jason_zig

Scaling Zigpoll[0] to 2M ARR as a solo founder (currently at 1.5 ARR). Each year you double ARR for a business it comes with a whole new set of challenges which are layered on top of the changes in the tech landscape.

Fortunately I think I've been bailed out by agentic coding the last couple months from a product perspective but I think the major gains so far have been due to marketing and exploring alternative growth channels. Even so, keeping momentum is never a given and requires constant output from all angles! Onward...

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

seeing how far 1 person project can go with Zigpoll: https://www.zigpoll.com

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!

you can email me if you want: jason[at]zigpoll.com

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 :)

well they were all websites so they had that in common but not much else. I would recommend starting off with an app store of some kind since getting initial customers is a real pain unless you already have some lined up due to past work experience / networking. That said, with enough time and screaming into the void you will get someone to walk through the door. Best to ask them as many questions as you can while they are hanging around!

You should almost always stick with an idea for longer than you think. I've had 3 successful projects (one making over 100K MRR[0]) IMO the main differentiator between winning and losing is how fast you are iterating based on customer feedback.

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

getting my 1-person business to 2M ARR[0]

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

is evaluation that important? ultimately if you can't do the work you're only cheating yourself in the long run...

I'm not sure that's true - try getting someone to pull up an html5 file on their computer for a presentation...

Crossed 100K MRR as a solo founder for Zigpoll[1] - honestly I never thought I would get this far with the product so now it's all about trying to market and keep growth strong. Doubling YoY gets harder each year so you always have to find new growth channels (or ways to improve existing channels). This is an interesting task especially given the current environment.

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

I think this was their business plan. See if it works and, if it doesn't, shut it down

I used the shopify app store to get the first customers - i think an app store is still the way to go since they handle a lot of the customer outreach for you. that said, there are a lot of other ways to niche down - discord communities, subreddits, private boards, etc... come to mind as good places to start

I agree there needs to be a way to fit it into the overall product direction. Solving these on a case-by-case basis is important and part of the job.

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...

I solo founded a business and it just crossed 100K MRR (still solo). The trick is:

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

I think you're ready to go to market!

I’m working on Zigpoll[https://www.zigpoll.com], a lightweight survey/feedback tool for ecommerce (mostly Shopify).

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).

My one-person project Zigpoll [https://www.zigpoll.com] I've cracked the eCommerce market (1M ARR as of a couple days ago) but want to spread out more broadly into other verticals (SaaS, Hotels, Restaurants, Home Services, etc...) to reduce sector risk. If anyone is cooking something up please reach out and I'll be happy to hook you up with the service for free. [jason@zigpoll.com]

Am I the only one getting overwhelmed with all of these feature/product announcements? Feels like the noise to signal ratio is off.

I run a survey product for ecommerce stores [1]

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/

Month 48 of my one-man project Zigpoll: 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...

I've seen people post this same advice and I agree with you that it works but you would think they would absorb this common strategy and integrate it as part of the underlying product at this point...

Ah man... anyone remember JQBX?

We're building Zigpoll (https://www.zigpoll.com), a survey platform focused on zero-party data collection — think post-purchase attribution, customer feedback, and segmentation — all done directly on your site without relying on third-party cookies or offsite links.

We initially built it for Shopify, but now it’s fully embeddable, supports headless implementations, and integrates with tools like Klaviyo, Zapier, n8n, and Snowflake. One thing we’re especially proud of is how fast and unobtrusive it is: polls load async, don’t block rendering, and are optimized for mobile and low-latency responses.

From a tech angle:

Frontend is all React, optionally SSR-safe.

Backend is Node.js + Postgres, with a heavy focus on queueing + caching for real-time response pipelines.

API-first design (public API just launched: apidocs.zigpoll.com).

We recently open-sourced our n8n integration too.

If you're a dev working on ecom, SaaS, or even internal tooling and need a non-annoying way to collect structured feedback, happy to chat or get you set up. Feedback welcome — especially critical stuff. Always looking to improve.

Working on: https://www.zigpoll.com a contextual micro-survey tool solo.

I'm now supporting over 30K clients and over 40 million survey responses. Naturally lots of things come up when scaling a project solo heres a few:

- Optimizing existing reporting dashboards

- Improving onboarding experience

- Tapping new growth channels (Organic SEO, Paid ads, Integration marketplaces)

- Resolving customer support tickets and minimizing ticket flow in general

Lots of things come up which always keeps the work interesting. It's probably time to scale past one person though so that's next on the docket!

[1] Surveys. Thinking about how to tighten up the onboarding experience, improve brand awareness, improve in-app data analysis, and how to integrate AI in new and exciting ways... and handling customer support tickets!

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

I've been working on Zigpoll as a one-man project for a while now: https://www.zigpoll.com/ it has traction and solid growth (~100% YoY for the past 3 years) but the larger the numbers the harder it gets to double each year.

In a past life I would have thought this would be the easy part given the product market fit but it's hard to figure out growth channels that are scalable and cost-effective at this stage. Burning what would otherwise be a large salary month on month in search of growth is mentally taxing when it doesn't deliver. Metrics across the board only seem to tell part of the story so it's tricky to figure out what needs changing and what's worth doubling down on.

If anyone has experience doing this sort of thing - please get in touch!

Curious - does anyone want this stuff?

are you serious?

You still have to become a domain expert to debug it though?

Not 100% on the nose with what you're looking for but I built Zigpoll (form builder for on-site surveys and forms) that may useful: https://www.zigpoll.com/

Might want to take a look in the mirror with regard to tech...