Chime Social

Spencer Jones had spent 18 months building a product that generated zero revenue. Facing the harsh reality that nobody wanted what he'd built, he made a radical decision: build four products in four months (one every three months) until something stuck. He wanted to connect with software engineers and get more active on Twitter, so he launched Chime as a Twitter scheduling tool designed specifically for developers with features like properly formatted code snippets.

The initial Twitter scheduling product didn't gain traction despite being technically solid. Developers, it turned out, weren't the persona driving Twitter growth. But while working with the Twitter API, Spencer discovered something interesting—he built a chart showing his own best posting times based on when his followers were active. When he tweeted a picture of that chart, he "instantly got some interest." He quickly productized and shipped the analytics feature, and "got like four or five more customers."

His first customer was Dustin McCaffrey (who had appeared on Nathan Latka's show), who was running a Twitter campaign offering to be the first customer for indie makers. Spencer joined in and McCaffrey became his first paying customer at $7/month. That early validation was crucial—McCaffrey later upgraded to the annual plan to "show longer support." Spencer credits this to just "putting yourself out there" and hustling to find early believers.

Twitter became Spencer's only growth channel, which made sense for a Twitter tool. He used several tactics: tweeting about new features, announcing "10 slots left at this pricing point" which sold out in 24 hours and took him from 10 to 50 customers, and an official product rename launch with a 25% one-day promotion that pushed him to around $500 MRR. He emphasized that network effects help—people talk about Chime Social on Twitter, so other users discover it organically. Spencer stayed skeptical of significant price increases, noting he'd heard from customers of competitors that their pricing was too high. He preferred to focus on building new features (like content analytics) to justify future price increases.

Spencer has 70-80 customers paying $9/month or $89/year, generating approximately $500 MRR ($6,000 ARR). He still works full-time as a software engineer at Morning Console, running Chime as a side project. His target is 15,000 MRR before going all-in, which he estimates will take a while given his family of four. He's in talks with an iOS developer to partner on a native iOS app, marking his first expansion beyond solo development. His approach emphasizes building in public, validating features before shipping, and letting the product's Twitter relevance drive organic discovery.