How My Startup Reached $1M ARR

Hello, my beloved readers ❤️

Some time ago, I shared a very honest article about my first failed startup — about mistakes, exhaustion, and the feeling that maybe I wasn’t good enough to build something on my own.

Back then, if I’m honest with myself, my expectations were modest.

I thought that maybe, in five years, I would get another solid opportunity to build a company from scratch.

Reality turned out to be much kinder.

In this article, I want to share a chronological and honest breakdown of how we grew our startup to $1M in annual recurring revenue, and the lessons I learned along the way — about the market, customers, ego, luck, and myself.

Reaching $1M ARR had been a goal in my head for a long time.

One of those numbers you keep somewhere in the background — distant, ambitious, almost abstract.

And yet, we reached it faster than I ever expected.

I’m incredibly happy and grateful that I can finally write this article — not as a dream, not as a plan, but as a reflection on something that actually happened.

This is not a success story without cracks.

It’s not a playbook.

It’s simply my attempt to document how things unfolded — from the first dollars in MRR to a milestone that once felt unreal.

If the previous article was about failure and uncertainty, this one is about momentum, responsibility, and quiet gratitude for how unexpectedly well things can go.

Let’s begin.

I joined my co-founder after he had already been working on the idea for 6+ months.

At the moment I joined, the project was doing around $200 MRR.

I was working part-time back then.

Six months earlier, I had shut down my previous startup, and for the sake of my nervous system (and basic sanity), I decided to keep a paid gig on the side to bring some cash.

My days were simple:

First half — the gig.

Second half — the startup, after lunch.

It worked surprisingly well.

When I joined, the product had a different name. After some discussion, we agreed that the brand didn’t feel right, so during the first month we focused almost entirely on renaming, rebranding, building a new website, and aligning on how the product should evolve.

In hindsight, that creative phase was incredibly important.

Working on brand and design together taught us how to collaborate, disagree, and make decisions as a team.

At that time, the product was very MVP-ish.

Basically one massive form. Everything else happened manually in the background, handled by my co-founder.

After analyzing similar solutions on the market, one thing became obvious:

We couldn’t win on legacy.

We had to win on simplicity, clean design, and responsive support.

Most competitors were extremely old-school — no real web product, clunky processes, and almost no customer support.

So we made a strategic decision early on:

We would build a modern, premium experience — the kind that’s already standard in many other industries.

That decision became one of the foundations of our future growth.

Our product is for U.S. citizens.

I’m a Ukrainian marketer.

Instead of seeing this as a disadvantage, I turned it into a strategy.

Since we had no advertising budget, I decided to combine marketing with learning the domain and the audience. I started writing articles about U.S. taxes, residency rules, and common mistakes Americans make when living abroad.

The first three months?

Nothing.

No new customers.

One day, my co-founder got excited because we saw a new signup (not even a subscription).

A moment later we realized: it was a designer I had hired to help us.

That was probably our lowest point.

But after a few months of writing consistently, one article finally started getting traction in Google. Then another. Slowly, we began receiving real signups.

The problem was:

The new product was still months away, and the old one was hard to understand and even harder to onboard.

So my co-founder suggested something simple but powerful:

onboarding calls for everyone who wanted to subscribe.

Looking back, this was a fantastic decision.

It helped us:

Growth at this stage was painfully slow.

But I’ll never forget the feeling when the first real customers started subscribing.

Pure entrepreneurial happiness — right there, in the moment.

Around that time, another startup I was working with part-time for money told me they wanted me full-time.

That was the moment when I was ready to say:

Fuck it.

I won’t miss this opportunity.

I felt like a shark that had just smelled blood.

I switched to working full-time on SavvyNomad.

Almost simultaneously, I decided to explore Latin America for a year, starting with a short visit to the U.S., where I met my co-founder in person for the first time.

We had worked together for more than six months without ever seeing each other.

Meeting face to face felt surreal — and grounding. It was great to finally spend real time together and confirm that everything we had built remotely… actually worked.

From a product perspective, this stage was critical.

Before, we only offered South Dakota, and it worked for roughly 50% of customers. That limitation was holding us back.

So we focused on launching Florida.

Once Florida went live, growth became noticeably easier.

On the marketing side, I doubled down hard on content + SEO.

Our Google traffic kept climbing.

I wrote around 100 articles to get us to $10K MRR.

In the beginning (up to ~100 articles), I wasn’t using Ahrefs or any “serious” SEO tools. I was simply writing about topics I knew our potential customers were already searching for — based on calls, emails, Reddit threads, and the questions we kept seeing.

I used AI tools heavily to make the process faster, but the principle was always the same: the articles had to be a free version of our product.

Not fluff. Real value. Clear steps. And they had to look nice: screenshots, simple visuals, and examples that make complex topics feel digestible.

Then I noticed a pattern: certain types of posts were getting traction.

So I replicated what worked. If an article about one state performed well, I wrote the same format about other states. I didn’t “invent” a content strategy — I followed demand and scaled what Google was already rewarding.

As always with content, some articles were clear outliers, while others brought in very little traffic — but it all added up.

It was possible to reach $10K MRR with a single channel.

But from my marketing background, I knew relying on one acquisition channel is dangerous.

If organic search works, the next logical step is usually paid search (Google Ads). These channels complement each other well, and you can transfer learnings between them.

I also experimented with partnerships — tax firms, accounting firms.

They didn’t bring meaningful results. Our affiliate incentives were small compared to their LTV expectations.

Still, I don’t regret it.

Partnerships didn’t work as an acquisition channel, but they helped us build early trust and credibility.

Another lesson I learned during this phase was about professional ego.

I really wanted to make videos.

But I had to admit something uncomfortable:

What I’m curious about — or excited to try — is not always what’s best for the business right now.

So I made a decision:

That separation helped both.

We also learned more about our market.

Initially, we assumed our ICP was digital nomads.

But during this growth phase, we realized something important:

Most of our customers were actually expats.

They were more mature. More settled. More decisive.

We figured this out through onboarding calls — and through real conversations with Americans I met while traveling.

In November 2024, we reached $10K MRR.

It felt incredible.

For me, it was a serious business milestone.

I even recorded a stupid little dance video to celebrate — and I don’t regret it at all.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDMlg8Xxx9q/

Our business has seasonality.

Demand is significantly higher during U.S. tax season — from January 1 to April 14.

We crossed $10K MRR just a few months before tax season.

That felt like an opportunity.

I decided to experiment with influencers and newsletters. Luckily, I had already scouted a few creators during earlier short-video experiments, so research didn’t take much time.

The result?

Little to no traceable conversions.

It might work as a brand channel in the long run, but from a performance perspective, the math didn’t really work.

Around the same time — again, thanks to our onboarding calls — we discovered a new use case for the product:

residential address for banking.

There are a lot of Americans abroad who need a U.S. residential address to keep using banking and investment services. Once we saw that pattern, the decision was obvious.

We didn’t need to change the core product.

Just a new landing page for Google Ads and SEO.

I’ve also recorded video on how I created landing page for this use case.

In retrospect, this was a very successful experiment — and it still brings us a significant number of customers today.

At this stage of growth, we also realized something uncomfortable:

Our biggest constraint wasn’t marketing.

It was operations.

The most painful signal was our mail operations.

At the beginning, mail processing was fast — around one day. But as volume grew, that “one day” quietly turned into a few days… and sometimes into a few weeks.

And once customers start waiting weeks for something that used to take a day, you feel it immediately: more tickets, more frustration, more people losing trust.

That was the moment we accepted the truth: if we don’t fix supply, demand will punish us.

So we shifted focus. More hiring. More process. More automation. Less “new shiny product,” more “make the machine reliable.”

So we hired a support employee and moved from Zendesk to Intercom.

That decision paid off immediately.

With Intercom’s AI agent, our resolution rate jumped to ~70%, compared to ~30% in Zendesk. The difference was night and day — and honestly, we couldn’t be happier about it.

Around the same time, I started taking finances more seriously.

Proper P&L, cash flow, and balance sheet.

Not because it was fun — but because we finally had something worth planning around.

When we crossed $20K MRR, it felt unreal.

I was in Buenos Aires — a city I had dreamed of visiting for years. When the milestone hit, I remember realizing that something bigger was happening.

A personal dream was slowly turning into reality.

That was also the moment we decided to finally pay ourselves salaries.

I had worked without a salary for 18 months.

My partner — even longer.

Shortly after, we made our first price increase.

For the first time, we were consistently hearing the same feedback:

“Your product is cheap compared to the alternatives.”

That was a good signal. I talk more about this decision in one of my videos.

Eventually, I noticed that SEO started to plateau. Writing more articles no longer felt like the highest-leverage use of my time.

So we expanded into other formats and started making YouTube videos.

We also completed our first M&A and acquired a newsletter, which helped us deepen distribution and audience trust.

As we kept learning about our customers, another shift became clear:

We were attracting more retired expats.

They required more support — yes.

But they were also incredibly grateful.

They left reviews more often.

They appreciated the service deeply.

And they reminded us why we were building this in the first place.

At this point, operations became a bottleneck for our growth, so we had to hire more people, and my business partner spent a lot of time on engineering to improve operations. It sucks when supply limits your growth; at the same time, it’s hard to complain about this.

We decided to add a new premium tier with a lease agreement and utility bill for high net worth individuals, and it helps us to increase LTV. Besides that, we haven’t changed our web product much because all engineering resources were focused on operational automation to provide premium customer support.

Google traffic is plateauing, but our bet on YouTube started to bring results, and we got our first viral video, which brought us almost 10K subscribers.

I’ve also realised that I’ve reached the point with Google Ads that I am not skillfull enough to continue scaling it, so I’ve decided to hire agency and because I build in public + background in marketing I have had relatively a lot of options to choose which definitely helped.

At this stage we were adding $10K MRR a month and it felt unreal compare to times when we were happy to have 1 new customers every day

Here I’ve also started to share less in public and making YouTube videos, because I was busy with business and it was hard to justify spending time to get a few hundred views. I still want to do it, but I am not sure about the format.

Reaching $1M ARR felt amazing, I started counting progress when we were 5% of $1M ARR and calculated progress every month

I’ve received a lot of warm words and congratulations from my family, friends and followers.

I’ve also realised that when you reach your dream you get a fear of loosing it, so we’ve started to work more on defending our business and reduce risks.

One thing I wish more founders talked about is what they deliberately didn’t do.

Saying “no” wasn’t about being conservative — it was about protecting the few things that were actually working.

Features we postponed or refused

Channels that didn’t work (yet)

Customers we didn’t serve

I’ve done marketing for many startups in my career.

Sometimes you do everything right — product, messaging, execution — but nothing really works. Or you get some traction, but growth is painfully slow because you constantly need to convince people that they even need your product.

In those cases, there’s often not much you can do.

And then there are moments when you look at a market and see:

That’s what we found.

Everyone knows the phrase: “When you find product–market fit, you’ll know it.”

I’d heard it countless times — but I had never truly felt it.

With this startup, I felt it the moment my partner wrote to me that we were growing too fast and operations couldn’t keep up.

I’m sharing this not to brag, but to make a point:

the market and problem you choose matter more than most people want to admit — and there’s only so much you can compensate for with execution.

Yes, we found the market.

Yes, we built a solution customers love.

Yes, we’re good at marketing.

But without natural demand, we would never have grown the way we did.

If you simplify growth, it looks something like this:

Growth = (Product + Sales) × Market

You can build a great product and be excellent at sales — but if the market is wrong, it multiplies everything by zero.

On the other hand, if you find a strong market that’s ready, with people willing and able to pay, even an okay product and sales motion can outperform most businesses.

We helped our customers save millions in taxes, and they rewarded us with trust, money, and incredible testimonials.

If you’re a founder stuck in a market that doesn’t appreciate your solution — move on.

Don’t waste your most productive years trying to force demand that isn’t there.

It sounds cliché, but connection with your customers is everything.

Because we didn’t have proper onboarding at the beginning, we had to talk to people. We organized calls just to explain what we were doing — and that forced us to listen.

Those conversations helped us:

Surprisingly, customers loved it.

In the tax and legal world, talking before hiring someone is normal — and our customers appreciated the support.

Huge shoutout to my co-founder Jameson, who did 10+ calls every day for almost a year, while still managing development and operations.

Most startups that make headlines grow because of some new algorithm or super-fast app.

I realized that innovation can also happen in:

Our app isn’t the fastest — and it doesn’t need to be.

It’s just significantly better than legacy solutions.

We managed offline operations at a level that many modern companies struggle to achieve online.

Our brand and marketing feel like a fresh breath of air in an old-school industry.

Yes, we use technology.

Yes, we do engineering.

But we also do many other things — and they matter just as much.

At the beginning, our web product was something I was honestly ashamed to show.

Even today, we still have bugs and some clunky UI areas.

But we compensated with:

Shipping early and iterating fast is usually the right move.

If your product isn’t perfect yet, compensate with effort, care, and presence.

People forgive bugs when they feel supported.

I’m still learning this.

You need ego to start a business — to take risks, challenge norms, and believe your approach can work.

That inner conflict helps you push through hard moments.

But ego can also hurt you if you let it override what’s best for the business.

In the beginning, I wanted to make videos.

Instead, I focused on writing articles — because that’s what worked best at the time.

I knew it was better for my co-founder to be the face of the business and talk to customers. He’s American. We sell to Americans.

That’s why all our articles are published under his name — and I’m completely fine with that.

Listen to your ego.

Understand it.

Don’t let it run the company.

Goals matter.

They help with prioritization, progress tracking, and alignment. They give structure.

But if you only live for milestones, you’ll always be chasing the next one.

Sooner or later, every dream becomes the new normal.

You can’t be happy living in the past or constantly projecting into the future.

Happiness exists only in the present moment.

I enjoy working on this business.

I enjoy working with my co-founder.

I love our customers and care deeply about making their lives abroad better.

I enjoy our team and what we’re building together.

That matters more than any number.

I’ve been lucky in my life — with work, investments, and even being abroad when war started in my country.

You can’t control how the universe responds — but you can prepare to notice opportunities.

Try new things.

Experiment.

Ask people, even when rejection is likely.

I’ve also failed many times. That’s unavoidable.

But I was ready for luck.

I knew I would build a company sooner or later.

I kept learning marketing and startups long before this one worked.

I took courses in finance and negotiation.

I saved money and built a runway.

I took care of my health so I could execute.

When the first signals appeared, I was ready to jump.

The difference between a loser and a winner is simple:

The winner tried one more time.

Even after my previous startup failed — when I felt miserable — I was still willing to try again.

And eventually, the universe smiled.

Be ready to be lucky.

For a long time, I’ve been building this blog — and building in public — around one very simple goal:

to reach $1M ARR with my own startup.

Now that we’ve done it, I keep getting the same question:

What’s next?

Until now, our focus was very clear:

We were moving fast, learning fast, and fixing things on the go.

The next chapter is different.

Yes, we still want to grow.

But now we also want to become a more mature business.

That means:

In 2026, we’re aiming to reach $300K MRR — roughly $3.5M ARR.

And over the next two years, the longer-term goal is $5M ARR.

Saying this out loud still feels scary.

There are internal voices that show up immediately:

I don’t have perfect answers.

But I know this:

We’re going to try.

And if we don’t get there, we’ll learn.

We’ll find our real ceiling — and build the company with that clarity.

Just like before, I want to keep:

This is a new chapter — not just for the company, but for us as founders, as a team, and as individuals learning how to grow responsibly.

Thank you for being here, for reading, and for following this journey — from failure, to momentum, and now to intention.

See you in the next chapter.