How Filip Panoski Quit His $7K/mo Job and Built Bazzly.ai to $1,757 MRR in 15 Months

Fifteen months ago, Filip Panoski had $0 MRR, zero customers, and exactly 10 followers on X. He was working a comfortable $7K/month day job while chasing the "indie hacker dream" on the side.

For 7 years, he built 8 different side projects. Most were technically impressive—cool UIs, clever abstractions—but they were classic “nice-to-haves.” People signed up, poked around, said “this is cool,” then never returned or paid.

Today, he is the full-time, solo founder of Bazzly.ai with $1,757 in MRR, 40 loyal paying customers, and 1.7K followers. There was no viral launch. No paid ads. No Product Hunt spike. Just consistent execution on a tool that solves one very specific, recurring pain for SaaS founders: turning Reddit into a predictable customer acquisition channel.

Here is the BS-free breakdown of exactly how Filip built, validated, and scaled Bazzly.

1. The Realization: Validating Distribution Before Code

After 7 years of zero-revenue side projects, Filip finally quit his job and went all-in on Bazzly. But he changed his entire approach.

Instead of guessing what people wanted, he deliberately chose a problem he knew had proven demand. He noticed competitors in the Reddit automation space were already collecting monthly subscriptions.

“There were competitor tools that were already making recurring revenue, and I knew I can compete with them so I started building one.” — Filip

That single insight—look for tools where people are already paying monthly—became his ultimate validation filter. If your tool solves a one-time issue, you are doomed to hunt for new customers forever just to keep your revenue flat. You have to build a recurring painkiller.

Before writing code, he tested the distribution. He spun up a waitlist and sent cold DMs to his target audience pitching the concept. He got 30 signups purely from those cold DMs. The problem and the distribution channel were validated.

2. The Product: Reddit Marketing on Autopilot

Bazzly isn't just an AI wrapper; it completely replaces a tedious manual workflow. It scans Reddit 24/7 for high-intent posts (e.g., people asking “What’s the best X for Y?”).

The core feature set includes:

• Auto-drafting & Posting: Generates personalized replies to high-intent leads.

• "Boost Mode" & Smart Upvotes: Strategically ranks comments to #1 (with a 95% claimed success rate).

• Zero-Ban Risk: Allows users to post via Bazzly's own high-karma accounts (12.5K+ karma) or via their own personal accounts using a Chrome extension.

• DM Automation: Sends personalized DMs based on users' exact posts.

He adopted a credit-based pricing model (one core plan + top-ups). For example, it costs 10 credits per comment via a high-karma account, 0.2 per upvote, and 0.1 per AI draft.

The ROI for busy founders is immediate. One early user, Victoria Matejevic (co-founder at vtoraraka.mk), reported: "Reddit went from hit-or-miss to around 60 signups a month. And I’m spending WAY less time on it."

Another user noted: "I used to spend 3 hours a week doing this manually. Now it takes 10 minutes."

3. The "Leaky Bucket" Crisis & Dogfooding

Filip often says, “Building the MVP was easy.” The hard part was the next three months.

He launched fast using the exact cold DM strategy he validated with. His simple template (which still boasts a ~30% reply rate) was:

"Hey, saw that you’re [problem_summary]. I built a tool [benefit]. Want to try it out?"

Within months, Bazzly hit $100 MRR. But then the funnel broke. Users signed up, churned, and were replaced by new ones. Net growth was exactly zero.

Instead of pouring more traffic into a leaky bucket, Filip did the uncomfortable thing most founders skip: he paused all marketing for three months.

He interviewed every churned user, asking: "Why did you cancel? What were you expecting? What would have made you stay?"

The Fix: Filip realized users needed value instantly. He rebuilt the onboarding so users simply enter their product URL, and Bazzly's AI pre-fills their keywords, subreddits, and tracking parameters automatically. He added tactical re-engagement emails.

He also began aggressively dogfooding his own product. “Becoming your own lab rat for 30 days will tell you faster than any survey,” he noted. Churn plummeted, and the funnel was finally ready to scale.

4. The Exact 4-Phase Growth Playbook ($0 to $1.7K+ MRR)

Filip’s growth chart is a masterclass in compounding consistency. It shows a long flatline near $0 from mid-2025 through early 2026, followed by steady compounding growth that accelerated sharply into a hockey stick curve.

He used a strict, sequenced playbook to get there:

Phase 1: $0 → First Paying Customers (Conversations, Not Content)

Filip didn’t start by tweeting into the void. He went directly to where his Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) hung out (Reddit threads with clear pain) and sent value-first cold DMs. The goal was simple: get signups and collect real objections. This unscalable phase secured his first customers and crucial product insights.

Phase 2: ~$100 MRR → Pause & Fix the Leaky Bucket

He stopped acquiring users entirely. He rebuilt onboarding, tightened positioning, and focused on value delivery. "This was the hardest phase. It felt like going backwards. But it was the most important thing I did."

Phase 3: $100 → $300 MRR → Scale Outreach on a Healthy Funnel

With churn under control, he resumed cold DMs and automated comments—this time using Bazzly itself. Because the funnel was fixed, every new user added net MRR instead of just replacing someone who left.

Phase 4: $300 → $1K+ MRR → Layer Content on Real Experience

Only after the core engine was working did Filip layer in content. He turned his customer conversations and building journey into posts on X, Reddit, and Indie Hackers.
The flywheel activated: Real experience → Resonant content → Traffic → More customers → More experience. ---

5. Key Takeaways for Indie Hackers

Filip attributes his growth past $1K MRR to three simple rules:

1. Weekly customer conversations.

2. Shipping what paying users request.

3. Refusing to build what nobody asked for.

Here is what other solo builders can learn from his journey:

• Recurring problems = recurring revenue. If users can’t explain why they pay you in one sentence, you built a nice-to-have.

• Launch ugly, nail onboarding. Make sure users hit that "Aha!" moment with zero friction, and use re-engagement emails to pull them back in.

• Talk to users 1:1. Especially the ones who cancel. Analytics never replace real conversations.

• Fix churn before scaling. More marketing on a broken funnel just equals more waste.

• Stack channels only on top of what already works. Nail one healthy acquisition channel before trying to be everywhere.

• Product Hunt is not a strategy. Filip still hasn’t launched on Product Hunt. Hope is not a distribution strategy; a daily presence where your customers hang out is.

Conclusion

Bazzly isn’t flashy AI hype. It’s a focused tool that replaces a painful weekly workflow. Filip proved you don’t need a massive audience, VC money, or a perfect product. You need a clear recurring pain, validated distribution, a brutal focus on retention, and the discipline to show up every day when the Stripe dashboard is still flat.

As Filip summarizes his own journey:

"Not the smartest or fastest founder. Just consistent."

Connect with the Founder & Product:

• Founder X (Twitter): @FilipPanoski

• Product: Bazzly.ai