Sequences, not theory. Each playbook is written for a specific stage and names the things you should actively stop doing while you run it.
A framework helps you decide. A playbook tells you the order. These SaaS playbooks are sequences — what to do, in what order, for a specific situation a solo founder is actually in.
Every playbook below names what to ignore at that stage. That section is usually the more useful half.
Most SaaS playbooks are written by people running companies with growth teams and a budget. The advice is not wrong — it is simply unavailable to one person with eleven customers and eight hours a week.
Stage is the strongest predictor of what you should be doing. The same action that is correct at $500 MRR is a waste of a month at $8,000.
| Stage | The job | Playbook |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-launch | Get in front of people at all | SaaS launch playbook |
| Launch day | Get the 24 hours that count right | Launching on Product Hunt |
| Launched, quiet | Work out which of four things broke | Launch flopped, no signups |
| Launched, signups, no revenue | Diagnose why nobody upgrades | Signups but no paying customers |
| $0–$1k MRR | Find ten people who pay and stay | $0 to $1k MRR |
| $1k–$10k MRR | Turn one channel into a system | $1k to $10k MRR |
| $10k–$30k MRR | Subtract before you add | $10k to $30k without hiring |
| Any | Keep the week from disappearing | Weekly operating cadence |
| Any, part-time | Make real progress in four hours a week | Building around a full-time job |
Work the stage you are in, not the one you want to be in. Founders at $600 MRR reading $10k MRR advice end up building infrastructure for customers they do not have yet.
Eight decisions come up for nearly every solo SaaS founder, usually at an awkward moment. Each has a defensible answer that most articles refuse to give.
Pricing before you launch — what to charge with zero customers to test against, and why guessing high is cheaper to fix than guessing low.
Waitlist or keep building — the decision before the launch playbook applies, and the one most pre-launch founders get backwards.
How long your free trial should be — the answer follows from your time-to-value, not from what competitors do. Most solo products should not run a thirty-day trial.
Freemium or free trial — for a solo founder this is not a close call, and the reasoning is about support load rather than conversion rates.
How to raise your prices — including who to grandfather, how much notice to give, and how much churn to accept as the cost of the change.
Building the pricing page — the layout and copy decisions that determine whether the number you chose actually converts.
Launching annual plans — when the cash-flow case outweighs the churn-masking risk, and how to price the discount so it doesn't train people to wait for one.
Whether to run a lifetime deal — the math founders skip before they regret it, and the one rule that makes a lifetime deal survivable: a real cap you actually honour.
Acquiring a customer and keeping one are different jobs. These five cover the mechanics of the second, from the first trial email to the moment someone hits cancel — and what to do with the ones who slip through anyway.
The trial email sequence — what to send on which day, and why most solo founders send too many emails too early.
Winning back churned customers — the three-message sequence for customers who paid and then cancelled, not the same problem as a signup who never activated.
The cancellation flow — what to ask on the way out, and the difference between a save offer that works and one that just delays the same cancellation by a month.
Getting churn feedback that is usable — the cancellation form gives you a category, the reply gives you the specifics, and a canned exit survey gets neither.
What to do with cold signups — different audience, different message than a churned payer. Most of this list never activated, and treating it like a win-back list wastes the send.
Most acquisition advice assumes a team. These four are written for one person running the channel alone, with the volume constraints that implies.
Cold email at low volume — a hundred well-researched emails a week beats ten thousand generic ones, and the deliverability math backs that up.
SEO when you are the only writer — the publishing cadence and topic selection that work when one person is the entire content team.
Building in public as a channel — what to actually share, how often, and why most solo founders quit before the compounding starts to show.
Referral programmes — when a referral programme is worth building at your size, and the simpler version that beats a points system for a one-person product.
Use a framework when you are stuck on what to do. Use a playbook when you know what to do and need the order.
If you are unsure whether your price is right, that is a framework question — start with the pricing framework. If you have already decided the price is too low and need to execute the increase, that is a playbook.
The full set of decision tools sits at SaaS frameworks for solo founders. The two clusters are meant to be used together: diagnose with a framework, then execute with a playbook.
Not sure which stage you are actually in? Marcus reads your numbers and names the playbook to run this month.
Start free →Every playbook here has a "what to ignore" section, and it exists because the binding constraint on a solo founder is attention rather than knowledge.
You already know you should be doing content, and community, and cold outreach, and a referral programme, and a changelog, and a newsletter. The reason none of it is happening is that all of it is on the list at once.
A playbook that only adds to your list makes things worse. The useful version tells you what to actively stop doing this quarter, which is why each page names it explicitly.
A rough test for whether you are in the right playbook: you should be able to describe this quarter's work in one sentence without using the word "and". If you need two "ands", you are running three playbooks at once.
If you have revenue, start with the stage playbook matching your MRR. If you do not, start with the launch playbook — or the flopped launch page if you have already launched and it went quiet.
If your problem is that you cannot tell which of these applies, the constraint is diagnosis rather than execution. Breaking an MRR plateau covers the most common version of that, and bootstrapped founder coaching covers how the priorities change once you are past $10k.
A SaaS playbook is a sequence of actions for a specific situation — a launch, a price increase, a move from $1k to $10k MRR. It differs from a framework, which helps you decide what to do. Use a framework when you are stuck on the decision and a playbook when you need the order.
Start with the playbook matching your current MRR stage. Founders at $600 MRR who follow $10k MRR advice end up building infrastructure for customers they do not have. If you have not launched, start with the launch playbook instead.
Not effectively. The binding constraint on a solo founder is attention, not knowledge. Running three playbooks at thirty percent each is the most common failure, and it usually gets diagnosed as the playbooks not working rather than as an attention problem.
A framework organises a decision — it tells you what the options are and how to choose. A playbook is an ordered sequence for a situation where the decision is already made. Diagnose with a framework, then execute with a playbook.
Tell Marcus your MRR, your customer count and your channel. You get one playbook to run and a list of what to drop.
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