€1,872 in six months is the SaaS curve nobody wants to post about

On r/SaaS this month, a side-project founder posted what reads like an apology and is actually one of the more honest pieces of data the subreddit has produced in months. The title: Not $10k MRR in 30 days. Just €1,872 in 6 months. Maybe I just suck.

The monthly breakdown they shared:

• Dec: €14
• Jan: €161
• Feb: €145
• Mar: €85
• Apr: €522
• May: €945

Total: €1,872. Context: dad, married, 9-5 remote dev job, building before work and after their daughter goes to sleep. Started in December.

What the curve actually shows

Four months under €200. Then €522. Then €945. The shape is not slow but steady — it’s four months of doubt, then visible inflection. If the founder had quit after the March €85 month, the May €945 would never have happened. The pattern is barely visible until it suddenly is.

This curve is closer to median than the viral $10K MRR in 30 days posts. The viral ones are either selling something (course, mentorship, lifetime deal) or are statistical outliers selected for narrative. The €1,872-in-6-months curve, with the specific monthly variance, is what most genuine solo builds actually look like. The reason it doesn’t get posted: Maybe I just suck is what founders feel from month 2 to month 5, and most of them quit before they hit the upcurve at month 6.

The top comment is the real Insight

The highest-voted reply: €14 to €945 in 6 months with a kid and a 9-5 is solid. The curve is actually accelerating, 85 to 522 to 945 over the last 3 months. Most of those 10k-in-30-days posts are selling something.

This is the read the founder couldn’t give themselves. From inside the build, the €85 month feels like failure. From outside, the 85 → 522 → 945 sequence is the inflection point most successful indie products go through — and quitting before seeing it is the modal failure mode of solo SaaS, more than running out of money or losing motivation.

What an indie founder should take from this

Three concrete things:

1. The first 4 months are a near-coinflip on whether your product has a real market. Below €200/month for 4 straight months is not yet a kill signal — it’s the noise floor where genuine signal starts emerging. Your kill criteria should be calibrated to data, not vibes.

2. The acceleration is the signal, not the absolute number. €85 → €522 is a 6x jump. €522 → €945 is another 1.8x. That sequence is what you watch — not the absolute MRR. A €1K MRR business with 1.8x monthly growth becomes a €60K MRR business in 9 months. The compounding is invisible in any single month.

3. The I suck feeling at month 4 is data about you, not data about the product. The founder in this thread named their feeling correctly (Maybe I just suck), which is the exact frame that produces the wrong decision (quit). Naming the feeling is the prerequisite to ignoring it long enough to see whether the curve turns.

The post is itself the artifact other founders should bookmark. When you’re at month 3 with €145 and convinced you should quit, you can look at this specific founder’s specific monthly numbers and see that €145 was their March, and May was €945.