Pckgr i el SaaS “avorrit” d’Intune: el camí fins als 60.000 dòlars al mes
Thomas Mahony explica com va convertir l’empaquetatge d’aplicacions d’Intune en Pckgr, un SaaS que afirma que factura 60.000 dòlars al mes.
Pckgr és un SaaS que automatitza una feina molt concreta: preparar, carregar i desplegar aplicacions de Windows a través de Microsoft Intune. En l’entrevista de Starter Story, el fundador Thomas Mahony afirma que el negoci factura aproximadament 60.000 dòlars al mes amb més d’un miler de clients.
La xifra és una declaració del fundador mostrada pel programa, no un compte auditat públicament. El valor del vídeo és sobretot el recorregut: detectar una tasca repetitiva dins de la pròpia feina, validar-la amb administradors reals i convertir-la en un producte estret però recurrent.
1. El problema “avorrit” que hi havia darrere de Pckgr
Mahony presenta Pckgr a 01:36 com una eina web perquè els administradors de TI despleguin aplicacions a Microsoft Intune amb pocs clics.
Intune permet distribuir aplicacions Win32, però l’administrador ha de preparar el paquet, definir ordres d’instal·lació i desinstal·lació, requisits, regles de detecció, dependències i assignacions. La documentació de Microsoft confirma que és un procés amb moltes decisions i que les instal·lacions han de ser silencioses.
El fundador explica que, en la seva feina, empaquetar una sola aplicació i comprovar que s’instal·lava correctament podia ocupar prop d’una hora (02:16). Va buscar alternatives, però les trobava massa tècniques o massa cares per al segment que volia servir.
La idea no va néixer d’una pluja d’idees genèrica. Va néixer de veure una fricció repetida, conèixer-ne els detalls i comprovar als fòrums que altres professionals patien el mateix.
2. Un producte petit pot resoldre una operació crítica
Des de fora, la funció sembla senzilla: escollir una aplicació, configurar-ne el desplegament i enviar-la al tenant de Microsoft del client. La demostració comença a 08:03.
El vídeo mostra aquest flux:
- seleccionar un tenant i obrir la biblioteca d’aplicacions;
- triar un paquet propi o una aplicació ja gestionada;
- ajustar opcions de desplegament;
- demanar al servei que prepari el paquet i el carregui a Intune;
- assignar-lo als dispositius corresponents.
La interfície és austera, però al darrere hi ha automatització, metadades, proves, integració amb Microsoft i manteniment de versions. És un exemple de com el valor d’un producte B2B pot estar en eliminar risc i hores manuals, no en tenir una aparença espectacular.
3. La primera validació va arribar abans del negoci
Quan l’equip va tenir un MVP, el va publicar gratuïtament a Reddit per trobar usuaris del nínxol (03:13). Van rebre adopció, errors, suggeriments i també comentaris durs.
La seqüència és important:
- primer, exposar una versió funcional al públic exacte;
- després, reparar errors i estabilitzar el servei;
- finalment, cobrar per comprovar si el problema tenia valor econòmic.
Pckgr va introduir una subscripció inicial de 25 dòlars al mes (03:50). El primer pagament va validar una cosa que els elogis no podien demostrar: algú estava disposat a incorporar l’eina al seu pressupost.
4. La distribució va aprofitar experts amb una audiència molt precisa
Després de la beta, Mahony assenyala les col·laboracions amb Microsoft MVPs com el canal de captació més efectiu (04:09). Aquests especialistes podien demostrar el producte davant d’administradors que ja entenien el problema.
El vídeo defensa una idea de màrqueting acumulatiu: una demostració a YouTube o un tutorial pot continuar apareixent en cerques mesos o anys més tard. En un nínxol tècnic, una peça útil i molt específica pot convertir millor que una campanya massiva.
No és una recepta automàtica. Una col·laboració només funciona si l’audiència és rellevant, el professional conserva credibilitat i queda clar quan hi ha patrocini o remuneració. Però el principi és sòlid: distribuir on la gent ja busca la solució.
5. El mètode de cinc passos del fundador
A partir de 05:35, Mahony resumeix el seu criteri per trobar un SaaS de nínxol.
Construir en un àmbit on ja tens credibilitat
Ell treballava diàriament amb Intune. Coneixia el vocabulari, els casos estranys i les conseqüències d’un desplegament defectuós. Aquesta experiència reduïa la distància entre una idea i una eina útil.
Buscar dolor, no “idees”
Una queixa recurrent, una fulla de càlcul manual o una operació que roba una hora cada setmana poden ser indicis millors que una tendència general. El problema ha de ser freqüent, prou important i compartit per un grup identificable.
Evitar la competició pel mercat més gran
Segons el fundador, les alternatives existents miraven sobretot organitzacions amb milions de dispositius. Pckgr es va concentrar en empreses més petites i proveïdors gestionats que necessitaven una opció més accessible.
Cobrar aviat
Un preu modest durant la beta prova si l’usuari només té curiositat o si rep valor. També obliga a donar suport, facturar i entendre les expectatives d’un client.
Optimitzar per llibertat, no només per escala
Mahony diu que ha mantingut un equip reduït i costos continguts. La seva mesura d’èxit inclou treballar des de casa i conservar equilibri vital, no només maximitzar plantilla o valoració.
6. El producte i els preus actuals confirmen el nínxol, no els ingressos
La documentació pública de Pckgr descriu una biblioteca de més de mil aplicacions, actualitzacions i suport per a múltiples tenants segons el pla. Els preus publicats comencen en 49 dòlars mensuals per a fins a 100 dispositius i pugen segons l’escala.
Aquestes dades permeten comprovar que el producte existeix i que té una oferta comercial coherent amb l’entrevista. No permeten deduir la facturació, el marge, la retenció ni el nombre exacte de clients.
Starter Story afirma que el negoci està autofinançat i que ha arribat als 60.000 dòlars mensuals. Sense estats financers independents, convé tractar-ho com una xifra aportada pel protagonista.
7. La pila tecnològica no és la part més exòtica
El fundador detalla la tecnologia a 09:31:
- Bubble al frontal;
- GitHub i GitHub Actions per al codi, la construcció i les proves dels paquets;
- Azure Functions per a processos de servidor;
- Monday.com per al seguiment del desenvolupament i els tiquets;
- Microsoft 365 per a l’equip.
La combinació de no-code, automatització i serveis gestionats li va permetre construir sense crear tota la infraestructura des de zero. Això no vol dir que la seguretat sigui trivial: Pckgr opera en entorns empresarials, integra tenants i prepara programari que s’instal·larà en dispositius administrats.
En aquest tipus de servei són centrals el control d’accés, la separació entre clients, la traçabilitat, la validació dels paquets, la gestió de secrets i la resposta a actualitzacions compromeses.
8. Microsoft també ofereix un catàleg: la diferenciació ha de ser concreta
Microsoft disposa del seu Enterprise App Catalog, amb aplicacions Win32 preempaquetades i opcions de gestió dins d’Intune. Això confirma que el problema és real, però també crea una alternativa directa per a determinats clients.
Pckgr ha de competir en amplitud de catàleg, automatització, experiència, preu, suport, velocitat d’actualització i gestió multi-tenant. Per a un fundador, aquesta és una lliçó important: trobar un nínxol no elimina la competència; obliga a saber per què un segment prefereix la teva solució.
9. “Comença” és útil si va acompanyat de validació
El consell final de Mahony és començar aviat, publicar i iterar amb usuaris reals (10:09). Les eines d’IA poden accelerar la programació, però també faciliten que altres construeixin una idea semblant.
La velocitat útil no és escriure codi sense direcció. És reduir ràpidament les incerteses:
- el problema passa sovint?
- qui té pressupost per resoldre’l?
- quina part és més dolorosa?
- què ha de funcionar perquè confiïn en el producte?
- quin canal arriba a aquests usuaris?
- continuaran pagant després del primer mes?
Conclusions principals
Pckgr il·lustra una via menys vistosa però potent per crear SaaS: observar una feina repetitiva que coneixes bé, resoldre-la per a una comunitat petita, publicar aviat, cobrar i créixer amb contingut especialitzat.
La dada de 60.000 dòlars al mes és una afirmació de l’entrevista i no s’ha de convertir en una promesa de resultats. El que sí que es pot verificar és l’existència d’un problema tècnic complex, una oferta comercial pública i un producte enfocat a reduir feina manual dins d’Intune.
La lliçó més transferible no és “fes una aplicació avorrida”. És busca un procés car que entenguis millor que la majoria i parla amb qui el pateix abans d’intentar escalar-lo.
Contrast i context
Fonts consultades
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03
Pckgr Docs What is Pckgr?
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04
Pckgr Docs Pckgr Pricing Model
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05
Microsoft Learn Add, assign and monitor a Win32 app in Microsoft Intune
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06
Microsoft Learn Microsoft Intune Enterprise App Catalog
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0:00
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to the outside world, it's really boring, but now we're making about 60K a month. If you look online right now, literally everyone is chasing the same AI at ideas. But what if I told you that building in a boring niche is actually where the real money is at? What started as a side project has since grown into a full-time business? Well, meet Thomas. He's a guy who spent years in a boring 9 to 5 doing the same manual tasks. Then one day he thought, what if I could automate all this and turn it into a business? I realized it can sometimes take you know, and how it's successfully packaged in application. But when I looked more at the solutions out that they didn't really fit what I wanted. So he built and launched a tiny boring app. And today that app makes over $60,000 a month. So I asked Thomas to come on to the channel to break it all down. In this episode, we'll dive into How to find boring app ideas that can make money, though one piece of content that got him hundreds of paying users overnight for free and how a million dollar idea might be sitting right in front of your face right now. This one is going to be fun. I'm Pat Walls and this is starter story. Alright guys, real quick before we dive in, Thomas is about to break down how we built this boring sast into a $60,000 per month business and I think Microsoft's projects like this are super underrated. So we put together a free report with 52 proven microsass ideas that you can draw inspiration from. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but for now let's get into the video. Okay, Tom, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built and what's your story. Hey everyone, I'm the founder of Package.
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1:39
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Let's say browse a base tool that allows IT admins to deploy applications to a platform called Microsoft in tune with one click. And now we're making about 60K a month. As you can see here, we did 447K as opposed to 910K, which is really good growth for us and we're really happy with that. That's insane. This business is doing $60,000 a month and this sort of like boring idea. I've never even heard of. Let's talk about the idea and how you found this idea. I think a lot of people watching this are like, hey, where can I find an idea like this? So how did you come up with the idea for this and how do you validate it? As I was working with InChun, I realized it can sometimes take you know, an hour to successfully package an application and verify that it's gonna install. I started looking on forums, and I noticed there were a lot of other IT admins that have the exact same problem. But when I looked more at the solutions out there,
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2:33
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they didn't really fit what I wanted. They were either too technical, too expensive, so I thought, you know, there's room or there was an inch to build cost affordable browser-based modern tool that could do just one simple job deploy applications. When I built this, this was before AI coding tools like cursor and cloud code existed. A lot of this had to be manually written by myself. I can definitely say it's great now that some AI tools do exist and makes it a lot easier. Okay cool, well thanks for sharing that. The more important thing to talk about now is obviously distribution validation. So how did you find your first customer for this boring set? Yes. And how'd you grow up from there? Once we had at the time what we thought was a working MVP, we knew it was time to get it out there and see if anyone actually was interested in using the product. We knew that Reddit would be the best place to do this. So we launched the product completely free. It gained a lot of traction quickly and some love the product. Some gave us really good feedback
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3:32
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and there were some people that were just downright rude and left pretty harsh comments. And that's something I've had to really learn if you wanna make it, you sort of have to be able to accept that some people are just not gonna like what you built. After fixing the early bugs and stabilizing the platform based on the initial feedback, we decided to bring in a $25 US dollar subscription fee per month. That's when we started to make money from it. I remember sitting there and getting the first notification on my phone of a customer signed up and was actually willing to pay for something I'd built. It was very exciting. Once we moved past the initial beta phase, probably the most effective strategy and something I'd recommend for everyone is partnering with people who specialize in the products. So for us, that was Microsoft MVP's. They would create demos of the products, which was a highly targeted audience. That approach was really, really good, because I'm really into planting seeds for marketing. And so like a YouTube video, for instance, someone could stumble across it two years later
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4:30
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and become a customer just something that you paid for a long time ago. So that return on investment is huge. Thomas's story is incredible, $60,000 a month, thousands of paying customers, and 100% bootstrap. But here's the thing about the type of people that use this product. They really care about security and compliance. These are the types of customers who want to know whether your product is socked to a compliant or ISO 27001 certified. And if the answer is no, you might be in trouble. This is why we partnered with Vanta on this video. Vanta automates all the painful parts of compliance, so you can keep building instead of drowning in paperwork. Right now, Vanta is offering a special deal for starters to reviewers. So, if you're building for businesses and want to skip the compliance headache, then check out Vanta at the first link in the description. Huge thank you to Vanta for this partnership. Alright, let's get back to the episode. You found a great SaaS idea, but I think a lot of people watching this are wondering, how do I find a low competition niche SaaS that can make $60,000 a month? So if you were to start over today, knowing everything that you know, what would you do? Step one is to build in an area where you already have credibility. For instance, working in Microsoft Inchune to the outside world, but I was living in breathing Microsoft Inchune. I've even had customers talk to me when I've supported them with something that they can tell that I really love what I'm doing, so it reminds something that you're credible in. Step two is to look for pain points instead of ideas. If you're noticing that people where you're working at complaining about something look to see if there's a solution there
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6:03
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that you can build a product, customers will ultimately end up buying to help with that issue. Step three is to avoid competing with the masses while they fight over the huge markets. There's an always an opportunity to target the smaller audiences that want something different. And in our instance, it was the competitors focusing on the customers with millions of devices where we were targeting the smaller businesses and there was planning of them and enough for us to make it full-time business out of it. Step 4 is to charge early even if the price is low. We charge during the beta and I guess that really validated that customers were willing to pay. There's no point chasing that idea if in the early stages no one's willing to pay for it. It just doesn't make any sense. Step 5 is to optimize for freedom instead of scale at all costs. So for us, we've got a really small team. We focused on running things with small costs. That means that the income that we make is ours. And we've been able to work from home and we've been able to have work life balance. And I can truly say that building the business I've been able to build a life that I'm really happy with. Okay, this is what I love about Thomas's story. He did not build something flashy. He found a boring overlooked problem. And now he makes $60,000 a month from it. So, you might be watching a wondering, where do I find a niche like that? And that's exactly why we built the Microsoft's ideas database. It's a free report breaking down 52 Microsoft's ideas that are already making millions with real revenue numbers, growth tactics, and pricing models that actually work. You can dig through this data right now and find a boring, profitable niche that nobody's
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7:43
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paying attention to. So my question is, what are you waiting for? Hit the link in the description, grab the report for free, and start building your next idea. All right, let's get back to the episode. Thanks for sharing that playbook, great playbook for trying to find a SaaS in 2026. I really still don't understand this Microsoft into and thing. Would you be able to just show me a quick demo of how it works? It's a browser-based tool that helps IT admins deploy software through Microsoft in tune with one click. We're here in the app library. We've got our test company packages selected, all we need to do is come here and select add-on app. You can either select a custom application, which is something that you've uploaded just so, or one from our own catalog. So we'll go ahead and do one from the catalog. These are all pre-managed applications. For instance, we can come here, we can click 7sip, and get to add it in. And you can see here from the status, it's a waiting deployment. So we can come down and click deployment. You get a few options to change a few settings and do some advanced configurations, and we'll just click deploy to Inchern. And that sends a request to the backend servers, which packages up the app, and uploads it into their Microsoft tenant. And this spring's open-inch, and we can see the application is here ready to deploy. It brings in metadata like the description, logo, and then you can view it for a few different details. So all we have to do is come down here, and we can assign to all devices. And that's it. It'll now deploy out to all the company devices. Well, I have no idea exactly what you did there. Because I don't know anything about Microsoft Intune,
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9:12
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but what I think is cool is that you're app. It does something pretty simple. I don't want to make it feel smaller than it is, because I'm sure it's complex behind the scenes. But when I look at that, it doesn't have an fancy design. It does something that's useful to companies to use and it makes $60,000 a month. And that's amazing. On that same note, I'm curious. What's the tech stack behind this? How complicated was this to build? The main tech stack behind it is, we use bubble I.o. which is on the front end. We do all the package build and testing using GitHub actions, and we host all our code base there as well. We use Microsoft Azure for all our serverless functions, And then we use Monday.com. We use that for tracking development progress and managing tickets. And then on top of that, we have Microsoft 365 licensing for each of the staff members. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing that. Last question that we ask all founders to come on starter story.
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10:00
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If you could go back in time and stand on young, Tom's shoulders before you've built this $60,000 per month SaaS idea, what would be your advice? My advice and this goes for anyone is just start. With the tools available today, code and chatGVT. Building software has never been more accessible but the downside of that means that someone else could build your idea while you're still sitting there planning it. So speed is the key, get things going. You want to launch early and share it with your target audience and then listen closely to the feedback that they provide. From there it just becomes a continuous cycle of improving the product based on what the customers need and want and their it comes your continuous improvement and development. Local, that's great advice. Thank you Tom for coming on to the channel and sharing. You obviously didn't come here to benefit a whole lot because it's probably not a lot of Microsoft Intune users watching this. So thank you for sharing and showing that you can make $60,000 from a boring SaaS. Thanks for having me on guys. All right, produce our Gus. What do you think? It just reminds me that there's a million ways to build a successful business. I spend a lot of time on X.
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11:05
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You probably do too. A lot of people watching this do and trying to find ideas from like this like social media, backo chamber, bubble about all these AI app ideas. Like if you want to find an idea that can actually make money in the long term, like his business. He didn't show these numbers, but I assume it's really low-churn. It's IT admins and people using this stuff inside of companies. This is extremely low-churn. This is a great business. Anyone watching this should realize that if it's boring and it doesn't make sense, that might be actually direction to go. Yeah, I can think about all the times I've sat in my nine or five and thought, man, I wish this was easier. That's kind of what he did. If you are in a job and you're looking for an idea, you want to build something on the side. Maybe you could do something similar. Even if you don't know how to code, if you want to do that, you can. If you join Starter Story Build, if you do, we'll help you find an idea, help you build it, and launch it, and get in the hands of real users in just a couple days. I'll put that link in the description. Thank you guys for watching this one. See you in the next one. Peace.