Niche SaaS: Bar Surveys to $2M ARR Leasing Platform

Steve Carroll sent his co-founder into New York bars to ask strangers how they paid their rent. Some women thought it was a pickup line - until they saw the Typeform survey. That scrappy approach got them 1,000 survey results and enough conviction to build a niche SaaS product for the rental market. In this episode, Steve reveals how Findigs pivoted from a consumer rent payments app to a B2B niche SaaS leasing platform after brand partners kept asking for access to renters at the point of move-in. That shift to vertical SaaS, combined with an ML-powered tenant screening engine, helped Findigs reach $2M ARR with just 12 people serving 60,000 units. Carroll's journey from consumer payments to industry-specific SaaS proves that the best niche SaaS ideas come from listening to adjacent stakeholders, not just your core users. Findigs differentiated in a crowded vertical software market by integrating alongside existing tools instead of replacing them. Key Lessons 🎯 Validate with niche SaaS customers, not just users: Carroll's bar surveys showed consumer demand, but the real business insight came from calling landlords already receiving Findigs payments - revealing the leasing pain point that became their core product. 📉 Onboarding mismatches kill niche SaaS retention: Findigs signed diverse customer profiles before supporting their workflows, creating manual workarounds that end users resented - proving that decision-maker enthusiasm does not equal user adoption. 🔄 Listen to adjacent stakeholders for pivot signals: Brand partners told Carroll renters are most valuable at move-in, not after. That feedback from outside the core user base triggered the pivot from payments to leasing. 🤝 Warm outbound beats cold outbound in niche SaaS sales: Findigs' first B2B customers were landlords they already paid rent to, turning cold calls into warm conversations with a built-in touchpoint. 🛠️ Avoid rip-and-replace to shorten sales cycles: Findigs integrates alongside existing software instead of replacing it, reducing sales cycles from months to weeks - critical in a market with entrenched incumbents. Chapters Introduction Steve's background on Wall Street and restaurant tech What Findigs does and the problem it solves Business size: $2M ARR, 12 people, 60,000 units How the idea came from renting in New York City Starting with rent payments as the first product Getting started with funding from a Wall Street contact Bar surveys: collecting 1,000 results in New York How Keith met his girlfriend doing customer research Shipping the first product in five months Getting 400 payments in the first month with no marketing Why the service was free and 75% of users tipped Pivoting to B2B niche SaaS after brand partner feedback Understanding the leasing pain point for landlords Six months of research before building the new product Early product mistakes: shipping before workflows were ready Getting attention in a crowded market Outbound sales: posing as renters to find leads Differentiating with ML-powered underwriting Usage-based pricing model Sales cycle measured in weeks, not months Lightning round Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/290 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email