Kevin Conti — Software Ideas: Turning Market Research Into a Paid Newsletter

Kevin Conti commercialized the market research he was doing to build his next SaaS into a paid newsletter called Software Ideas. He launched it in July 2020, and on October 7 of that year he wrote that in roughly three months it had reached $6,019 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR), 318 paid customers, and about 3,300 free email subscribers. What he sold were research reports founders could use to choose a market to enter and a first product to build.

Market Research for Finding the Next SaaS Became the Product

While working as a full-time software developer, he first built CoderNotes.io. The service made it easy to search code snippets and technical notes, and it reached No. 2 daily on Product Hunt in June 2020. But the service’s MRR, which he disclosed in a November interview that year, was about $50. Through that experience, Conti learned that positive reception and actual paying demand need to be verified separately.

When looking for his next business, he started by examining job postings. He gathered software companies that were hiring as candidates, then researched the markets they were in and competing products. Because manual work was slow, he looked into company-information databases such as Crunchbase and Owler, but at the time access cost up to $1,000 per year. The newsletter began with the idea that selling his research findings to other founders could recoup the data costs and even generate extra income.

Reports That Examine Market, Product, and First Customers Together

The research focused on B2B software markets where customers were already spending money. He distinguished the main customers of large providers from customers who were too small for those products or had different requirements. He then organized into a single report the customer segment a small founding team could focus on, differentiating features, a minimum viable product (MVP), and pricing hypotheses.

In an actual early report, he looked at CaptivateIQ, a sales commission management service, and then proposed a product aimed at B2B companies with 1 to 10 sales employees. The initial features were setting commission calculation rules, entering sales data or importing it from a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and a dashboard to view each employee’s commissions. He also advised finding customer prospects starting with companies that used a particular CRM. The report presented both how to narrow the development scope and how to find the first customers.

The report also included risks the reader needed to investigate further. In the early Issue 7, it proposed a tool aimed at the situation in which a founder hands off work to a first employee, explaining that automation features should be omitted from the initial version to reduce development time. It then advised asking how the founder transfers work knowledge, how the employee’s progress is checked, and how approvals are handled. The format had readers examine product implementation, customer acquisition channels, and actual purchase demand separately.

Validating Presales and Customer Acquisition Channels

The first sales experiment began with publishing those research findings. On June 19, 2020, he posted an analysis of three business opportunities on Indie Hackers and asked readers who would be willing to pay to receive similar material by email to contact him. He offered those who reached out another free sample, starting conversations with people who had read the research and shown interest.

He set the presale threshold in advance: sell a one-month newsletter for $19 each to at least 10 of 100 potential customers. After about 35 conversations, he had secured 10 sales totaling $190. He excluded one purchase from a supportive friend from the demand calculation.

After gauging the response to the first post, he published a second one. He incorporated reader feedback to write deeper market analysis and tested whether it could attract new readers again. He then made Twitter and Indie Hackers his main customer acquisition channels, regularly publishing useful posts and business progress updates.

When sales opened in July 2020, the subscription cost $57 for three months, or $19 per month. Conti explained that he had identified people actively looking for their next business as his core customers. He priced for that customer and did not try to turn everyone casually browsing startup ideas into a buyer.

Subscription Revenue Growth and Going Full-Time

As it grew, the free email list became a key channel for converting to paid subscriptions. Free readers received weekly previews of the research, giving them a chance to judge whether the material was what they needed. The homepage also placed free subscription signups in several spots. Early on, much of the traffic came from founder communities and Twitter, but in a 2021 interview he explained that Google search traffic had begun to surpass other major channels.

The follow-up records he published show the pace of growth. On October 9, 2020, he reported that cumulative sales since launching the business had surpassed $20,000; in a November 5 interview, he disclosed MRR of about $8,000. On December 15, he revealed MRR of $11,000 and more than 600 active customers.

For operations, Mailchimp handled email delivery and Stripe handled payments. The member site for reading past newsletters was built in-house with Phoenix, letting subscribers look back at reports.

As subscribers grew, the time required for research and writing grew as well. The first newsletter was 1,218 words and took 10 to 15 hours to write, while issue 44 grew to 8,306 words. Once paid readers surpassed 500, the time spent answering individual questions about business opportunities or marketing strategies in reports also increased. Conti said that producing more thorough material was crowding out other work, including marketing.

In March 2021, he gave his employer four weeks' notice. The business covered his immediate living costs, and he judged that continuing it would require more time. The post announcing his transition to full time went up on May 4 of that year, about 10 months after starting Software Ideas.

Revisiting Customers' Goals and His Own

The nature of the product itself also affected subscription retention. In a 2021 interview, Conti explained that customers cancel when they abandon their startup plans, find an idea to execute, or use different criteria than he does for judging a good business. In particular, he viewed cancellations from customers who found an idea and started building as a sign that the service had done its job. Later, through The Foundation course covering presales and early customer acquisition, he sought to support the next step after finding an idea.

During operations, he collaborated with several writers, but the core work of identifying market opportunities and analyzing complaints from specific customer groups remained with Conti. He explained that fully handing over his role would require someone with both SaaS experience and writing ability, and that the cost of that person plus his own living costs would be difficult to cover with a small newsletter's income. The SaaS he had wanted to build was pushed back, and he experienced burnout from repeating weekly research and writing. The 2022 transition announcement contained his decision to reshape the business to fit his original goals.

On June 13, 2022, Software Ideas ended weekly publication and recurring subscriptions with issue 102. Active subscribers at the time received a prorated refund for their remaining subscription period and were switched to lifetime access to the full report archive. The offer presented to new customers was an archive of all previous reports for a one-time payment of $149.