Baretto (tiny.host)⚡
@_baretto
Solo founder building @tiinyhost 🏗 | $500k+ ARR 📈 | Member of @RamenClubHQ 🍜 | Sharing my journey along the way 🚀 💻💂
41,000 new users signed up for Tiiny in July 🤯 ...and thousands in MRR 💸 But how did we acquire our first customers? Here are some key lessons I learned early on... A thread 🧵
Unpopular opinion: Most founders would rather redesign the homepage than write a cold DM.
Rejected by YC. Solo-founded, bootstrapped. Competing against million-dollar startups. Just $70 MRR in the first year. That’s how Tiiny started. Still I kept trying. And after 4 years of constant shipping, it’s now a $500K ARR startup 🙌 Keep shipping.
Tiiny's MVP: No login. No payments. Uploads took 15+ mins. Still launched. Now it’s a $500K ARR SaaS. Perfect is the enemy of shipping.
Unpopular opinion: SEO + YouTube eats every other distribution channel for breakfast.
Genuinely marketing at its finest. Indie hackers take note.
Thank you for your interest in Astronomer.
Building a SaaS in 2025? Ask yourself: what’s your goal? Want to build something sexy? Chase unique ideas. Want to build something profitable? Build on a validated idea. Validated idea >>> Reinventing the wheel
Another banger last night 🔥
Co-hosting the largest monthly Indie Hacker meet up in the world tonight 💸 We're nearly 150 strong tonight 💪🤯 @IndieBeers
Reminder: Your startup doesn't fail because you build too few features. It fails because you build too many (and take distribution out of the equation).
Co-hosting the largest monthly Indie Hacker meet up in the world tonight 💸 We're nearly 150 strong tonight 💪🤯 @IndieBeers
Average Indie Hacker marketing: - Product Hunt launch - Spamming their product under every post on Twitter - Building in public (with 17 followers) - AI-written blogs The hack they’re missing: - High-quality handwritten SEO articles - YouTube
$0 marketing channels I use to compete against VC-backed million-dollar startups: - Reddit - Email - SEO - YouTube - IndieHackers - Slack communities - Twitter
The biggest risk is not taking any risks. Right after college, I got a job at JP Morgan. Everyone thought I had made it. But I risked it all to ship software. They thought I was crazy. Not anymore I guess 🙌
My first 4 startups failed. But it taught me to: Build less. Market more. Listen more. Then I launched Tiiny. Now it’s a $500K+ ARR SaaS.
Love seeing long games like this. 6 years before the rocket started to lift off and 8 till destination set to MOON.
not sure how you see a chart like this then just continue living your life
You don't need to build the best SaaS. You just need: - A simple UI - Clear copy - A channel to reach users Most people miss the last one.
YouTube really is another patience game. Video which now has 76k views got only 54 views in the first 30 days 🤯
Another year's renewal of X Premium - is it worth it? 🤔
