$36K/year micro-saas app | Starter Story

A side project that makes $36,000 a year sounds modest, but the numbers tell a more interesting story. The app in question helps golf courses run tournaments with live scoring, charging $2,700 per year. At the time of the interview, that meant roughly 10 customers. The founder also charges per event, a smart strategy that adds variable revenue on top of the annual subscription. The episode is a case study in how a narrow, unglamorous problem can sustain a profitable micro-SaaS business without venture capital, growth hacking, or a team.

The psychology of picking the right problem

The core insight is that the founder did not build a generic "golf management" platform. He built a tool for one specific, painful workflow: running a tournament with live scoring. Golf courses already had software for tee times and point-of-sale, but tournaments were still managed with spreadsheets. That gap—between what existing software handled and what staff actually did on tournament day—is the sweet spot.