Bootstrapping a SaaS boilerplate to $25k MRR with Kyle Gawley from Gravity

Jack: Hi everyone. You are listening to Scaling Devs, the show that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. I'm joined today by Kyle Gawley, who is the founder of Gravity, which is a boiler plate for getting your SAS project off the ground. Kyle, thanks so much for.

Kyle: No problem. Pleasure. Thank you for the, for the invite.

Jack: Could you tell us a little bit about Gravity?

Kyle: Yeah, sure. So Gravity is a SaaS Software is a service boiler plate, that helps developers launch products faster and get to market faster. So it has a lot of, features that people need, like payments authentication, user interface, email, uh, all of those things pre-built and included, so they can just focus on the features that are unique to their product.

Jack: It's so cool. And I, I've used boiler plates previously and I think it's like the last thing you want to do is when you're starting a new project is get bogged down and stripe and setting up logins and stuff. So it's really cool and it seems like you're doing really.

Kyle: Yeah, it's, it's been an incredible journey and it, it kind of just started as a happy accident, but it's, it's really exploded in the last, two years.

Jack: I heard that you started out and you got maybe five sales or so in like the first couple months, and now you're on like $25,000 MRR as an indie hacker. What happened in between?

Kyle: Basically, I, built it to scratch my own itch. I wanted a boiler plate so I could launch my own ideas faster. And then I met a guy in a, in a coworking space here, and he, he showed me, Competitors in other languages, like Bullet Train is the big Ruby on Rails one. And then I was like, wow, people are paying a lot of money for a product like this.

And he was like, yeah, man, like you, you should totally like just go and throw this on Indie Hackers and try and sell it. And I was like, what's Indie Hackers? And then he showed me the farm. I was like, wow. So I built like a crude prototype. I branded it. I put like, A very crude landing page together.

And then I just, I just put it on Indie Hackers for $99 was the first price point. And then I sold three copies, I think in the first month, and then basically launched it in September. And then by the end of the year, I sold five copies of it in the, in the final quarter for 99 bucks each. And I was like, whoa.

Jack: Yeah. That must have been an amazing feeling.

Kyle: Yeah, it was, it was completely unexpected cuz my actual intention was to build a boiler plate to help me build more products. But it actually turned out that the boiler plate became the, product.

Jack: One of the things that I consider a lot when I was looking at boiler plates was that you really have to have like a lot of trust cuz it's something that you're buying, that you don't necessarily know exactly what the code's gonna look like and you're gonna build your whole startup on the basis of this boiler plate. is that something that you fought a lot about?

Kyle: Yeah. this is a great question cuz this is the most important part of my, my sales process cuz the product is, there's two things. The product is, is very a very high price point. And also because of the nature of the product being downloadable code.

I can't offer refunds because, or I can't, I can't give people a trial. You know, you can't download the code and try light and then decide you don't like it. Cuz then those people have got the, they've got the code base and there's no way for me to then say, okay, you can, you, you know, not gonna have access to this.

So I have a no refund policy because of that. And this is a barrier for some people. So the only way to overcome that barrier is for me to like create a lot of trust so that, People don't feel that that is an issue

Jack: Yeah, and could you talk a little bit about how you create that trust?

Kyle: There's a couple of different ways that I do it. I asked my customers in Slack today. Um, you know, what was the, the main thing for them? Uh, so one of the things, uh, that one of my customers, Randall Kish said that was really important was the number. I have on the website the number of other businesses and developers that are, that are using Gravity.

So I have like a little live ticker on there. Every time there's a sale, the number goes up. So, for her that provided some social proof. I, I also have that alongside testimonials with, other people. So when I have her testimonial on there, I have a testimonial from, Brad Bitler, who was actually, he, he is a designer at Apple and he bought Gravity to spin up a side product.

And I have a testimonial on there where he's like, comparing me to engineers at Apple, which I think like is, is a huge, like, credibility boost for me. Another customer today on Slack said that the trust pilot. A huge component of that. Having those third party reviews or reviews that are not on my site.

You know, they're being written by customers, but they're written on something like Trust Pilot, where I have no control over it because. Not that I do this, but obviously you can just put any testimonial you like on your website. And there's probably some shady businesses that do this. So I also have the trust palette, link on there as well, so people can go to trust palette and they can see independent reviews and verification on there.

I also think another part of my strategy is, my Twitter profile. So I'm, I'm on Twitter every day. I see that as me. Accountable. So, you know, if someone's skeptical about who's behind this, who am I? Am I even a developer? Do I know what I'm talking about? You know, they, they can click on the Twitter link on my website.

They can go to Twitter, they can see I'm on Twitter every day. I'm, talking about building products with JavaScript. Right now, I'm, I'm tweeting like crazy about an AI product that I'm building, that I'm building with my. Boiler plate. Um, so I think that is like, that also creates trust. A lot of my customers follow me on Twitter or connected with me on Twitter or, you know, they first, their first touchpoint was maybe, you know, coming across my Twitter profile and then seeing what I was working on.

Jack: A lot of that is the trust that you are like a legitimate business and that you're like some, someone to be trusted. And then I think for developers there's also this kind of like technical trust that they want to build up. And, , kind of wonder if you talk a little bit about how you, you build that trust, that they trust that your code is gonna be good and that it's gonna be, you know, something that's scalable and, built well.

Kyle: Yeah, and this is a tricky one, and a few people said in Slack today that this, even with all of the trust, that there was still a little bit of risk. Not necessarily, I don't think they think that the code is gonna be complete garbage, but maybe they think it's not gonna be structured in a way that is suitable for them.

The code is structured in a very standardized way, uh, with an API model view controller. So it's, it has wide appeals. There's obviously some opinionated choices in there in terms of the technology. Technology choices. I think like one really good way that I I find that I've, uh, reduced this perceived risk is I made a video years ago.

It's actually, it's actually done quite well on YouTube, called the Architecture of a modern JavaScript SaaS application, where for 20 minutes I basically just show the code base of gravity. Uh, I talk about how the API works, how the client is structured, how the models and controllers work, and I, I'm basically.

I'm talking through how the typical application is structured and I'm showing the code. So if anybody ever asks me like, can I see a bit of the code, I, I can just send them that video cuz sometimes they expect a screenshot and then when I show them that video and they can actually sit down and they can hear me talking about it and

they can understand why I've made certain decisions. I find that that's a very good tool in helping them to reduce the, the risk in their mind that, you know, maybe that the code could potentially be just garbage and it's not using any standardized structure or patterns.

Jack: And I guess there's also a channel as well, YouTube, where people can actually hear about you for the first time.

Kyle: I really should be putting more time and energy into it.

Jack: I mean, you're an indie hacker. You have so many different [00:08:00] things to do. I actually like. Brings a song quite nicely to like, how do you spend your time in terms of marketing? You've mentioned Twitter, you've mentioned YouTube.

Kyle: I think, well, it depends what I'm doing. Like I, I, I'm on Twitter every day. YouTube. I, I should, I don't really have a routine for YouTube. I have a routine written out, but I'm, I'm not, I'm not really executing on it too well. But Twitter, I'm very strict with, I'm always on Twitter every day. I'm thinking about the strategy and the content, and I'm very, I'm very disciplined, um, with it.

But in my, for me, Twitter is much easier because YouTube. It's a lot more complicated. It's a lot more complicated when traveling to bring the gear around and get the lighting and all of these different, components. I mean, I'm marketing daily on Twitter. I, I tend to, I tend to go through periods where I'm gonna working on a new project.

So over the summer that was working on my course. Um, and then I'm very intensely focused on product. And then once I've finished that, then I was very intensely focused on marketing for, a couple of months. And then I'm experimenting with ai, but I think the key is trying to. The two are very tightly coupled.

So me building stuff is also marketing. Even though I'm playing around with this, these AI projects at the minute, it produces content for me to tweet about it. And I'm also tweeting alone promoting the AI product. I'm also promoting my boiler plate because this is a product built with my boiler plate. I try and think about all of these things and make sure they're, they're some how interconnected. So if I am going to build something and I'm going to build something for just the fun of it, I have to be able to utilise it in some way for, for marketing or building in public and, and not just, just as a hobby, if that makes sense.

Jack: Have you thought much about like how people kind of see your tweet about an AI project that you're building and then somehow some stuff happens in between and then they end up buying gravity. Have you thought much about what happens in between that

Kyle: Yes, I've thought about it more today because another thing that physically, all of the customers that respond to me on Slack said that one of the other things that really helped them in their decision was that I have a really good demo application online. So, although you can see the code, you can go and see the actual application that you're gonna get, and you can see that it's, it's high quality.

Now, what I'm doing with the AI may or may not support this because, I'm taking a very scrappy approach with this product. I'm just, I'm shipping like a new feature every day and it doesn't look, perfect. Like the gravity demo that I have looks perfect, it looks beautiful.

Everything's very well considered. Whereas now I'm just like, I'm shipping stuff every day and the UI is maybe a wee bit messy. but I don't know. I think that the people that buy the boiler. Will understand exactly what's, what's happening. You know, they're following me on Twitter and they, they know I'm being scrappy.

They know why I'm being scrappy,

because I'm, I'm, just trying to get stuff out there and, and validate it. If they're really interested in buying the boiler print, I assume they're gonna go and look at the demo and see. Okay. You know, this, this looks good, and maybe the AI product does look good. My standards are just so high.

If I, if I ship something and I just like, it's a wee bit, the UIs not completely perfect, then I'll be like, oh, this is, this is just a complete mess. But actually it's, it's probably pretty good.

Jack: And do you find that people specifically have something they're solving or is it like they hear about gravity and they're like, oh yeah, I, I should just use that

Kyle: They all have something that they want. I would say maybe 80, 90% of them have a very specific product in mind, and they're about to start work on it, and then they pull the trigger. I would say it's maybe around probably between five and 10%.

People buy it for educational purposes, so they maybe don't have a product in mind, but they want to use it as a learning tool to see how a product is created. So then we do, they do create a. They know exactly how it should be structured and how to, how to execute it.

Jack: Yeah, that makes sense. So the majority have a specific goal in mind.

Kyle: Yeah. Cuz I think because it's such a high price point, it's, it's not the kind of product that many, many people are gonna buy just to, just to kind of tinker around with, I think that they have a very set idea of what they're gonna create and how they're gonna monetize it and what the business model should.

Jack: And you mentioned previously that you've done quite a bit of SEO as well, and I can imagine that ties in fairly well.

Kyle: That was also a happy accident at the start because whenever I started this, there was no other, no js. Boiler plate. So I was able to get ranking for those keyboards very quickly. And then over the years, I've, invested more and more in just fine tuning the site, optimizing the site, to make it perform better.

Jack: Do you have any kind of tips on for that people might take if they're trying to do like all the SEO on their own?

Kyle: I think the best tip I can give is one of my Twitter friends, Roberto. Uh, he's, he's always sharing like amazing SEO content. I, I can give you his Twitter handle.

Jack: Has he got a cat in his picture?

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz this product is called Cat, is Cat Links, which is my next tip get cat links because it's like a, there are SEO tools out there, but they're very expensive and, you know, most in the hackers aren't gonna pay a hundred bucks a month for, things like Sam Rush.

So Cat Links I think starts at nine or $15. Per month and it's very affordable and it does a lot of great stuff. So I use that for auditing my pages, tracking back links. It also suggests where to get back links and stuff. So I, I found that quite useful cuz the backlink suggestion thing, I went on the whole bunch of different sites that it suggested and submitted gravity and I actually find that, Beneficial cause I didn't know to, to do those things.

So I would recommend that. And he has a newsletter as well called Rank Makers, he's just constantly sharing good SEO advice, tailored for IND hackers, and then he has a SaaS product for, for those people to, implement that and manage it themselves.

Jack: I think it's the second time someone's mentioned catling something that we've we've spoken a lot about trust, and that you've kind of built that over time by just. Engaging people with people, and , building a high quality product, having testimonials and people that are passionate, it feels like that is like a really great way to do it. , and here's like kind of a curve question. I know previously you've raised money with a former start up. And we were talking about this, that were like, if you were pitching this kind of marketing approach to like your investors and saying, you know, we're gonna be really active on Twitter.

We're gonna, just do a really good job in the community and, and stuff like that. It's kind of maybe like not super exciting approach and I just wondered if you. If you had money, like tons of money and you had to spend it, if there is anything that you would spend it on or if you would just carry on doing more and more of what you're already doing.

Kyle: I think if I was gonna do it, I would invest in, content, I would produce a lot more video content, a lot more blog posts, and then I would focus on, you know, trying to reap the seo, benefits from that. Paid advertising, not so much because developers don't respond well to paid advertising.

I mean, most of them have ad blockers and they have the ads switched off. And I've done, I've done kind of this experiments, I've experimented with Facebook ads, red ads, carbon ads, and I just find like, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work at all. And the conclusion I came to is that developers they're either not seeing the ads or when they do see them, they're not.

Interested. But what content in community I think is very interesting to them and they, and they do respond well to that because, I mean, the building public and the Indie hacker community on Twitter and sites like Indie Hackers is, massive. And like you can go on those sites every day and you can see the same people, engaging and, proactive.

So I think that being a part of that community is essential.

Jack: Yeah, so just doing the kind of like hard, gritty work.

Kyle: From a VCE perspective, I can see where it may become problematic because. There's an argument to be made that I'm doing all this under my own Twitter profile. I'm, I'm building my personal brand. Obviously, my personal brand is very heavily coupled with my, my products.

And, and that's fine as an indie hacker for a vc. Maybe, maybe they won't see it the same way and they just look like, well, you're just promoting yourself, Kyle, you know, you're not really, promoting the business. But, but I don't know, because I think even for VCE funded startups and big, big corporations, having an actual real human being at the face of it, or, or many human beings, um, like who are public facing is really powerful versus just some anonymous.

Kind because people want to engage with humans. They wanna talk with humans, they want to interact with humans on Twitter. They don't want to interact with,just like, you know, branded accounts.

Jack: Have you ever tried doing like Gravity as like its own kind of marketing channel on Twitter and stuff?

Kyle: No, I did experiment with some other products, um, that I was building on the side a few years ago. I just decided it was just, it was just way too much hassle

because it's hard enough to just focus on my own profile and build my own profile. Then you have all these other profiles that like, have like 10 followers and then you're thinking about how to, how to grow those and manage those.

And, because I would served in different markets, it was just a lot of hassle and it was complicated. So then I just decided to focus on the kind of, one Niche. I just do it all under my, personal profile. I think it also kind of de-risks the business in a way because if a product fails, you still have an audience.

You still have an asset, and then you can use that asset to launch and monetise something else.

Jack: Kyle, here's a fun one. What do you think people sometimes do badly when selling to develop?

Kyle: Okay, this, this is an easy one to answer because my Twitter dms are just full of just random messages every day from people that I've never seen before in my life who don't even follow me. I've never engaged with me or interacted with me trying to sell me. Some product, oftentimes the product is not even is relevant.

Sometimes it's loosely relevant. And I, I see this all the time, and developers, they hate this more than anyone else. Just cold sales in the first message. It's so bad that if you want to sell well to people, it's actually really easy because everyone else is so bad at it if you just do it right, like if you just get like, even slightly, right, you're gonna stand out against all these other people.

So if someone is like, follow me on Twitter, they're responding to some tweets or they're, they're engaging with me publicly and I know who they are, and then they launch a. And then they ask me to check it out, or it's something I may purchase or they ask for some, like support on product on, then I'm much more likely to do it.

And I, I think everyone just wants the quick fix of like, I'm just gonna, like, I'm just gonna spray and pray a whole bunch of people on Twitter and hope that someone buys it because it's fast and it's easy. They probably automated it. They don't want to invest the time into the long term strategy of building relationships, uh, like And then at some point you're gonna ask for something back. But when you're putting like value and you're building connections and relationships, then you ask for something like, it's a no brainer. And a good example of this is like, de be the, everyone knows him is the mean guy, the mean guy on Twitter, you know, he's been putting that great content for, for years.

And I've interacted with him many times on Twitter and he recently launched his course. I looked at the landing page, you know, a couple bits of copy spoke to me. I was like, yeah, this is a problem I have. I'm instant purchase. You know, I didn't have any resistance because I know him. I've interacted with him a lot on Twitter.

I have a relationship with him. I've seen his Twitter. I, uh, I kind of grow massively. So it was, it was just an absolute no brainer. But if somebody just landed my dms trying to sell me that product, I'd never seen them before in my life. Would I purchase it? Maybe if the landing page was extremely good, but it's a very, very, very hard sell versus just investing in building solid relationships.

Jack: Yeah, that's really true. I think I'm really easy to impress on Twitter, like someone compliments like an I love you.

Kyle: Yeah, someone just does one thing's, not trying to sell you something. They just want to, they just wanna like, give you some support or value, or they're just, they're just interested in even one tweet and they've made the effort to interact with you. It's massive because most people don't do it.

They just wanna spam you with some DM that you know, they never, they don't even follow you. They don't even know like what, what it is you do. And here they are trying to sell you their product.

Jack: One final question, Kyle, what do you see the future of gravity

Kyle: Good question. I recently pre-launched the course and I finished the course. I've still to do the full course launch, and I did that because, Kind of divided developers into two camps. There's, there's the entrepreneurial developers that, uh, they just wanna save time and they will happily just spend $900 on a boil plate and save in the hassle.

There's people that just wanna do it themselves and they don't wanna pay for anything. But then there's people that wanna do it themselves and they don't know how to, Um, but they will pay to learn how to do it. So that's why I created the course.

So now I. Two products for the same audience, and those products are, are tightly coupled. Um, I think like my strategy going forward is to find other products that will come under the gravity. Umbrella that I'm not a hundred percent sure what those products will be yet, but I just want to be really laser focused on that Indie hacker technical developer niche, and build tools and products for those people.

But I'm also very cautious about it because I don't want to just start loads of things that. Fail to get traction and, and, go nowhere. I do try and spend most of my time focus on the boil plate and the course and, and improve what's working and, and marketing those existing products. I pre-sold it in June, and

then I finished the course in September. But I haven't done the full launch yet for a couple of reasons, just because of the issues with the Twitter algorithm and

like economic reasons. I've kind of held off on doing the full, proper launch.

But the course is made, the course is live on my site. It's selling every month,

but I, I need to do the proper, full, big, official launch.

Jack: That course sounds amazing. I'm definitely gonna check that one out. We'll put a link to that in the, description.

Kyle, thanks so much for joining. It's really, really interesting. I think Gravity is a really cool product. And I'm excited to see what else you're gonna build in the future as well.

Kyle: it's probably gonna be something to do with AI images.

Jack: So AI images, we will, uh, will stay tuned. Where can people learn more about Kyle and about Gravity and about your AI images, startups.

Kyle: My Gravity website is use gravity.app. But the best place to find out about me and what I'm working on is my Twitter, which is just my name at Kyle. Golly. I'm on there every day tweeting. Anything that I'm doing to tweet about it on Twitter at the minute, I'm experimenting with, , an AI graphics startup, which is AI graphics.io.

I'm not really sure what that product is going to be. I just started working on it as an experiment to teach myself ai, but now I've got some users, not some people are paying for it. So I'm starting to treat it a little bit more seriously than I I was when I started out, but I'm still trying to figure out.

What that product should be and what the, what the product market fit is. But I, I'm, I'm documenting that whole journey on Twitter, every single day.

Jack: That's amazing. That's a great resource to learn from.

Thanks Kyle, and thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you again next week.