Micro-SaaS Alternatives to BigTech/VC
Hi HN
I started this crowdsourced list to find small internet products made by solo developers (or tiny teams) that can be used as alternatives to BigTech/VC-funded startups.
E.g. you can use Tally (by two devs, $14K MRR) instead of Typeform ($190M funding, 600+ employees)
or Plausible (by two devs, $83K MRR) instead of Google Analytics.
I added a link to a form where you can send me suggestions to alternatives, happy to add to the site!
Thanks, Rauno
Published in 2022, this chronicle by @raunometsa details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 151 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 30 comments
Nice page! A small suggestion: use section or category names.
For example, instead of 'Buffer', the category or section could be called 'Social media tools'. Same for the other sections e.g. 'Analytics', 'Cold email tools', and so on.
Also, Zendesk and Freshdesk are both in the same category of help desk software but are listed separated on the page.
Thank's for this! I've been building a list of bootstrappers to follow on Twitter and added a bunch of these folks to said list [0].
[0]: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1553077166270709760
The one thing that keeps me from using smaller competitors is that I don't have a guarantee they won't shut down. I need to know for sure that whatever I integrate with is going to last longer than I do. Even though there's a lot to dislike about the big players, I can rest easy knowing they will outlast me.
Appreciate the site, but I don’t see the point of including their revenue. On the contrary, lower revenue would make me want to choose the higher revenue option - being able to make money is a sign of competence after all.
Team size and age of the startup are better metrics imo.
This would be a list by many buyers, especially in the enterprise, of companies to avoid. If you want to help the indie startup it is probably better to remove their revenue numbers. Most buyers are concerned if the product they invested in will be around in a couple of years.