Crossed over 100K MRR and I'm shooting for 2M ARR by the end of the year. Growing something in this stage is totally different from making it go from zero to one so it's an interesting learning curve. AI has also changed the calculus as well where it seems less crazy to try and do this sort of thing. Time will tell!

Ideas came from building something that I wished existed. Honestly I didn't overthink any of them and I'm glad I didn't. If you do too much market research it tends to make your vision seem less exciting IMO.

Either way my whole point is to just iterate on your initial idea for long enough that it goes from being "your fun idea" to "your fun idea that people are willing to pay for". Then just repeat that loop until you retire :)

I think about it like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You might hit the bullseye in one shot but usually you'll just hit somewhere random then it's up to you to iterate and find the version of your idea that the market will actually pay for. This is the feedback part of the equation and giving up and throwing random darts may never pay off.

[0]https://www.zigpoll.com

the requirements for growth keep changing plus all the AI noise means that the playbook changes regularly. staying on top of the state of the market while improving/maintaining the product and understanding our icp + exploring new verticals is a tricky (but fun) task to manage!

[0]https://www.zigpoll.com

I used to think "if you build it they will come" but, as it turns out, it's much more nuanced than that and requires a lot of iterating and stumbling along the way. I hope to break into another vertical this year!

[1] https://www.zigpoll.com

When I first started, getting customer reviews was my north star, so i would add any feature and hide them under "advanced" if they were ridiculously long-tail. Still worth it for the review and positive experience even if you hide the feature...

1. Don't give up after the first month of no traction, if you can get at least 1 customer at this stage that is a good sign.

2. Make contact with every customer you acquire, find out why they installed your product and what they want from it. Build any feature that they say is missing and offer the best customer support possible

3. Repeat this for a period of time. Once you have more customers the circumstances will change but this how you go from 0 -> 1 and get some runway IMO

Built it because most survey tools felt overgrown for what I needed. It focuses on post-purchase and on-site surveys, attribution questions, and getting clean data out.

Lately I’ve been working on:

Simpler targeting + survey logic Exposing survey data to AI tools Improving response rates without nagging users

It’s bootstrapped, profitable, and built by one person (me).

I’m a solo founder and developer, and I’ve been building software since 2011. Over the years, I watched customer feedback tools go from simple and focused to bloated, enterprise-heavy platforms. Tons of features, endless configuration… and yet I kept using maybe 10% of what was there. The rest mostly got in the way.

So I decided to build the feedback tool I actually wanted to use.

That became Zigpoll — a fast, focused survey and feedback platform designed for real-world businesses. It does the essentials really well: post-purchase surveys, attribution insights, customer feedback loops, and clean integrations with the tools merchants already use. No bloated dashboards. No “enterprise for enterprise’s sake.” Just actionable feedback that’s easy to collect and easy to act on.

Zigpoll has been live for several years now and is used by thousands of merchants across ecommerce and SaaS. It’s built with performance and privacy in mind, with a strong focus on reliability, flexibility, and data ownership.

On privacy: Zigpoll collects only what’s necessary to run surveys and generate insights. No invasive tracking, no session replays, no selling data.

If you’re a founder, marketer, or product team who wants customer feedback without the overhead, I’d genuinely love to hear what you think (try our contact us form): https://www.zigpoll.com

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, architecture decisions, why certain features didn’t make the cut, or what’s coming next.

— Jason

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46918479

Points: 1

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A lot of our customers use post purchase surveys and on-site surveys to help with this sort of thing. For example a really common use-case is an attribution survey which appears after a sale is made. The survey will ask something like "how did you hear about us?" which helps determine what actually drove the sale so they can get some clear insights outside of Google and Meta. It's not perfectly reliable but it's an additional data point that helps with the mess out there...

[1] https://www.zigpoll.com/

On-site surveys for eCommerce and SaaS. It's been an amazing ride leveling up back and forth between product, design, and marketing. Marketing is way more involved than most people on this site realize...