The spreadsheet that broke me
Like most indie hackers, I started tracking my SaaS metrics in a spreadsheet. MRR in one tab, churn calculations in another, waitlist signups in a third. Every Monday morning I would spend 30 minutes copying numbers from Stripe, cross-referencing with my database, and trying to figure out if my business was actually growing.
It worked — until it did not.
The spreadsheet grew. The formulas broke. I started skipping the Monday ritual because it felt like busywork instead of building. And the one time I needed to check my churn rate for a pricing decision, the numbers were three weeks stale.
The tools that did not fit
I looked at what was available. The analytics tools were built for Series A companies with dedicated data teams. The waitlist tools were standalone products that did not talk to anything else. The project trackers were generic Notion templates that required hours of setup.
Nothing was built for my stage — the stage where you have a few paying customers, a growing waitlist, and a hundred decisions to make with imperfect data.
What I wanted instead
I wanted one place where I could:
- See my revenue numbers without logging into Stripe and doing mental math
- Track my waitlist without a separate tool and a separate login
- Set goals and actually see progress toward them
- Share milestones when I hit them, because building in public matters at this stage
So I built it.
What IndieBase is today
IndieBase connects to your Stripe account and shows you MRR, churn, and LTV in real time. It lets you launch waitlists with built-in referral mechanics. It tracks your goals and lets you share wins with your audience.
It is not the most feature-rich analytics platform. It is not trying to be. It is the toolkit that fits the stage most indie hackers are actually at — the stage where you need clarity, not complexity.
Why I am sharing this
Because every tool I trust was built by someone who had the same problem I did. And I think the best way to earn trust in this community is to be transparent about why this exists and who it is for.
If you are an indie hacker tracking your metrics in a spreadsheet, I built this for you. If you are launching your first product and need a waitlist that actually converts, I built this for you. If you want to see your numbers without the overhead of enterprise tooling, I built this for you.
That is the story. The rest is in the product.