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Build Your SaaS

"Justin, I built a SaaS!"

90 min episode · 2 min read
·

Episode

90 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Remote Work

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Multiple attempts before success: Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)—all failed because users wouldn't log in regularly or lacked urgency, demonstrating that reasonable hypotheses don't guarantee product-market fit without genuine customer pull and unavoidable pain points.
  • Agency-to-SaaS bridge strategy: Harris used TinySeed funding as a financial bridge when SaaS revenue was only 20% of his consulting income, allowing him to shut down his agency in May 2024 despite the risk. The funding covered runway, full-time engineer hire, customer success manager, and SOC 2 compliance—capital-intensive requirements impossible to self-fund while maintaining household expenses.
  • Partner channel dominance: App On Sync generates 80% of revenue through agency partners who bring enterprise clients needing compliant outbound data integration. Agencies value the partnership because App On Sync handles complex CRM administration through Slack support channels, letting agencies focus on their core competency while proving ROI to clients through proper data attribution in systems of record.
  • Community immersion advantage: Harris spent years in outbound sales WhatsApp groups and LinkedIn communities before building App On Sync, gaining tacit knowledge impossible to replicate through research alone. This daily immersion revealed subtle pain points like reply routing rules for 1500-employee companies and Salesforce field population quirks that competitors miss, creating defensible product advantages through accumulated domain expertise.
  • Pull hypothesis validation: Successful customers have three characteristics: outbound integration is an active project on their list, it's unavoidable right now (proven by hiring an agency), and existing solutions have serious limitations. Harris validates urgency by asking what customers are actually doing to solve the problem—vague answers indicate insufficient pull regardless of stated interest, while agency contracts signal genuine commitment.

What It Covers

Harris Kenny shares his six-year journey from quitting his job in 2019 to building App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce, after four failed product attempts and running an agency.

Key Questions Answered

  • Multiple attempts before success: Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)—all failed because users wouldn't log in regularly or lacked urgency, demonstrating that reasonable hypotheses don't guarantee product-market fit without genuine customer pull and unavoidable pain points.
  • Agency-to-SaaS bridge strategy: Harris used TinySeed funding as a financial bridge when SaaS revenue was only 20% of his consulting income, allowing him to shut down his agency in May 2024 despite the risk. The funding covered runway, full-time engineer hire, customer success manager, and SOC 2 compliance—capital-intensive requirements impossible to self-fund while maintaining household expenses.
  • Partner channel dominance: App On Sync generates 80% of revenue through agency partners who bring enterprise clients needing compliant outbound data integration. Agencies value the partnership because App On Sync handles complex CRM administration through Slack support channels, letting agencies focus on their core competency while proving ROI to clients through proper data attribution in systems of record.
  • Community immersion advantage: Harris spent years in outbound sales WhatsApp groups and LinkedIn communities before building App On Sync, gaining tacit knowledge impossible to replicate through research alone. This daily immersion revealed subtle pain points like reply routing rules for 1500-employee companies and Salesforce field population quirks that competitors miss, creating defensible product advantages through accumulated domain expertise.
  • Pull hypothesis validation: Successful customers have three characteristics: outbound integration is an active project on their list, it's unavoidable right now (proven by hiring an agency), and existing solutions have serious limitations. Harris validates urgency by asking what customers are actually doing to solve the problem—vague answers indicate insufficient pull regardless of stated interest, while agency contracts signal genuine commitment.

Notable Moment

Harris describes the impossible decision-making paralysis of running an agency and SaaS simultaneously: a multi-thousand dollar monthly retainer client demands immediate attention for mortgage payments, while a hundred-dollar SaaS customer represents higher paper valuation but less cash flow. The math doesn't work when comparing bottom-line service profit against top-line software revenue multiples, making task prioritization genuinely impossible.

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Episode Transcript

This podcast is hosted by transistor.fm. Hello, and welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2025. I'm Justin Jackson, co founder of transistor.fm. And I'm Harris Kenny, founder of App OnSync. Yes. Now Harris and I have known each other for a while. Long time listener of Build Your SaaS. Right? Oh, yeah. And I wanted to have Harris on because he sent me an email with the subject line, I did it. I built my SaaS. And, Harris has been sharing his story with me over the years. I know he's had multiple attempts. And I think what was exciting to me, Harris, is just this is hard. Like, doing this, building, a SaaS, building a a software as a service product, and getting it to profitability is really tough and usually takes multiple attempts as, we'll hear. So I wanted to have you on because I think your story will be encouraging to folks who are in it. Yeah. For sure. Well, I appreciate being on, man. I mean, yeah, I I listened to the the show for years. And so and, hey, I had had a bunch of attempts and, always kind of look up to you from afar. We almost met in person at Podcast Movement when it was in Denver, and we we missed Yeah. How did that because I was looking at that email too, and I was like so you had emailed me, like, oh, I'm going to go to Podcast Movement in Denver, and then we just never crossed paths. Well, I was only there for a little bit. It was when I was things were really crazy at that time. Okay. And so I just didn't have a lot of time. So I was, okay. I wanna go, and I'm like, I hope I'll catch Justin. Check out the boots, but if I don't catch him so I just like it it was like, well, what you've talked about for years of just, like, no margin. Like, I've just been living a no margin life for a while. And so it was one of those situations where, like, I was late, and I had to leave early. And I was I hoped I caught you, but it just didn't it was just too tight. But, like, there's a future with more margin where you're like, my friend's in town. I'm gonna go do this thing, and, like, I have time to do that. And I just, like, haven't haven't had that. Yeah. I mean, I I think that's gonna resonate with a lot of people. As an aside, this is something I've been thinking about for a while is, you're a part of this mega maker community that I've been running since 2013. And I'd like to do some more real life meetups with mega maker folks, and maybe I have to take my son to university in Toronto this …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links. As an Amazon Associate, SignalCast earns from qualifying purchases.

Tools

  • Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)
  • Harris Kenny shares his six-year journey from quitting his job in 2019 to building App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce
  • App On Sync handles complex CRM administration through Slack support channels, letting agencies focus on their core competency
  • IntroCRM (Bubble CRM)
  • Harris Kenny shares his six-year journey from quitting his job in 2019 to building App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce
  • SPONSORS [Transistor.fm]

Products

  • Draft StudioBy guest
    Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)
  • App On SyncBy guest
    Harris Kenny shares his six-year journey from quitting his job in 2019 to building App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce
  • Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)
  • App On SyncBy guest

    by Harris Kenny

    Harris Kenny shares his six-year journey from quitting his job in 2019 to building App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce
  • IntroCRMBy guest
    Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)
  • LeadRaterBy guest
    Harris built five products before App On Sync—IntroCRM (Bubble CRM), LeadRater (Glide lead scoring app), Draft Studio (GPT wrapper for email variations), Card Importer (HubSpot business card scanner)

company

  • Harris used TinySeed funding as a financial bridge when SaaS revenue was only 20% of his consulting income
  • App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce
  • App On Sync, a profitable SaaS connecting outbound sales tools with HubSpot and Salesforce

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