How I built my first SaaS without an audience ($25K/month)

With no audience, picked a partner that already had the target customers: Legacy X, an Amazon seller coaching program he had bought 2 years earlier, with thousands of active sellers. Pitched: 'I can build you a better product research tool than anything on the market. Give me 48 hours, and if you like what we see, we can partner. No strings attached.' Build schedule: hours 1-4 mapped the partner's existing systems, SOPs, data and workflows and merged them with his own process; hours 5-12 built core features in Cursor (functional, not perfect); 13-20 bug testing; 21-30 UI polish and branding; 31-40 edge-case testing; then final polish, recorded a demo video and sent it. Partner called next day to go full-time. Gave up equity (exact share not stated) in exchange for launching to the partner's students on day 0. Recommends listing 5 possible distribution partners (coaching companies, communities, influencer groups) and reaching out to 3 within a week.

Legacy X coaching customers pay $50/month; the general public pays the regular $199/month. All users are paying (no free tier mentioned).