The Story
Andy Cloak built Data Fetcher, an Airtable extension that lets users import data from any API directly into their Airtable bases. He grew it to $23K/month with 600 paying customers as a solo founder by leveraging Airtable's built-in marketplace for distribution.
As Andy explains: "I studied engineering at university, but I never loved it. I always wanted to launch my own projects and so I taught myself to code."
Before Data Fetcher, Andy built and sold a TikTok influencer directory: "I was scraping TikTok, selling that data as a SaaS business and that got to a few thousand dollars a month in MRR and I sold it."
The idea came from his own problem: "I was kind of trying to launch like an IPO's newsletter. I was pulling financial data into Airtable to manage it all there and that really sowed the seed for what would then become Data Fetcher years later."
Key Insights
The Platform Strategy
"I saw a very similar add-on for Google Sheets called API Connector and they were doing super well. They had like 100,000 users and seemed to be like smashing it. Kind of the perfect lifestyle business."
"The main benefit I guess is distribution, right? So, being on the marketplace, especially being early to a marketplace like that, on a growing platform, you've just got this steady stream of super qualified leads and they trust you because you've been approved by the platform themselves."
The Sweet Spot
"It's big enough to kind of change my life financially, but it's not such a big opportunity that there's loads of people raising loads of money to come and build like a $100 million business. So it's kind of in this perfect indie hacker opportunity space where it just like sits in that sweet spot."
6-Step Framework for Finding Platform Ideas
Step 1: Find a growing platform using tools like Exploding Topics
Step 2: Find a pain point on that platform - "You can look in their forums, on Reddit, on Twitter. You just want to find that use case."
Step 3: Borrow a proven add-on or pattern from a more established platform - "For me that was obviously Google Sheets and Airtable"
Step 4: Check you can integrate - "Is there a public API? Is there a marketplace? An extension SDK?"
Step 5: Do napkin math - "Work out how many users does this platform have? How common is this problem? And then how much are people willing to pay for it."
Step 6: Assess platform risk - "How likely is this platform to build this into their feature set?"
Platforms to Build On Now
- •Notion: "It's not the newest tool, but it's still growing like crazy and the API is relatively new"
- •Figma: "Loads of little opportunities with things like exporting Figma to Webflow to Framer"
- •Avoid ChatGPT/Claude: "Everyone and their dog is building for ChatGPT and Claude just because there's so much competition"
Growth Strategy
"I got the first customer after a few days. As I said earlier, just the benefit of being on a platform so early."
"I found that I could see certain use cases coming up again and again, certain APIs that people connecting to. So, I started doing content marketing around those use cases. So writing blog posts, creating YouTube videos on the most popular integrations."
Growth timeline:
- •1K MRR after a few months
- •3K after a year
- •10K MRR after first year (after adding no-code integrations)
- •20K after 3 years
Business Numbers
- •$23K MRR
- •600 paying customers
- •85% profit margin
- •Solo founder
Tech Stack & Costs
- •TypeScript and React (extension)
- •TypeScript, Postgres, GraphQL, Node (backend)
- •Next.js and Tailwind (marketing site)
- •Heroku (hosting) - $2,500/month
- •HTNA (workers)
- •Help Scout (support)
- •Plausible (analytics)
- •Mailer Lite (newsletter)
- •ChartMogul (analytics)
- •Total SaaS tools: ~$1,000/month
- •Co-working: $150/month
Key Lessons
"The biggest lesson has been the power of focus over chasing shiny objects. So, over the few years, I've wasted probably 6 months trying to launch side businesses."
"What I do now, it's a bit weird, but I use Claude as kind of like a business coach. So, every time I start to get distracted or I'm not working hard enough, I literally go to Claude and I say, 'Be my business coach and make me focus on the thing that's working and talk me out of trying to launch something new.' And I'm embarrassed to say that it actually works pretty well."
Key Advice
"I'd tell young Andy to do proper user testing. Do it early and do it often because I wasted almost an entire year without ever speaking to the people that are using what I'd built. And in one afternoon, I found all of these UX issues and solving those, you know, increased the revenue, increase the usage, increased everything almost overnight."
Resources
- •Data Fetcher: https://datafetcher.com/
- •Follow Andy: https://x.com/andycloak