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How one founder reached $10K MRR by selling through connectors
Executive overview
Most SaaS founders waste months on cold outreach or paid ads to reach customers one by one. Ivan built Lancer, an AI agent that automates Upwork job discovery and proposal writing, and reached $10K MRR in under four months without either.
His approach: find the people who already own your customers' trust, and make them affiliates. One well-placed connector outperforms hundreds of cold calls.
Selling through a connector is a high-ticket sale; selling to end users directly is a low-ticket grind.
The problem Lancer solves
- Upwork posts ~200,000 jobs per month across 24 hours
- Qualifying a job and writing a personalised proposal takes ~10 minutes per job
- AI agents can outperform humans on this task by 10x or more
- Ivan first built the tool internally for his own agency, then launched it after beta users closed five-figure clients within two weeks
Pricing structure
- Pay-as-you-go: $79 for 30 proposals, $2 per extra
- Light: $300 for 250 proposals, $1.50 per extra
- Unlimited: $500/month (original launch offer)
The connector growth strategy
- Connectors are people with a large network of your ICP who command trust within it
- For Lancer, Upwork coaches are the connectors — they have 5–20 paying clients per month who need exactly what Lancer does
- Coaches can upsell Lancer as a natural extension of their own service
- Most of Lancer's growth came from just two connectors
How to find and close connectors
- Identify your ICP first — who buys easily, onboards with low friction, and churns slowly
- Then ask: who has a large network of these people and holds their trust?
- Reach out with a highly personalised pitch — a detailed Loom video, specific references to their work
- One affiliate justifies effort you'd never spend on a single subscriber
Commission structure
- 30% lifetime commission if the connector onboards the client on Lancer
- 20% lifetime commission for a straight referral
- Upfront payment may be appropriate for high-value connectors (Ivan paid $1,000 for one call)
- Track affiliates and run monthly payouts using Tolt (affiliate marketing software)
The five-step connector playbook
- Define your ICP — who has low-friction onboarding and low churn
- Identify connectors — one layer above your ICP, wide network, high trust
- Send a personalised pitch or offer to each connector
- Work out commission terms: 20–30% lifetime is standard; upfront payment case-by-case
- Track referrals and pay out monthly via affiliate software
Tech stack
- TypeScript (Next.js frontend, Node.js backend)
- GCP and Hetzner for hosting, Firestore for the database
- Elasticsearch for job querying
- Open Router for LLM API access
- Cursor with Claude for development
- Tolt for affiliate tracking
Platform automation as a business model
- Every platform with a large user base and tedious manual workflows is a candidate
- Users are already identifiable on-platform — ICP targeting is built in
- Examples beyond Upwork: Fiverr, LinkedIn, Poshmark, Pinterest
- Build the automation first as an internal tool; validate before launching externally
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