Bootstrapping a SaaS in the adult industry to $2.9k/MRR

Last week I wrote a post about creating a SaaS for OnlyFans creators being an untapped niche.

The post received numerous comments. The best one came from a lady named Dashiell Bark-Huss.

Dashiell is the founder of WishTender, a wishlist platform for content creators.

There's a slight twist, however: WishTrender's audience consists of adult content creators who want to receive gifts from their followers safely without exposing their address and caters heavily to the adult industry.

WishTender is currently doing $2.9k/month in GMV revenue.

After writing the post and receiving the comment, I couldn't help but contact Dashiell for an interview. Luckily, she agreed and the information she shared was really, really interesting.. Here's the interview:

Hello! What's your background, and what are you working on?

I taught myself to code while living in a van with the goal of one day becoming a tech entrepreneur. Specifically, I was interested in lucid dream technology.

My current startup, WishTender, has nothing to do with lucid dreaming. But on the side I work on the Dream Phone, a device to send messages from within a lucid dream to my computer. In the long term, I hope to focus more on how to bring lucid dreaming to the public.

WishTender is a wishlist for content creators to get gifts from fans. Content creators list items they want. They share that wishlist with fans. Fans fund the gifts. The content creators can use the funds to buy the gifts.

What motivated you to get started?

My friend brought this idea to me.

My friend was a sugar baby at the time. That means, in her case, she has email conversations with rich men and they buy her gifts.

She came to me saying that these men were throwing hundreds to thousands of dollars per week at her. But they prefered to give her gifts over money.

She couldn’t find a safe wishlist that would protect her identity. There was one option but it was notoriously unreliable. I thought if instead of mailing the gift, we just send the wisher the funds to buy the gift, we can give the same experience without the logistical issues.

I interviewed other adult industry workers and they were interested in a solution as well.

What went into building the initial product?

I built it myself having only taught myself how to code the year prior. I didn’t know how to build a full stack app. I never worked professionally as a developer. So it took me a year just to make a usable web app. I had to learn a lot of difficult software development ideas that aren’t well documented because they are above most newbie level tutorials.

I could have taken shortcuts to finish a minimum viable product sooner. But I was using the opportunity to learn about software development too, not just business.

How have you attracted users and grown WishTender?

DMing on Twitter and word of mouth.

After launch, my spouse started helping by DMing 60-100 financial dominatrixes every day on twitter. This is a niche target market that we found likes our product. Most of our DM’s get ignored. It’s about a 2%-4% response rate. I think it might be higher in other industries.

Because people are always sharing their WishTender wishlists on Twitter, we get users who heard about us that way too.

We tried to grow through social media content. But TikTok and Instagram shadow banned our accounts.

On TikTok, our views were growing until our most engaged video got 8000+ views and 840+ likes fast. But TikTok suddenly removed it for illegal activity, with no clarification on what they were referring to. Ever since that video was removed, all our videos get 0 views and don't show up in hashtags searches.

The shadow bans are mysterious. The platforms don't inform you when the ban will end or why you're banned. In our case, it might have to do with hashtags we used or who's following us since we're interacting with the adult industry.

I'm hoping to get out of the shadow bans and get back to making content. We were just starting to learn how to make content as a brand. I really like these two videos we made: one, two. Unfortunately we were already shadow banned when we posted them.

On Twitter, we're staring to understand how to tweet from a brand account. Some of my favorite inspirations for brand accounts are GymShark, Wendy's, and Fast. Additionally, I look at the accounts of business's that are similar to WishTender. You can find a brand's most engaging tweets by using twitters advanced search. Use those tweets to inspire a similar tweet that makes sense for your product.

My users like when WishTender tweets funny thoughts from their perspective. They'll engage with those to show they're part of the group and get the joke. Gym Shark does this well. They don't tweet about their products. They tweet their customers' thoughts. Example: "if my airpods disconnect in the gym i’m finished". Here's a funny tweet GymShark made that I drew direct inspiration from.

What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We charge the gifter 10% on top of the price of the gift. But we make about 4% of that because of Stripe fees. Right now we're focused on getting more users and building trust to get more transactions.

What are your goals for the future?

Because of our tight profit margins, WishTender needs to have a lot of gifts coming through or figure out other ways to monetize. So I hope to grow the user base. We probably need around 10k users to get to some meaningful income. We are at 300 now.

If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

Hard to say yet.

Every day my perspective changes on this.

For example, when I launched I thought “I should have left features out and launched sooner. I made a huge mistake.”

But then after users joined specifically for the extra features I was glad I included them. Especially, because learning to code them after launch would have been hard.

Sometimes I regret being adjacent to the sex work industry. It has barriers. Businesses don’t want to work with you.

WishTender hosts no adult content, but ours users are in the adult industry. Simply associating with those users puts a target on our back. Payment processors, social media, banks; there are complications with all of them. We got banned on Facebook because we said our wishlist was “SW friendly”-sex worker friendly. We’re frequently shadow banned on social media, which makes organic growth hard.

The sex workers themselves are a barrier. They need to protect their identities so it's hard to interview them for customer research. Their clients even more so.

The adult industry is also draining to me because I’m not interested in sex work or porn. I think when you are really interested in your target market or industry, the hard days are easier.

But then I think, "Maybe this barrier is beneficial. If I can get through it, the barrier is WishTender's moat."

Another area I question is my choice of revenue model. My business has thin profit margins. Meaning, I need to have a lot of users and a lot of transactions to make a profit. This model is rare for an Indie Hacker project.

Likewise, while we aren't exactly a market place, we have gifters and receivers. So we have two types of users to think about, which is difficult.

There's one thing I certainly regret; Asking the wrong questions in my initial market research. The Mom Test is a great book to help you better ask the right questions. Another great book full of examples on the topic is Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen.

Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Community. The Indie Hackers community has been a gem. Getting others' perspectives is so helpful when I’m lost.

At the same time, understand that there are confident people that don't know what they are talking about. Glean from them what's useful. But also listen to your gut. You have the fullest picture of your situation and business.

Where can we go to learn more?

I'm most active on Twitter.

This is WishTender's website.

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