How Andre Haykal Jr. built a $2.4M SaaS in 87 days

Executive overview

Andre Haykal Jr. spent months burning cash on developers who couldn't ship, nearly quitting before relaunching ListKit — a cold email lead generation SaaS — to $1M ARR in 87 days.

The key was the productized SaaS approach: sell the service manually first, build cash flow, validate demand, then convert to software. By launch day, he had a warm audience of paying customers who had shaped the product and were ready to buy.

Serve the market before you build the product.

The productized SaaS model

• Run the service manually on the backend; the customer sees a product-like front end
• No dev costs upfront — fulfil orders by hand with existing skills
• Use the revenue to fund product development over time
• Gather real market research before writing a line of code
• Enter launch with proven demand and a ready-to-buy customer base

How ListKit got its first customers

• Cold emailed prospects offering 50 free leads as a lead magnet — no hard sell on the product
• Leveraged existing audiences from the agency and coaching business (Client Ascension)
• Told the full story publicly — struggles, failure, rebuild — so customers felt invested
• Launch was a handful of emails, live calls, and tweets to a warm list; no paid ads needed at first

Pricing strategy

• Start by calculating your own costs, then benchmark competitors
• Ask customers what they like and dislike about competitor pricing
• ListKit uses a simple credit-based model at $97/month entry, scaling to enterprise tiers
• No free trial — a money-back guarantee captures revenue immediately and filters out freebie seekers

Growth channels

• Cold email: primary early channel; aligned perfectly with the target audience's own goals
• Paid ads: scaled past the ceiling cold email hits; test ~20 new creatives per week (mix of direct-to-camera video and static images)
• Content and affiliates: compounding long-term channel
• Product ecosystem: coaching program and agency funnel customers into ListKit

Building the co-founder team

• Five co-founders with fully complementary skill sets: CEO/team leader, CTO, two CMOs, head of sales
• Rule: only recruit for skills you don't have; don't duplicate your own strengths
• Find co-founders in communities where the skills you need already concentrate
• Align on vision before anything else — misaligned vision means working in opposite directions
• Debates are normal; treat co-founder relationships like any relationship that needs active maintenance

Keeping costs under control

• Total monthly operating cost: $150K–$175K (team, ads, acquisition)
• Majority of the 40-person team are offshore developers (Ukraine) and CS reps (Lebanon)
• Offshore hires cost $1K–$2K/month vs $5K–$8K for equivalent US hires
• Offshore team members cited as equal to or better than US equivalents in output quality

Competing against established players

• ListKit identified that Apollo leads were unverified — a known pain point among users
• Built the same core product with one key improvement: verified leads
• Strategy: find a dominant, proven incumbent; find what users hate about it; fix that one thing
• Every new customer gets a one-on-one onboarding call — a churn-reduction edge competitors don't match

Mindset and longevity

• Seven years of entrepreneurship before this breakout; first four to five years were not a success
• Consistency during bad periods matters more than doubling down during good ones
• Focus on inputs (what you control), not outputs (results you can't always control)
• Continuous personal investment — coaching, mentors, learning — compounds into team capability