a master at that “game”. I’m in this for the long run.

Lack of focus

The second point I have to admit to myself is that I’ve been way too distracted recently and all over the place. This directly affects the quality of my writing since I’m not giving it the attention it needs, and that of course hurts growth.

One important adjustment I’m struggling with is focusing on just the writing. I’m so used to doing so many different things that I’m not being purposeful with blocking time for deep thinking and writing.

Putting out high quality content requires working differently. It requires sitting for long periods of time focused on a single topic, not jumping between small and medium sized tasks which is what I’m used to doing.

This is also not an easy time to be focused. I’ve needed to spend a disproportionate time on admin-related tasks to wrap up 2025, due diligence work for a new acquisition I’m working on (more on this in a future post), and hours preparing documents for a special digital nomad visa for Thailand (DTV visa) which thankfully got approved.

On top of all the above I’m still managing two retainer clients.

It’s been a busy and high context-switching period for me which comes with a cost.

Thankfully most of these distractions are one-off and infrequent.

The bottomline is I can’t succeed as a writer if I’m not putting enough hours aside for deep work.

I’ve been implementing some “tricks” recently to help with this and I’ve seen a huge improvement which I’m happy about.

Don’t publish high quality content, publish “subscribe-worthy” content

From my research into some of the most successful newsletters in the world a common theme emerged.

The quality of the content is the most important thing.

According to Lenny Rachitsky of Lenny’s Newsletter, the newsletter I’ve modeled SaaS Decoded after, the vast majority of his growth has come through word of mouth which is driven by the quality of his content.

The issue is that “high quality” is kind of subjective. I can spend 20 hours on a post and by the end I think it’s high quality, yet the content won’t be shared, receive any comments and won’t drive new subscribers.

So the question is how can I guarantee that the content I write for the newsletter is so good that people will share it with their friends and coworkers?

Of course not every post will be a “home run”, but what can I do to increase the chances that a piece of content I publish becomes “subscribe-worthy” and shareable?

This isn’t an easy question to answer but thankfully I came across a really helpful talk by Chenell Basilio of Growth In Reverse, a fantastic resource for understanding how successful creators grew their newsletters, YouTube channels, etc.

In the talk Chenell doubles down on the importance of producing high quality content and provides a few good examples.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the bar of excellence is way higher than you’d expect.

This was an eye opener for me and I’ve had to adjust my own expectations of the effort and depth I will need to put into my content in the future.

To put out that level of quality on a weekly basis is going to take a level of commitment, focus and discipline which is far beyond the expectations I had at the start of this journey.

Chenell sums it up beautifully by saying that the goal is to make content which is “subscribe-worthy”. I love this.

The good news is that you can’t solve a problem without having first identified it. I now believe I know what I must do and I’m excited to do it and report back.

Next week I’ll be publishing part 3 of my series on product-led growth for B2B SaaS. Posts I publish after that piece will be at a whole new level.

SaaS Decoded

The PLG Engine: A definitive guide to scaling B2B SaaS using product-led growth [PART 2]

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

5 months ago · Justin Butlion

To help me make my future posts “subscribe-worthy”, I’ve created a checklist which I’ll run through before starting a new post.

I’ve stolen a few good questions from my research into Lenny’s process, tips from Chenell’s video, and other obvious questions I need to ask myself before finalizing a topic and direction for a future post.

The checklist should make a huge difference in how I approach future content and I’m excited to see how things change now that it’s a part of my process.

Remind myself that most quit at this point

The last tactic I’m using to help me cross the Valley of Despair is to constantly remind myself that this is the point where most quit.

Even though Lenny and a few others I’ve studied had immediate success with their newsletters, I know this is rare.

Most successful creators grinded for years with little to show for it before seeing explosive growth.

A very powerful tool I’ve been using recently to keep me motivated is a Twitter post by MrBeast, the world’s most successful YouTuber.

It’s hard to believe that the YouTuber with 471 million subscribers today had less than 100 subscribers 4 years into his journey!

I’m 2.5 months into my journey with 9 posts and 75 subscribers and I’m feeling depressed; how silly.

Imagine James “Jimmy” Donaldson (AKA MrBeast) quit 4 years into his journey. You and I would have never heard the name, MrBeast.

The Valley of Despair is a shit place to be but even some of the greatest creators alive today crawled through it and got out.

Now it’s my turn.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post and know someone who could benefit from my content, please hit the share button below and send it to them.

Have a great week ahead.

Justin

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I find myself writing to you from another airport. I have a 9 hour layover in Bangkok today while on my way from Chiang Mai to Da Nang.

I just spent the last 8 weeks in Chiang Mai and really enjoyed it. It’s still my #1 destination as a digital nomad and I plan to apply soon for Thailand’s DTV visa so I can stay 6 months at a time in Thailand. The plan is to apply for the visa while I’m in Da Nang and return to Chiang Mai after the rainy season in October.

I plan to spend the next 3 months in Da Nang and then possibly check out Japan. Northern europe (Estonia, Denmark, Sweden) is also an option. The summer months are always tricky.

Executing the game plan

When I made the decision at the start of the year to pivot away from consulting to building SaaS Decoded I had a game plan for the initial few weeks.

The plan in a nutshell was to:

• Start publishing a weekly post on SaaS Decoded and to stay consistent. Make publishing that weekly post my #1 priority.

• Post daily on LinkedIn.

• Work through a long to-do list of “other” work to “clear my plate”, reduce stress and create space for more focus.

So far I’ve executed this plan well.

Along the way I’ve achieved the following:

• Published 6 long-form weekly posts for SaaS Decoded and grown the subscriber count to 70.

• Fired my final full-time employee

• Cut my software costs aggressively

• Updated existing clients

• A lot of admin-related cleanup

• Finalized my accounting for 2025

Moving to Asia was also part of the plan so I could significantly lower my personal “burn” and reduce financial stress. Going from Thailand to Vietnam drops my burn even further. I’ll be living comfortably there for about $1,500 a month.

Each week I’m feeling more and more at ease with this transition and enjoying a much calmer work routine.

“Vibe coding”, shiny object syndrome, and Justin “the coder”

The ongoing GenAI wave is the hottest topic on the Internet today and even though I fought the temptation for a long time, I broke and decided to go down a few AI rabbit holes the last few weeks.

I killed 2 birds with one stone and turned my research into two weekly posts for SaaS Decoded.

The first was a detailed beginners guide that covered a wide range of AI topics.

SaaS Decoded

The complete bullsh*t-free beginners guide to AI for non-developers

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

6 months ago · Justin Butlion

The second was a summary of a bunch of research I did on adding smart agents to Slack.

SaaS Decoded

How to add an AI coworker to your Slack workspace in 5 minutes (+ 12 practical ways to use that coworker)

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

6 months ago · 3 likes · Justin Butlion

I’m late to the AI game and only recently started using Gemini on a frequent basis to help with research for content.

I now have multiple friends who run businesses who have become “vibe coders” and I don’t know what to make of it.

On one hand I see the benefits of working with these incredibly powerful development platforms and being able to turn ideas into reality quickly and relatively cheaply. But on the other hand I see it as another “shiny object” for technical generalists like myself to chase instead of staying focused.

When I first started working in tech over 15 years ago I taught myself web development. I spent about a month learning HTML and basic CSS. Those programming languages were enough for me to build static websites but I wanted to build dynamic sites.

I started teaching myself PHP, MySQL and how to build basic web applications.

I quickly realized that going from HTMl and CSS to PHP was a significant leap and that I didn’t have the patience to truly become a software engineer. For me the code was a means to an end. Truly great software engineers love the building process and tackling the never ending problems that arise in building powerful software. I just wanted something I could put out into the world to make some money.

The reason I’m very hesitant to start “vibe coding” is because I think its a bit of an illusion. The tools can now do 80% of what’s needed insanely quickly with text-based prompts but what happens when you get stuck?

The illusion is that now I’ve got a working app but as a “vibe coder” I don’t understand what I’ve built. I can’t read the code, troubleshoot major bugs and make sure my app can handle high load. I don’t know QA, logging, backups, DevOps and all the other nuances that come with building and scaling a web application.

Now I will admit that since I haven’t even tried to “vibe code” I’m most definitely missing part of the story. Perhaps the tools are now so good that they handle everything on your behalf and you don’t actually need to understand what’s happening under the surface.

At least for now I feel that someone in my position is better off hiring an experienced developer who is using these new AI tools to tackle any software development that I may need.

Because we have gas-powered chainsaws doesn’t mean we should all become lumberjacks. If I need to fell a tree, I’ll call an expert.

Growing on X is tough but I’m slowly making progress

I wrote in a post a few weeks ago that I spent some time improving my use of X and have started to better understand how to use the platform to grow my following.

Even though LinkedIn is my #1 social media platform for growing my audience, and in turn SaaS Decoded, it would be great if I had two networks I could leverage. X is very popular among tech workers which is SaaS Decoded’s target audience.

Over the last few weeks I’ve managed to get my follower count over 1k and start to improve my “verified follower” ratio.

I’ve also managed to drive over 120 visitors to my profile and significantly improve my impression count.

Impressions don’t always equal new followers as the graph below demonstrates.

I’m still learning and will have to do a better job of integrating dedicated time on X into my routine. Right now I’m spending way too much time “doomscrolling” and being drawn into content that’s a complete distration.

I’m excited to get better at building an online audience and with time I’m confident I can “crack the code” of X. I’ll continue to report back.

That’s it for now friends, thanks for reading and have a good weekend.

Justin

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A few days ago I fired my last remaining full-time employee and for the first time in years I’m a team of one.

Whenever there is a big change in my businesses I like to take a step back and reflect.

The last 2 years working with this employee allowed me to learn some important lessons I want to try and crystalize in this post.

If you’re an agency owner, or planning on starting your own agency, you’ll find the lessons in this post beneficial.

I also want to mention that this post will be for paid subscribers of Coffee + Revelation. If you want to read the full post, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid membership. Most of the content I publish at Coffee + Revelation is 100% free but occassionally I will publish a post dedicated to my paid subscribers.

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The growth capacity conundrum

One of the most impactful lessons I learnt during my time as an agency owner was the importance of removing myself from client fulfillment.

The biggest benefit that the employee I just fired provided me (she was an account manager) was time.

I spent many years writing SQL, building dbt models and building Tableau dashboards but that all changed when I hired the account manager. She could handle the majority of the day-to-day client work allowing me to spend my time on trying to grow the business.

In theory this sounds great and an important step but there is an assumption baked into this logic; that I was able to grow the business.

For the two years the account manager worked for projectBI she was never once at full capacity.

This meant that the account manager could never meet her true ROI for the business which is a major problem.

Now imagine a scenario where the agency owner doesn’t have an account manager, that he is doing all the client fullfillment himself. When would he have the bandwidth to actually grow the business?

This growth capacity conundrum is one I’ve yet to solve.

However, when looking back I think the answer is for the owner to first prove he can generate sufficient new business before hiring an account manager, even if this means staying as a freelancer longer than he would like.

The economic impact of adding employees (fixed costs) to a small business can’t be overstated. If the ROI isn’t extremely high, you’re better off not doing it.

It’s a chicken-egg situation though because I would have never learnt this lesson if I hadn’t added the account manager to the team in the first place.

I also think many freelancers never take the leap and actually add team members which is a bigger mistake than adding employees too early.

Damned if you do damned if you don’t.

An employee is a cog in a machine so what happens if there is no machine?

Read more

It’s been a few weeks since I made the big switch and I’m slowly getting smarter and better at playing this new game. I’ve also come to realize some key things which I’d like to share with you in this edition of Coffee + Revelation.

Firstly, a quick update.

This morning the 50th subscriber joined SaaS Decoded.

I’m happy with this pace of growth since I know the early days building the audience will be slow and a bit of a grind. As the numbers grow, the pace of growth should pick up as word of mouth and social proof do their thing.

For now the plan is to continue publishing free content until I hit 1,000 subscribers and then I’ll move forward with my plans to start monetizing the audience.

This past Tuesday I published part two of my two part growth series for B2B SaaS.

SaaS Decoded

20 growth tactics used by Cursor, Gong, Intercom, Clay, n8n and other fast growing B2B SaaS companies [PART 2]

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in-depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

7 months ago · Justin Butlion

In total I covered 20 different growth tactics across the two posts and had a lot of fun writing the series. I want to try and focus as much as I can on growth since this is a topic that everyone is interested in and a pain point for all SaaS founders.

Building an audience is a skill

I had an epiphany this week.

I was sitting in the coworking and decided I’d spend some focused time thinking about how I use X (formally Twitter).

I’ve been on X for 15 years but I never took it that seriously and failed miserably at using it to grow an audience. I’ve posted nearly 10k times on the platform and have very little to show for it.

I spent about 45 minutes using Gemini to learn more about the recent X algorithm changes and then watched some useful YouTube videos. This helped me realize I had been making some basic mistakes repeatedly on the platform.

Here’s one big insight that hit me like a lightning bolt.

X has two “systems”. The first is straight forward. You publish a post and it appears in the “For You” feed of those that follow you.

The second is an algorithm which dictates if your post moves into the “For You” of people that DON’T follow you.

It’s difficult to grow on X when your posts are only being seen by people that already know who you are. The goal is to get your content in front of new potential followers.

So how do we get a post to move into the “For You” feed of non-followers? You need engagement signals on the post within the first 60 minutes after posting it. Replies are top of the list and carry a 14X weight compared to “likes”.

But here’s the problem. What are the chances of getting a lot of replies on a post when you have a small audience? It’s very low. So logically there’s no point in posting until you have a sizable audience that will result in at least some replies on your content.

For the time being I’m going to be a “reply guy” on X and see how that goes.

Anyway, while I was having these realizations about how to do a better job on X, I had my epiphany.

My job now is to build an audience and to do that job well, I’ll need to master a handful of skills.

Building an audience is a skill, or rather, a combination of many skills.

In order to become a master at audience building, I’ll need to master:

• How to capture and convert attention on each of the social media platforms I choose to focus on (LinkedIn & X at this time)

• Copywriting

• Editing

• Writing long-form, educational content

• Coming up with ideas for new content

• Interviewing and research

• Focus

• Consistency

• Patience

By slowly “clearing my plate” of all the other areas of focus I’ve had over the last few years, I’m slowly gaining more peace of mind and bandwidth that I can channel towards improving these skills.

It excites me to think how much better I will be in 12, 24 and 36 months from now after spending hundreds of additional hours dedicated to these skills.

I like to remind myself that many of the world’s largest content creators spent years practicing their craft before gaining the skills and notoriety needed to succeed.

MrBeast had 76 YouTube subscribers 3 years into his journey! How many does he have today? Over 465 million!!!!!

I’m excited to spend more dedicated time improving these skills and will report back to you how my ability to grow my audience is changing as I improve.

How are you surviving financially while you build up SaaS Decoded?

This is a fair question and one I put a lot of thought into before making the switch at the start of the year.

Thankfully I’ve put myself in a decent position financially through all the hard work over the last few years.

My portfolio of SaaS brought in $72k last year and I expect it will do over $80k this year without any new acquisitions. At around 60% net profit margin, that will be enough to cover my salary.

I also have some cash reserves, 1 solid retainer client paying $3.3k a month, and 2 other legacy clients that we are engaged with. My account manager is handling the bulk of the day-to-day and I’m involved in some projects.

There is still an open question on what will happen with the consulting side of my businesses in the coming few weeks and months. Unfortunately the situation is quite complex and not something I want to get into detail at this point in the newsletter.

Each week I’m simplifying things by cutting back on the team (less involvement of freelancers), cutting software costs, and trying to eliminate as much as I can so I can stay focused on SaaS Decoded.

Another major piece of my strategy is to significantly reduce my salary.

The goal is to send myself $3.5k a month which is quite a significant reduction from last year (I paid myself around $5.5k per month in 2025). I honestly thought this would be tough to do and add a lot of stress but so far it’s working fine.

It helps a lot being in Asia where the cost of living is low. I’ve been in Thailand since the start of the year and will be in the country until the 3rd week of February.

From Thailand I’ll be moving to Da Nang, Vietnam which is even cheaper than Thailand. I plan to be there for 2 - 3 months before heading to my next country. At the moment I’m not sure which country that will be but I’m leaning towards Japan.

I’m hoping to spend as much time as I can this year in Asia to keep my living and travel expenses down to buy time for SaaS Decoded to grow.

As I previoustly wrote, I’ll need to write consistently and market SaaS Decoded for between 7 and 11 months to grow to 10k subscribers. At that level I should be making a few thousand dollars a month in profit which will be enough to cover my living expenses.

I’ve got plenty of runway to support myself while I work towards that milestone.

I have no concrete financial expectations for 2026. I just want to stay focused and build SaaS Decoded. I believe in the long-term potential of the brand and if things go according to plan, it should be a huge financial success in a few short years.

That’s it for this week friends, thanks for reading.

Justin

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This last Tuesday I published my first long-form post for SaaS Decoded, a 4k+ guide on BI for early-stage SaaS founders.

SaaS Decoded

The complete BI blueprint for early-stage SaaS founders: From zero to data-driven decision making

👋 Hi there, I’m Justin. Welcome to another edition of SaaS Decoded. Each week, I publish an in depth, actionable guide to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses…

Read more

7 months ago · 2 likes · Justin Butlion

It felt good publishing the first of many long-form pieces for the new newsletter and to start adjusting to a very different work rhythm.

In this edition of Coffee + Revelation, I will be covering the following topics:

• What I’ll need to do to succeed in building SaaS Decoded

• How I plan to support myself with the newsletter

• The first major milestone for SaaS Decoded

• My plans for growing the newsletter over the next 6 - 12 months

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One high quality post per week is enough

In my recent post where I announced my shift towards SaaS Decoded, I mentioned that my plan was to publish 2 Substack posts and 2 YouTube videos a week.

The last two weeks have taught me that if I’m going to publish the best long form pieces I can, I need a lot more time than I initially thought.

I’m working almost every day to "clear my plate” so I’ll have more time for writing but it’s taking time.

I still have clients I’m responsible for, year-end admin work which can’t be ignored, and old projects I’m wrapping up. This past week I finally shut down Feedio, finished work on two client projects and reviewed the recent work completed by my bookkeeper.

I want to get to the point where I have multiple full days a week to focus exclusively on writing.

I previously wrote that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Lenny Rachitsky who has built a multi-million dollar business on Substack, writing primarily about product management, career development and tech startup growth.

Lenny achieved this incredible level of success by spending years publishing a single post a week.

Lenny's Newsletter

1,000,000

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a year ago · 329 likes · 70 comments

I don’t need to put out more content than Lenny to replicate his success, I just have to be consistent, put out good content and be very patient.

To succeed, I must be very patient

If I’m going to succeed in building SaaS Decoded into a successful newsletter, I’m going to have to very patient.

The playbook is clear to me and now I just have to execute.

The first major milestone I’d like to reach with SaaS Decoded is to get it to the point where it’s generating enough revenue to cover my basic living expenses.

That number is $3.5k a month.

$3.5k is enough for me to be comfortable living in cheaper destinations around the world (I’m a digital nomad).

So how do I get SaaS Decoded to that point?

Let’s look at the math together.

Right now the price of a premium subscription of the newsletter is $14 a month, or $99 a year. Assume 90% of those that pay purchase the monthly plan, and 10% purchase the annual plan.

That would mean that the average revenue per paying subscriber would be $13.43 before fees.

The gross profit after fees per paying subscriber comes to $11.72.

This means I’ll need about 10k email subscribers at a 3% conversion rate to generate $3.5k in gross profit.

I know there are other ways I could monetize the audience, and I have some ideas on getting a higher conversion from free to paid but I like to be conservative.

It took Lenny about 11 months (9 months of consistent writing) to reach 10k email subscribers.

In total he wrote 43 posts before hitting 10k email subscribers.

So the first major milestone for SaaS Decoded is to reach $4,000 MRR which should leave me with about $3.5k in gross revenue. I should be at roughly 10k email subscribers when I hit this mark.

I’m a big believer in focusing on what I can control which in this case is to just publish good content week after week.

I estimate I’ll need to publish somewhere between 30 and 50 posts to hit the 10k mark.

With an output of one post a week, it will take me between 7 and 12 months to publish enough content to hit the 10k email subscriber mark.

So in summary, instead of focusing on MRR, I’m going to declare that the first major milestone for SaaS Decoded is to publish 30 high quality long-form posts at a cadence of one per week.

Once I’ve hit that milestone I should be well on my way to supporting myself directly through the newsletter.

Utilizing multiple traffic engines for growth

To get tens of thousands of SaaS founders and operators to voluntarily give me their email addresses, I’m going to have to get my content in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

Substack has some powerful social and recommendation-based features but these won’t be enough to get the newsletter to 10k subscribers and beyond.

Getting the first few thousand subscribers is going to be a slog. It’s always slow in the beginning to build up an audience. Once enough people know about the brand, enjoy the content and are sharing it, the pace of growth increases.

It took Lenny two and a half years to reach 100k email subscribers. In 2024, 5 years into building his newsletter, he gained almost 500k new email subscribers.

I need to put enough “energy” into “the system” to get things going and then the audience, library of content, and brand will do the heavy lifting. This is where leverage comes into play.

My strategy for getting my content in front of the hundreds of thousands of people that will lead to the initial 10k subscribers is by utilizing multiple traffic engines. These can be divided into those I control, and those I don’t.

Under my control:

• LinkedIn

• X

• Reddit

• This newsletter (Coffee + Revelation)

• Substack notes

Those that I don’t control:

• Google Search

• Substack’s recommendations

• word of mouth

Throughout the week I will be posting about the topics covered at SaaS Decoded on social media to help promote the substack. I’m using Buffer to schedule out content so I can spend no more than 3 times a week writing posts for social media.

As SaaS Decoded grows, I expect to get more views from Google search, Substack Recommendations, and word of mouth.

Accelerating growth by tapping into other people’s audiences

There is a smart tactic that Lenny has leveraged to grow his newsletter, tapping into other people’s audiences.

He has smartly tapped into other people’s audiences in three ways:

1. Writing guest posts for other publications

2. Using thought leaders in his content

3. Accepting guest posts for his own newsletter

I’m going to use all three methods, especially #1 and #2. For at least the first year I don’t plan on accepting any guest posts for SaaS Decoded. Once at scale, I think it would be a good idea to accept the occassional high quality guest post.

Writing guest posts for other publications

I’ve used guest blogging as a growth tactic in the past and its very powerful, especially for tapping into existing audiences that don’t know you.

Once I’ve “cleared my plate” and have optimized my routine, I will have the bandwidth to put time into writing the occassional post I can pitch to other publications.

I’m not setting any goals when it comes to putting out guest posts but if I can write a guest post once every 4 - 6 weeks, and get them published on the right publications, that would be great.

Using thought leaders in my content

One tactic I do plan on using frequently is using thought leaders in my content.

I want to cover topics for SaaS Decoded that I don’t know deeply, and therefore will need to learn from experts on these topics. I’ll then mention these experts in my posts in the form of quotes, general insights and as “case studies”. This will not only enhance the content, but be a great way for me to expand my own network.

Some of these thought leaders have audiences of their own and will be willing to share the posts that involve them on social media. This will get SaaS Decoded in front of more people than I can on my own.

That’s it for this weeks post, thanks for reading.

Justin

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Happy New Year.

I hope you all had a restful end to 2025 and are ready for whatever 2026 throws your way.

2025 was a mixed year with a few great milestones having been reached, mixed in with a lot of frustration and stagnation. Honestly I’m happy its behind me.

You’ll soon learn why 2026 will be a very different year for me.

In a few weeks from now I plan to publish a post that will provide a thorough review of 2025.

This is quite a long post but one of the most important posts I’ll ever write. I suggest you refill your coffee mug and get comfortable.

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A real change is needed and now is the time to do it

From past experience I know the last 2 weeks of December are very slow, so this past December I did things a bit differently.

I decided I would take my foot off the gas from the 23rd December until the first week of January and use that time to rest, think, spend some quality time with family and get my mind ready for 2026.

This time allowed me to reflect on the last few years and what I had accomplished. It also allowed me to reflect on a theme which is shown nicely in the graph below.

The graph above shows the top-line revenue I’ve generated per year since I switched from being a freelancer to running an agency.

I’m really proud of what I’ve achieved. I know that generating $1M from selling services online is no small feat but the table above is not telling the full picture.

Firstly, it shows revenue, not profit.

For most of the time period shown above I’ve had 2 full time team members working along side me. Add to that 2 - 4 freelancers doing different jobs at different capacities, hundreds of dollars a month in software and admin-related expenses (bookkeeping, tax filing, virtual mailbox, etc) and there isn’t much left for investments, marketing, bonuses etc.

The graph also shows that I haven’t managed to break through the $250k revenue mark, even with years of experience as an operator.

On the positive side, the graph above doesn’t show that I’ve invested the vast majority of the profits into acquiring a portfolio of cash flowing SaaS apps.

This however has been a slow build. I’ve invested around $200k into the acquisitions and spent tens of thousands of dollars paying down seller finance loans.

In 2025 I generated $72k from the SaaS at around a 50% net profit margin which is definitely a big win. The $30k+ left over from the SaaS is a nice chunk of change but not enough to make any significant moves.

Lastly, the most alarming piece of information not shown in the table above is that out of the $227k my businesses made in 2025 from services, over 85% of it came from clients we had closed in 2024. Over 90% of the revenue came from just 3 clients. We lost 1 of those clients in August which resulted in the business losing 11k a month in recurring revenue.

I completely failed in driving new business for projectBI in the first 3 quarters of last year, and only managed to close 2 clients for my new agency, Titan CX in the 4th quarter.

My failure to grow my businesses beyond the $250k mark comes down to one of two things.

Either I’m trying to offer services where there isn’t a real demand, AKA no service-market fit. For example offering expensive custom business intelligence services to mid-market Shopify businesses.

In 3 years running projectBI offering such services, we only worked with 13 DTC brands, most of them on small, one-off projects. We only ever closed 1 client on a retainer greater than $8k a month. It took me years to accept this reality which is why I stopped marketing projectBI and instead spent my time starting Titan CX earlier this year.

After 4 months and hundreds of hours working on this new business, I can say with confidence that it was a mistake in going this direction. I had strong conviction when starting Titan CX, and it did check off certain boxes that projectBI didn’t, but in turn it didn’t check important boxes that needed to be checked.

I wrote a dedicated post on the issue of value vs. complexity which is a serious issue for a business like Titan CX. I’ve experienced this issue up close being stuck for weeks on $1,000 projects that require multiple video calls, involvement of multiple stackholders including CTOs, multiple rounds of iteration, etc.

A more serious issue is the lack of retainers. You can’t build a 7-figure agency providing one-off projects unless you can charge a fortune for your services (need to be up market), or you are good at getting new business on a regular basis.

In short, Titan CX was doomed to fail from the start. At least I learnt this lesson relatively quickly and didn’t spend years knocking my head against the wall like I did with projectBI.

So where does that leave me?

I spent the majority of December thinking through my options.

Some of the ideas that I thought through:

1. Shut it all down and retire —> I could live off of my investments and revenue from the SaaS but I don’t yet have enough built up and even though I’d have “freedom”, I wouldn’t be happy.
   

2. Shut it all down and get a job with a remote company —> Not a bad option but it would require me giving up a major part of my identity (I’m an entrepreneur), certain freedoms I have as “the boss”, and I know I wouldn’t be happy.
   

3. Pivot into another agency —> I could shut down Titan CX and move into something else. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of expanding Titan CX into other services such as helping startups set up event tracking (implementing Segment), focusing more on product analytics where I know there is service-market fit, etc. This is risky and I still have the issue of being weak at lead gen.
   

4. Give Titan CX more time —> As I wrote above, the model is fundamentally broken. I think Titan CX could work if I was working on it on my own without a team, essentially as a freelancer. I’m still not sure how much revenue I could generate providing these services. The lack of ongoing retainers is a major problem.
   

5. Shut down the agencies and just be freelance —> I really liked this idea since it would simplify things a lot, allow me to pay myself a higher salary and allow me to control how much time I spend working. If I connected with the right clients and charged a premium, I could get by nicely with a handful of clients each year. The issue is I’d be giving up leverage, basically give myself a job (selling my time for money), and in many ways it would be a step backwards. I’d be solving some problems while creating others.
   

6. Go all-in on SaaS —> An idea I’ve had for a while is to sell equity in Hawkeye Ventures, raise significant capital and go all-in on acquiring and growing my SaaS portfolio. I’d need a full post to cover this topic in detail but the short answer is that I’m not willing at this point to give up equity in my holding company and don’t mind playing the long-game when it comes to building up the holding company.

I’ve decided to go with door #7.

Introducing SaaS Decoded

After 7 years working as a freelancer and agency owner providing consulting services to small and medium-sized businesses, I’ve decided to make a complete change.

Door #7 is to go all-in on content creation.

In short, I’m dedicating myself to building a new education brand named, SaaS Decoded.

SaaS Decoded’s mission is to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses.

I’m going to be producing content covering a wide range of topics from growth, to pricing strategies, product development methodologies, UI/UX best practices and much more.

The brand will consist of a substack newsletter (subscribe now), and YouTube channel (subscribe now). I’d also like to add a community and podcast but for now it’s about being focused and consistent with putting out quality content.

Each week I’ll be publishing 2 substack posts, 1 long-form deeply researched actionable guide, and 1 free flowing summary / round-up style post, and 2 YouTube videos.

I’ll be promoting the content on X and LinkedIn.

Trust me friends, making this decision wasn’t easy. I had a lot of factors to consider. Let me share some of them with you now.

Why go all-in on content?

I could write a thousand words to answer this question but let me give you the short version instead.

• I love content creation, writing in particular.

• I’m really burnt out playing the consulting / agency game for so many years. The fact that I’ve been stuck for the last 3 years has taken a serious toll on my mental and physical health. I needed a significant change and I decided now was the right time to do it.

• The content game is straight forward. There are a lot less variables and I can focus on inputs which I can control. This reduces stress and eliminates analysis paralysis. Switching costs are significant reduced.

• I’ve seen at a small scale through this newsletter how powerful the newsletter game (and substack as a platform) can be.

• It provides maximum flexibility. I commit to a certain set of weekly tasks, get them done and move onto other aspects of life. I can work when I want, where I want as long as I get my tasks done.

• It’s a creative outlet which I’ve been craving for a long time.

• It’s infinitely scalable and has high leverage. The SaaS market is huge and the amount I’ll spend creating content won’t really change if I have 1 subscriber or 1M subscribers, but the gains I get over time go up exponentially.

• I can monetize from day 1 and Substack and YouTube handle that side almost completely. I pay some fees and the money hits my business bank account each week.

• I’ve learnt a lot from studying Lenny Rachitsky of Lenny’s Newsletter. Lenny started his substack about 6 and a half years ago and is making an estimated $4M - $5M a year from it. He writes about product management, growth and career development. He had thousands of paid subscribers supporting his writing within 18 months. There are many examples of full-time content creators making a full time living (and much more than that) from substack and YouTube.

• Building an audience will make it easier for me to conduct market research and identify real problems that I can solve through services. This will allow me to break the cycle and launch a service (if I choose to go that route) with clear service-market-fit.

• Building a sizable audience will boost my personal brand and give me authority in the market. This will help in many ways from connecting with influencers, to raising capital for future business deals.

• Building an audience will allow me to connect with interesting individuals in the SaaS market. This in of itself could lead to incredible opportunities.

• If my job now is to educate others on building large, successful SaaS businesses, I’ll have to improve my own skills and knowledge in this space. This will force me to stay on top of the news, innovations and other changes going on in the market.

What are some of the negatives of this approach and how are you dealing with them?

The biggest issue with this approach is that it will take significant time and a lot of work to build it up to the point where I can make enough to pay my living expenses.

I’m essentially going to be working “for free” until the size of the audience is large enough that the few percent that pay subscriptions to access the premium content pay enough that I can cover my basic living expenses. Every dollar after that point is a bonus.

I’m not setting any revenue goals since I know from studying many full-time creators that the revenue scales exponentially.

To deal with this reality I’m going to take the following steps:

• Lower my salary —> I wanted to get paid $7.5k from the businesses per month this year but I’ve now dropped that number to $4k. I could lower it even further if needed.
  

• Be stricter with my personal budget —> I’m going to have to watch my spending this year since my salary will be lower. This will mean spending more time in Asia and other cheaper locations in 2026 while I give enough time for SaaS Decoded to pick up steam.
  

• Continue supporting existing agency clients —> Right now we have 5 clients across projectBI and Titan CX. 2 of those are retainers. Revenue from these clients should provide enough revenue for a while.
  

• The SaaS portfolio is generating over 4k a month and growing —> Instead of saving money towards another acquisition next year, I’ll pull out profits from the SaaS when needed.
  

• I have about $30k in stock investments and about $15k in cash runway in the businesses I could pull out if needed.

There is definitely some risk here but financially I should be fine for at least 18 months.

What will happen to projectBI, Titan CX and inbound consulting opportunities moving forward?

For now projectBI and Titan CX will stay open for business but I will no longer be promoting these agencies. We will continue to support the existing clients and if any inbound leads come my way, I will engage them.

This will allow me to cover the cost of my team (right now just 1 full-time team member) and at least part of my salary while I build up SaaS Decoded.

One big change I will be making however is significantly raising prices so if I am pulled into consulting work, the price new clients will pay will be significant.

The same goes for any other consulting opportunities that come our way.

One advantage of providing education to the SaaS market is that on occassion I see us getting an inbound lead looking for help.

At the end of the day there will always be founders and operators that just feel more comfortable paying someone to do something than learning the skill themselves.

I’m going to be extremely selective with which consulting opportunities I take on, and put extra effort into shaping those opportunities to best service myself and the businesses so I’m not stuck doing client fulfillment for low prices.

The goal now isn’t to make money from services but to build an education brand that can scale to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in revenue over the next few years.

The ask

Friends, if you’ve made it this far into the post, thanks for reading. I know I can sometimes get into the weeds but it’s important to get all my thoughts onto the page.

I want to end this post with an ask.

If you work in SaaS, either as a founder or operator, to please consider subscribing to the SaaS Decoded substack and share it with your friends and colleagues in the SaaS market. The more support you can provide at this early stage the better.

Please also feel free to share your ideas for content and what topics you’d like to see covered in future posts.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions on why I’ve made this move that I haven’t answered in this post, please let me know in the comments below.

All the best.

Justin

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I hope you are all enjoying the holiday period and spending some needed time away from screens.

I’m writing this edition of Coffee + Revelation from an uncomfortable “booth” in the El Prat Airport, Barcelona’s main international airport, while waiting for my flight to Abu Dhabi (and then onto Chiang Mai, Thailand).

I’ve just wrapped up 6 weeks in Barcelona where I spent a lot of quality time with family, finishing my plans for 2026, and desperately trying to complete a number of client projects for Titan CX before the year is over.

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300k is knocking

At the time of writing this post, the total revenue generated by my three online businesses, projectBI, my eCom BI services business, Titan CX, my Intercom agency, and Hawkeye Venture, my SaaS holding company, is $298,635.

I’m just $1,365 away from the $300k mark which I’ve never reached before.

I still have one more round of deposits from the SaaS before the end of the year and almost $10k in client contracts still to be completed and paid, so the chances of passing $300k before the end of the year is very high.

The 300k mark is only symbolic. I didn’t have a revenue goal for the businesses in 2025.

Still, I believe it’s important to recognize and celebrate wins, and reaching 300k in revenue in a single year is definitely a win in my book.

My travel plans for 2026

Since 2018 I’ve been living as a digital nomad. During that time I’ve visited 16+ countries. I’m at that stage as a nomad where it’s less about visiting new countries but rather spending quality time in countries I really enjoy.

My plan in 2026 is to be a lot more strategic and smart with my traveling plans. I’ve very much “winged” it over the last 7 years which isn’t smart. Booking trips far too late, and not planning ahead costs me a lot of money each year and it’s just silly.

For now my travel plans for 2026 look like this:

• Jan - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Feb - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Mar - Da Nang, Vietnam / Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Apr - Da Nang, Vietnam / Buenos Aires, Argentina

• May - Da Nang, Vietnam / Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Jun - Talinn, Estonia

• Jul - Talinn, Estonia

• Aug - Talinn, Estonia

• Sep - ?

• Oct - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Nov - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Dec - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Jan 27 - Chiang Mai, Thailand

• Feb 27 - Chiang Mai, Thailand

The year starts in Chiang Mai, Thailand, my favorite destination as a digital nomad. November through February is the best time of the year to be in Chiang Mai.

After Thailand, it’s a toss up between Da Nang, Vietnam, a close and very affordable destination to Chiang Mai, or Buenos Aires, Argentina. I spent 3 months in Buenos Aires this year and loved it. March to May is a great time to be in Buenos Aires. It will come down to how things are going financially, and if I’m willing to travel around the world (literally) to spend 3 more months in Buenos Aires.

The one new location I’d like to visit in 2026 is Talinn, Estonia. I always have an issue during the peak summer months since Europe is too expensive, Asia is too hot, and it’s raining none stop in South America.

I’ve always wanted to visit Estonia and from what my research tells me, the weather is quite good there in June to August. Getting there shouldn’t be too bad from both Da Nang and Buenos Aires.

There is a questionmark about September since I can only spend 90 days in the EU and plan to finish the year back in Chiang Mai. Some options for that month include South Korea, Japan, Israel, Georgia, or Albania.

I plan on applying for Thailand’s DTV visa sometime before October. That visa was especially made for digital nomads. Those that have it can spend up to 6 months in Thailand each year. It is a 5 year visa.

The DTV visa will allow me to stay in Chiang Mai from Oct 26 all the way through to end of Feb 27.

The substack just passed 500 subscribers

Another nice milestone worth mentioning is the fact that Coffee + Revelation just passed 500 email subscribers.

The substack grew from 286 subscribers at the start of the year to 501 at the time of publishing this post. During the year I also gained a number of paying subscribers for the first time and have generated just over $500 from the substack.

I want to thank you for your ongoing support of the substack. I have no plans to stop publishing updates, lessons and other thoughts that enter my head while I continue “climbing the mountain” of entrepreneurship.

That’s it for now friends, I know this is a shorter, less interesting post than what you’re used to receiving from me.

I have some ideas for really cool, in depth posts I plan on writing and publishing early next year.

Be well, rest up and lets all get ready to crush 2026.

Justin

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I’ve been spending some time over the last few weeks working on my plans for 2026 and I’m ready to share them with you.

2025 has been a mixed bag of a year and I plan to do a very thorough review of the year which I’ll share with you in a post in January.

In this edition of Coffee + Revelation I’m going to go into a lot of detail on the following topics:

• My business goals for 2026

• Why exactly I’ve picked these goals

• The exact plan I’m going to execute on to achieve these goals

Get strapped in, this is going to be a long (but good) one.

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My business goals for 2026

Below is a list of my business goals for 2026:

• Pay myself a salary of $90k ($7.5k a month)

• Generate at least $100k in profit from services

• Generate at least $50k in “war chest” capital from the SaaS

• Make my 5^th SaaS acquisition (at least 5k MRR) [estimated at +-240k at 4X ARR]

To understand the goals above, you first need to understand the wealth creation model I’m leveraging.

The diagram above explains it quite well.

It starts with a holding company which owns online service businesses (“agencies”).

The service businesses generate profit which go into a “war chest” used by the holding company to acquire cash flowing, highly profitable SaaS. These SaaS in turn generate profit that goes into the “war chest” for additional acquisitions.

Since my first acquisition in Nov 2022, I’ve managed to grow revenue from SaaS to over $70k a year, compounding at 40% a year.

I’ll continue to leverage this approach in 2026.

Read more about my business entities, assets, etc in the post below.

So if I had to summarize my overall plan for 2026 it would be this:

Generate enough profit from the SaaS portfolio and agencies to fund a large acquisition by the end of 2026 of a SaaS doing at least $5k in MRR.

By the end of 2026 the current SaaS portfolio should be doing over $7k in MRR. Adding 5k in MRR from an acquisition would take total MRR to $12k or $144k in ARR. At this point I’d be 60% of the way to my long term goal of $20k in MRR.

So now that the overall plan is clear, lets look at each goal.

Pay myself a salary of $90k ($7.5k a month)

Over the last few years I’ve been paying myself between $40k and $60k a year which has been enough to support a comfortable lifestyle and monthly investments of $750 into the S&P 500 index.

A about 3 years ago I sat and calculated different salary breakdowns to better understand my breakeven point, and different comfort levels based on hypothetical salaries.

I calculated that a monthly salary of $7.5k would be a sweet spot. It would allow me to continue my current lifestyle as a digital nomad while providing a larger budget for entertainment, better accommodation, eating out, and enough left to grow my bank balance.

It’s about time I get my salary up to a point where I can build some personal runway to reduce stress and incrementally improve my lifestyle.

In 2026 this will be a priority, even if it means a slower build up of the “war chest”.

Generate at least $100k in profit from services

If the main goal is to acquire a 5k MRR SaaS before the end of 2026 then I will need sufficient capital to make that acquisition.

The cost to acquire a 5k MRR SaaS will be between $150k and $240k (2.5X to 4X ARR).

If we take the high end, we’ll need $240k which needs to come from profits, debt, or a combination of both.

Here is how I plan to finance a $240k acquisition before the end of 2026:

• 50k in profit from the existing SaaS portfolio

• 100k in profit from services conducted by the agencies (projectBI and Titan CX)

• 50k personal loan (I will withdraw 50k from personal investments and loan it to the business)

• 20k from the existing war chest (It’s currently at 11k and should be close to 20k before the end of the year).

• 20k in short term debt from Stripe / Mercury.

If we crush it on the agency side then I’ll have more profit and won’t need as much debt to make the acquisition.

To generate $100k in profit, projectBI and Titan CX will need to generate about $280k in revenue.

$280k - $90k (my salary) - $66k (other business expenses) = 130k

130k - tax (21%) = 102.7k

Right now projectBI, my eCom-focused analytics agency has 2 steady retainers generating +-$8k a month. I’m not sure how long these retainers will stick around but I’ve estimated that projectBI will generate about $60,000 in 2026.

This means that the new agency, Titan CX will need to bring in $220k in revenue or $18.3k a month.

Generate at least $50k in “war chest” capital from the SaaS

As I wrote above, I plan to finance $50k of the next SaaS acquisition using profits from the SaaS.

I estimate that the current SaaS portfolio will generate +-$80k in revenue in 2026 (based on a very conservative 10% year-over-year growth rate) but that’s before operating expenses, tax, seller finance loan payments and owner salary payments I might need to make to cover shortfalls from the agency.

I’m quite confident I’ll have at least $50k left from the SaaS after all deductions which will go towards the next acquisition.

Make my 5^th SaaS acquisition (at least 5k MRR) [estimated at +-240k at 4X ARR]

The final, and main goal in 2026 is to acquire a 5k MRR+ SaaS to add to the portfolio.

This acquisition will not only take the total MRR to 12k (60% of the goal of 20k MRR) but will also help differentiate the portfolio (most revenue today comes from 1 SaaS, Meet Slack), and be a “compounding machine”.

The biggest weakness with the current portfolio is that they are simple apps with very low conversion to paid. I can’t actively grow them with the profits they generate.

The next acquisition needs to be a B2B SaaS which I can actively grow using standard growth marketing best practices. I want to be able to reinvest in the app and increase the new MRR growth rate.

If I managed to take the app from $5k MRR to $10k MRR within 6 - 12 months, all the economics of the holding company will change and I’ll be close to hitting my goal of 20k MRR. This makes the next acquisition I make super critical.

Investing over $200k in a single acquisition will be risky but it’s the only way I can significantly increase the size of the “snowball” and ultimately get to the point where I’m playing this game at a scale which has the potential of reaching millions in revenue a year.

What if I come across a smaller deal that looks good before the end of 2026?

This is a legit question I’ve asked myself and the short answer is that I’ll just have to judge each opportunity on an individual basis.

At this stage I’ve made up my mind that I need to acquire a large SaaS to scale the holding company at a desirable pace. If I do come across a smaller deal along the way, it will have to blow my socks off.

Not only would the SaaS have to check all the boxes (low churn, B2B, built-in growth engine, etc) but I’d have to be convinced it has clear product market fit, is low risk and has major growth potential.

If it checks all those boxes, and I can afford the acquisition, I’ll move forward.

What if I come across a larger deal that I can’t afford with the cash I have in the bank?

If by the end of the year I come across a larger deal, say for example 8k MRR for $336k (96k ARR at 3.5X), I may try and negotiate a deal that includes using seller finance.

So in such a scenario I’d pay for example $200k up front, and pay off the rest over 18 - 30 months using revenue from the app.

This would be far more risky than buying a smaller app for all cash but I’ve seen some incredible deals in the last 8 months for $400k - $500k which I would have loved to add to my portfolio.

I’m ready to roll the dice and play this game at a different level.

The action plan

Now that I’ve laid out the goals for 2026 let me share my plans for achieving those goals.

The goals:

1. Pay myself a salary of $90k ($7.5k a month)

2. Generate at least $100k in profit from services

3. Generate at least $50k in “war chest” capital from the SaaS

4. Make my 5^th SaaS acquisition (at least 5k MRR) [estimated at +-240k at 4X ARR]

Firstly we can skip over goal #3 (50k from the SaaS portfolio) because the only inputs to hit this goal is to answer the occassional support ticket, sending an invoice once a month to Monday (as in Monday.com) and to not break anything. Supporting the SaaS portfolio takes me less than 2 hours a week.

The SaaS portfolio is extremely low maintenance and runs on autopilot.

Goals #1, #2 and #4 are all dependent on the success of the service businesses, projectBI and Titan CX.

As I previously wrote, I need to generate around $280k from services in 2026 in order to pay myself $90k and end up with $100k in profit for the “war chest”.

I’m confident that projectBI’s existing clients will generate at least $60k in 2026 which means Titan CX needs to bring in $220k.

Right now Titan CX doesn’t have any retainers so effectively we’ll need to bring in 220k in new business in 2026.

I estimate the average project for Titan CX to be around $8k. This means we need to complete 28 “rounds of work” for clients to hit $220k.

Most clients won’t need more than 1 round of work but some might rehire us. I don’t have enough data points to know the rehire rate but lets assume 10% do.

That means we’ll need to close around 25 new clients in 2026. Assuming a sales close rate of 70%, I’ll need 36 qualified leads. To be safe, lets round up to 50.

50 qualified leads doesn’t sound too bad, but as I’ve written many times before on this Substack, I’ve struggled with lead gen. I’ve touched on this challenge in more detail in the post below.

So what’s the plan to generate 50 qualified leads for Titan CX in 2026?

The marketing plan for Titan CX will comprise of 4 main parts.

1. Content marketing

2. The “Secret Referral Program”

3. World-class execution

4. Experimentation

I’m planning on publishing a dedicated post on my marketing strategy for Titan CX, so for now I’ll just touch on one of the 4 pillars, content marketing.

Content marketing

The content marketing strategy for Titan CX for 2026 is a deep topic but it could be summarized as follows:

• Launch a new SaaS-focused education brand named “SaaS Decoded”. Under this brand will be a Substack newsletter and YouTube channel.

• I will publish content to these new channels every week and promote them on LinkedIn and X (you can find me on X here).

• I will share lead magnets and other useful content on Intercom and Titan CX’s services to these channels to promote the agency.

• Some of the SaaS Decoded audience will be the right fit for Titan CX and engage with the lead magnets. I’ll nurture these leads and some will convert to clients.

The combination of long form, short form, a newsletter (ideal for capturing email addresses), lead magnets and email nurturing will act as a powerful, leveraged flywheel. As the audience grows, so will the exposure to new potential audiences, resulting in more and more leads.

YouTube and LinkedIn will be the main traffic engines (for getting exposure to new, potential audiences) while the Substack newsletter and pre-built email series will allow me to continue to engage with, and nurture, the more relevant agency leads.

I’m calling this approach the “wide net strategy”.

SaaS Decoded’s content will be aimed at SaaS founders and operators. Among the audience will be a some who use Intercom and are a good fit for Titan CX (the “blue” circles).

Others will really like SaaS Decoded and become paying subscribers of the substack (the “green”), and some might even reach out asking for help with non-Intercom related challenges (the “orange”).

There will also be members in the audience not yet using Intercom that might start using it.

I can create useful content for a broader audience (B2B SaaS in general) instead of only producing content on Intercom, and in the long run generate a larger audience which can be monetized in multiple ways.

This approach will also allow me to continue growing my SaaS expertise, connect with other SaaS experts and have more fun.

That’s it for this week friends, thanks for reading.

PS: If you are enjoying my posts, please consider hitting the share button below and sharing this post to your LinkedIn.

PSS: If this is the first post of mine you’ve read, you should consider subscribing to get my next post directly to your inbox. You should find the subscribe button at the top of the post on the right hand side.

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I hope you enjoy the video post above. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section below.

Enjoy and until next week.

Justin

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Earlier this week I boarded a plane and left the famous city of Buenos Aires after 10 wonderful weeks. I leave Argentina having eaten great meat, drank fantastic wine, and made a lot of great memories.

I was fortunate to meet some first class people in Argentina (shoutout to Agustin) who I now call friends.

I now find myself in the familiar city of Barcelona where I’ll be spending at least the next 4 weeks and more likely 6 to 8 as I take care of a long list of personal projects, including getting a new passport, and applying for Thailand’s digital nomad visa.

I’ll share more about my future travel plans in a later post, for now I want to focus on the mental game of entrepreneurship.

Remembering what I want, the best way to get it, and if it’s all worth it

The last few weeks have been rough.

There were more than a few days where I didn’t want to get out of bed and face the every growing to-do list.

Whenever I’m feeling depressed like this I turn to two types of “medicine”, talking with friends who are more experienced and smarter than me, and spending time in a coffee shop with some pens and paper.

I’ve found that one of the best remedies is to remind myself what I want, and then think through the paths to get what I want. This helps me push away my “monkey brain” and help me get back on track.

So what do I want?

I want a business empire that generates so much positive cash flow that I can start projects, have experiences, and help the world at a level I can only dream of today.

I want to get out of bed everyday excited to find new deals, work with a small group of killers and watch with a smile as the empire grows from strength to strength.

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I’m talking about millions of dollars a year in profit from multiple business units.

I want to get to this point owning all, or at least the vast majority of the business and without taking on excessive debt. I want a thriving, highly valuable, low risk holding company with multiple subsidiaries.

So if I had to put a number on it, lets say $10 million dollars in profit.

This year my businesses will do just over $300k in revenue at around 25% net profit margin (60k in profit). +-75k of the $300k will be from SaaS which is currently operating at a 52% net profit margin.

Assuming I can compound at 40% a year over the next 10 years:

• Year 0 - $300k

• Year 1 - $420k

• Year 2 - $588k

• Year 3 - $823k

• Year 4 - $1,152k

• Year 5 - $1,613k

• Year 6 - $2,258k

• Year 7 - $3,162k

• Year 8 - $4,427k

• Year 9 - $6,198k

• Year 10 - $8,677k

Assuming I can compound revenue at 40% a year, every year for the next 10 years, I’ll be sitting with a business empire that’s doing $8,677,000 in annual revenue.

Assuming most of that revenue is coming from SaaS, the profit margin will be significantly higher than 25% but lets be conservative and assume a 40% net profit margin, that’s +-$3.5M dollars.

$3.5M is not $10M but I don’t have to wait to reach $10M a year in profit to start working through my “wish list”.

However I slice it, it’s going to take many many years of compounding to turn my current business holdings into multi-7 figure behemoths.

This leads me to the next big question…

Am I willing to make the sacrifices needed to build my business empire?

Let’s look at another scenario.

In 2025 Hawkeye Ventures will generate +-$75k from the SaaS portfolio.

Without making another acquisition, I estimate 15% growth of the portfolio over the next 12 months.

This means by the end of 2026, I’ll have $86k in top-line revenue from the SaaS and over 40k in extra cash sitting in the bank account.

By this point I’ll be done paying the seller finance loan for my 3rd acquisition, Translate Channels leaving the business completely debt free.

So lets run some numbers.

$86k * 92% = 79k (gross profit)
79k - (12 X 1k) = 67k (net profit before tax)

If I wait just one more year I’ll be in a position to pay myself $5k a month from the SaaS portfolio ($5k X 12 = 60k) which is more or less equivilent to the salary I’ve paid myself the last 3 years. As a reminder, I spent 2 - 3 hours a week managing the SaaS portfolio.

I could technically close both agencies tomorrow, live off of the profits of the SaaS and some personal stock investments and essentially “retire”.

As the portfolio grows throughout 2026, I’d need to pull less from my investments.

On one hand I’m able to get rid of all the “pain” of grinding every week building my empire and get all my time back to spend on other things.

And on the other hand I see a path forward to continue to climb the mountain and reach my long term goals. This would give me the lifestyle and opportunities I can only dream of today.

My “monkey brain” says “enough is enough, you deserve to stop and experience ‘financial freedom’. My “ambitious brain” says, “you’re not there yet, keep on pushing, it will be worth it”.

Next month I’m turning 41 years old and even though I’m still healthy and relatively energetic, the question of “how much more am I willing to sacrifice” is weighing on me more and more. Even if I reach my business goals, will I have enough time to “taste the fruit of my labor”?

Thankfully, I believe I have a solution to my dilemma.

Mental frameworks that will help guide me forward

There are 3 mental frameworks that I’ve adopted to help me deal with this dilemma.

Mental Framework #1 - You only live once

We all know this one (unless you believe in reincarnation) so I’m not going to spend much time on it.

This framework makes the decision very clear. I’ve got to go after it and aim for the moon. Even if I only get a tenth of the way “up the mountain”, it will still be a better outcome for me than if I stop now or in 12 months time.

I’ll have my time back and I’m sure I’ll be happy if I stopped now but will it last and how will I deal with the guilt of not believing in myself and going for it.

Even if I go after it and completely fail, burn out, go broke and wake up one day in 20 years with nothing, at least I can tell myself that I went after it.

Mental Framework #2 - Slow and steady wins the race

Since building a business empire is a “never ending game”, its like a marathon, it requires patience and endurance.

As I demonstrated above, even at a high consistent compounding rate, it will take more than a decade until I see massive amounts of cash flow.

I’ve got to stay in the race long enough to let the compounding work.

So step 1 is accepting that extreme patience and consistent output is required. Step 2 is to set up my life to support this reality.

Since business has ups and downs, I can’t tie my mood, energy level and overall happiness to the business. I’ve been doing this for years and its very unhealthy.

I need a more balanced approach to how I live my life so when things are negative in the business, the impacted on my overall happiness is minimal.

To help me make this significant change, moving forward the items below will be a priority.

• Limit “work” to 4 hours a day, Monday through Thursday. No work on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays.

• Make time during the week to write a post for this Substack.

• Have an adventure at least once a week.

I define “work” as spending time on tasks which are important to move the business forward but aren’t fun, energizing or mentally stimulating. There are parts of the job which I do enjoy and don’t include those in the 4 hours a day.

Today I have the bad habit of being in front of the compute 6 - 10 hours a day but only really getting 1 - 3 hours of actual work done. Since I don’t have a balanced approach to life, work just fills the hours.

I know from experience that when I’m focused and give it my all, 4 dedicated hours a day is more than enough to move the business forward.

I enjoy writing for this Substack and want to make sure its a priority. My new approach of limiting work to 4 hours a day will give me the space to write more consistently.

And lastly, take advantage of the fact I’m a digital nomad and living in insanely cool and interesting cities and have an adventure once a week. This could mean visiting a coffee shop on the other side of town, or going to a concert. It could mean joining a chess club, or going on a bike tour of the city. Anything to get me out of the Airbnb.

Mental Framework #3 - Prioritize my financial security

The third and final framework is for me to prioritize my financial security.

In short, this means prioritizing my target salary of $7.5k a month before building a war chest, or any other investment into the business.

I’ve done some calculations over the years and I worked out that based on my current lifestyle, earning $7.5k would be the ideal amount.

My breakeven is around $4.5k so $7.5k is enough for me to elevant my lifestyle quite a bit while earning enough to build a significant personal cash cushion.

I won’t be in a position to fly first class, or rent a penthouse suite but it will allow me to stay in better airbnbs, eat out more frequently and have more of a budget for adventures.

Even though I like the idea of investing back into the business as much as possible, I still need to pay myself enough to feel comfortable, even if this means slower growth for the business.

At $5k a month, I’m often stressing about running out of cash and its a feeling I don’t want to deal with anymore.

The combination of earning $7.5k a month and limiting myself to 4 hours a day of “work” will be enough to take my entire lifestyle to a different level. This change will give me the mental and physical energy to continue climbing the mountain as I inch closer to where I want to be.

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading.

Best,

Justin

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