Jon is the founder of Supastarter, a SaaS StarterKit/Boilerplate for developers to save time on launching an MVP
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Hey Jon, Tell us more about what you are working on
Supastarter is a starter kit (some also call it a boilerplate) for SaaS applications that essentially helps you start a SaaS really fast as it has all the common functionality of a SaaS (like authentication, billing, i18n, landing page, etc.) already baked in and also provides you with a scalable and production-ready stack to ship an MVP really fast that can scale to millions of users.
It was made for developers and technical founders who want to launch a product and save time. This is especially helpful for solo founders who often times start things as a side project and don’t have the time to do all the research and core functionality but rather want to focus on the core features of their specific business.
Unlike other starter kits/boilerplates, supastarter is built from the ground up to be production-ready and scalable. It also doesn’t rely on a platform like Supabase or Firebase like some other alternatives, which allows you to choose your preferred tools and does not lock you in with any provider. Beyond that, supastarter comes with a lot more functionality than most other boilerplates and is the result of 3 years of customer feedback and iteration.
Tell us More about your background, and how you came up with the idea of SupaStarter
I am a fullstack developer from Germany, who has been working in web development for the past 10 years in both small startups and large enterprises. I also run a side business where I do development freelance work for clients.
Supastarter was created as a solution to my own problem which was me finding myself writing the same functionality over and over again when starting new client projects. I built a small starter kit for my own projects and then realized that this might be helpful for other developers too, as it was based on a very common and popular stack. So I started offering the code online and started to grow the product from there.
How did you get your first Customers for SupaStarter?
To be honest, I didn’t really check the market fit or anything and just published a website with the purchase link, then shared the website on X (which was still Twitter at that time). From there it grew organically.
There was no real strategy in the beginning to acquire customers. There was just one sunday afternoon (a week after I posted the link on Twitter) where I suddenly got an email from Stripe telling me someone purchased my product.
In terms of traffic Twitter/X worked from the beginning and is still the best source of traffic though the is a notable amount of traffic coming from other sources nowadays like Google, Reddit and many of the boilerplate directory sites.
I believe the main reason we grew our credibility was the fact that I offered extensive support on the supastarter discord server from the start. I actually hoped on video calls with some customers to solve their bugs and this made them speak positively about me and the product on social networks.
I also offer some discounts now and then (like a black friday deal), but there is no free trial.
What Marketing Channels are working for you now?
I am mostly utilizing X as a marketing channel. I also sponsor some newsletters and directories.
I’m not really sure which channels are most effective to target to find my target audience. I still have a lot of potential to grow in this regard.
How is your business doing now?
We’ve been operating for almost exactly three years now. We have over 450 developers using supastarter today and the number is growing quickly. In recent months we have an average of one sale per day and about $10k revenue per month with a total now of $100k+ (after three years).
The business has grown organically from taking 3 months to get to the first $1k to now over $10k per month.
The market for boilerplates has become very crowded so there is a lot more competition than there was in the beginning. Also with more competition the expectations for quality and features as increased, so we need to keep up with the pulse of time.
To combat this, we are currently working on versions for other frameworks like SvelteKit and Angular to bring the same powerful features to a broader range of developers and founders.
I hope to be able to keep the slow but constant growth from the last years to grow it into a business I can live off.
What has been your biggest achievement in business thus far?
The biggest achievement so far was crossing $100k revenue. It’s a number I would have never dreamed of and it felt incredibly good to reach that.
There was no concrete goal in mind, but having a six-digit revenue after 2 years of work and getting to $10k revenue each month feels like I have made it with this project as I could actually live off of that.
The key factors to get there were consistency and listening to customer feedback. The starter kit has been rewritten completely once and since then optimized and extended by new features every few weeks based on what customers need.
Getting to $100k motivated me even more to keep building and growing this product and help even more developers to start their SaaS easier and faster.
What were the worst mistakes you’ve made since launching?
I think the biggest mistake I made was selling for a far too small price in the beginning. I started with $49 and increased slowly increased it to $299. In hindsight I should have at least started at $199 as the perceived value is a lot higher and the customers I got since selling for that price (or more) are a lot less needy for support.
When I started this project I wasn’t sure if people would even pay the $49 for this starter kit which made me target the wrong customers.
I learned that a higher price results in a higher perception of quality and value. Of course increasing the price will reduce the target group, so you need to find the sweet spot between a higher price and less sales. For supastarter this is $299 right now.
What Tech Stacks are currently available for SupaStarter?
Supastarter is available in two versions currently. One based on Next.js and the other on Nuxt. Both come with a dedicated API layer that uses Prisma as the ORM and tRPC as the api framework.
The current stack resulted from customer feedback who wanted a scalable, production-ready stack that is as flexible as possible. With the tools we picked, you can use multiple databases and services and thanks to the dedicated API layer you are able to easily add further apps like a mobile app to the project and reuse all your data and backend logic.
The real strength of supastarter that makes it stand out from the competition is the architecture that is scalable and production-ready and not just made for building MVPs like other boilerplates. In addition to that it’s one of the most flexible starter kits and allows you to choose the services that work best for you.
We are constantly updating our starter kits to stay up to date with the latest technologies and also add new features. Recently we have for example added multi-language mail templates and a more detailed form validation logic. You can read all the latest updates on our changelog page.
Note: while publishing this interview, SupaStarter is now available for Svelte aswell
What advice would you give to new entrepreneurs?
Whatever you build, it’s often times more valuable than you think, but you need to find the people who’s problem you are really solving. Make sure to get customer feedback as early as possible and build what customers actually need, not what you think they do.
What resources do you recommend for entrepreneurs?
I can highly recommend the following podcasts, which I am listening to regularly too: The Bootstrapped Founder, The SaaS Podcast and Startups for the rest of us.
The only community I am really active in is the #buildinpublic community on X. All the people there are incredibly creative and I am really thankful for all the great feedback they gave me and also supported me while building supastarter to where it is right now.
Lastly, Where can we learn more about you?
You can follow me on X where I share a lot about my daily life as an indie hacker and web developer.
