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Issue 5 · June 2026

Featured storyFounder narrative

How Inés Vargas got her first 100 paying customers in 90 days (and the $1,470 it cost her)

Inés Vargas, a solo founder in Bilbao, hit 100 paying customers in 90 days for $1,470 in total spend. The itemized cost breakdown, the LinkedIn voice-DM channel that beat cold email 27x, the pricing flip at customer 38, and the channel she'd skip if starting again. Told as told to Joaquín del Río, with the spreadsheet on the table.

$1 MRR90-day arcFounder narrative
By Joaquín del Río11 min read
Read the story
A solo founder at her desk in a Mediterranean apartment mid-conversation on a video call, with a Stripe sticker on the laptop and a Calendly printout pinned to the wall behind her

In this issue

In-depth founder interviews, MRR journeys and post-mortems — with the real numbers.

A founder's desk with charts and a laptop showing revenue figures
MRR journey

Marta del Sol on hitting $4K MRR with three AI agents

Marta del Sol runs a one-person operations studio from Valencia and crossed $4,120 in MRR across nine clients — with three AI agents doing the delivery and a $612 monthly software bill. Here's the real arc: the underpricing she's embarrassed by, the month two clients churned at once, why her clients renew for the Friday report and not the robot, and the caveats she insisted we print next to every number.

$4K MRRMRR journey
Joaquín del Río11 min
A line chart trending upward on a screen, masking an underlying churn problem
Post-mortem

Why we killed our SaaS at $12K MRR (a post-mortem)

Cadence reached $12,400 in MRR with 140 accounts and an up-and-to-the-right graph — then the founders shut it down on purpose. This is the post-mortem of the most dangerous number in startups: too much to walk away from, too little to live on. The retention they didn't track, the customer they optimized for and shouldn't have, the fork they took too late, and the unusually honest way they ended it.

$12K MRRPost-mortem
Joaquín del Río10 min
A developer's workspace with a laptop, notebook and coffee on a wooden desk
Day in the life

From freelance to $50K MRR in 18 months: a day in the life

Tomás Iglesias turned six years of hourly freelancing into a productized service business doing $51K MRR with a team of five — and his hours dropped from 60+ to 45 a week while revenue doubled. A real Tuesday, with the numbers: the utilization metric he checks before coffee, the $28K over-hiring scare, why he still does every sales call himself, and the $13K of actual monthly profit hiding behind the headline.

$50K MRR18 months inDay in the life
Joaquín del Río10 min
Analytics dashboards on a laptop showing a steep drop-off after launch
Lessons

A 90-day post-mortem of a failed AI app launch

The app worked. The demo hit 140,000 views and 412 people signed up on launch day. Ninety days later: 11 paying users, ~$209 MRR, and an $8,000 monthly burn. This is the boring middle where AI products actually die — the retention cliff the launch hid, the month spent building the wrong thing, the five user calls that came too late, and the specific trap of an AI demo that's too good to be true.

90-day arcLessons
Anya Petrova10 min
By the numbers
5
Stories published
$66K
MRR represented
5
Editorial beats

One founder story per issue, with the spreadsheet attached.

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