The storyHow they got there
Andrew Pierno launched Microns around 2020 as a newsletter and marketplace for buying and selling micro-SaaS businesses — targeting a gap in the acquisition market for companies valued under $100K, where Flippa was noisy and larger marketplaces ignored the small end.
The first ten buyers and sellers were sourced from Andrew posting deals he was personally working on, on Twitter. His personal brand in the indie-hacker community was the initial distribution channel. The first hundred came from the newsletter compounding: each successful transaction generated a testimonial, which drove the next deal.
At maturity, the channel mix: Twitter/X and Andrew's personal brand (~50%), newsletter compounding and referrals (~25%), SEO and the marketplace landing page (~15%), and Indie Hackers community (~10%). Paid ads were never tried. Twitter audience and newsletter were doubled down on.
The business model combined listing fees with a 10% transaction fee on each successful acquisition. CAC was effectively $0 — the audience drove all supply and demand. The two-sided marketplace network effect compounded as each successful sale attracted both new buyers (seeing proof of deals closing) and new sellers (seeing clean exits). By report, mid-five-figure MRR.
Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from
Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.