Marc Petersen

7-digit SaaS Exit in 2018 |
Building
(User Tracking) +
(AI Support Hub) +
(Nonprofit CRM)

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

Early Stage Founder Rule #1: Build trust before revenue.

Show your face. Share your journey. Let people cheer for you before they buy from you. 👀💙

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

Our donation widget is integrated on the website of our newest NGO client. From registration to go-live in less than 24 hours—the second time this week! 😎

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

Took a day off yesterday for Christmas stuff. Raisenext didn’t.

Another nonprofit registered after lunch! 🥂

We connected directly through live chat.

The customer found a few bugs and a missing feature.

My co-founder jumped on an immediate night shift—like last Friday—to get it all live.

Customer is happy.
Product is stronger.

That’s how we try do it with every single customer.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

My approach to great onboarding:

The best improvements don’t come from UX theory.
They come from watching users fail,
then talking to them,
then fixing exactly what they didn’t understand.

I’m doing this on purpose…
I hope I’m right.

Now back to coding and improving one onboarding issue I just discovered—this time, something I experienced myself when using a new tool for the first time 😜

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@PashaBorsai Happy to check it out. Send me the link :-)

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@PashaBorsai Welcome to the club 😅

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@zilvestro For me, Cursor is an IDE.
Claude Code is not. I use Claude in the terminal of my IntelliJ Idea IDE

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

It's one of those days that makes all the hard work worthwhile.

A large NPO started using our donation form over the weekend. Today's call showed:

✓ Quick wins to ship fast for easier onboarding
✓ They loved our donation widget and touchpoint tracking.
✓ Strong demand for donor self-service (reduces support load).

I am building for these moments:

- Seeing people use what we build
- Understanding what resonates
- Selling the future (features / pain killers) ❤️

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@bretonwill TAM

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@Adrian10XAds But how do you find out that, for example, the offer and landing page need to be improved? With traffic that isn't converting. 🤷🏻

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

B2B SaaS founders (teams of 1–3): What’s your biggest headache right now?

1⃣ Support inbox chaos
2⃣ Bug reports scattered everywhere
3⃣ Messy feedback-to-feature-request flow
4⃣ Keeping users updated (roadmap/release notes)
5⃣ Something else?

I’m building releasebird around this and want to sanity-check with a few founders.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@TimoBuilds_ I probably have a 24-month runway but also three kids. I aim for $10k MRR plus visible traction (also having a great co-founder. So must be good for both of us).

Not sure if it’s smart, but it ensures I can stay in the game forever with a try-fail-repeat approach.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

On the way from €1.5k → €10k MRR 🚀
Here’s the software I use every day (wrapped up without thinking what I missed) as a bootstrapped SaaS founder:

Claude Code · IntelliJ · ChatGPT · Gemini
folk CRM · Canva · X · LinkedIn
Releasebird · SaasToast · Sintra
Slack · Spotify · AWS · MongoDB

No magic. Just hustling.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@chrissyinspace Keep hustling if you love what you do—I’ve always had my MacBook next to me for over 15 years. But plan relaxation times into your day and week.

Sidenote: I try to work as little as possible from my phone, as it mostly annoys the people around you who deserve your attention.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

Also worked today on finishing our DATEV export for our NPO fundraising CRM.

It's still a bit buggy from what Claude did 🪲. Need to iterate further.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@eliana_jordan Would use affiliates only for existing (paying) customers or also for people that are no customers at all?

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

@1Umairshaikh Unfortunately as full stack software developer for more than 20 years I also agree that the hard part is marketing 😅
Building is together with AI pure fun.

[Marc Petersen @pocketone]

✔️ Delegated B2B lead research for raisenext
✔️ Finally had time to test our new video bug reporting feature for releasebird 🎥🐞👇