2024 Recap: Growth, Wins, and New Challenges

As the year comes to a close, I wanted to share with you the recap of this year. Many things happened and it’s an interesting exercise to think about what have been done successfully or failed.

A Year of accomplishments

At the start of the year, I had ambitious goals for IACrea. I wanted to grow the business while reducing churn, launch new SaaS projects, and explore new collaborations. The growth was slower than I expected, but I’m quite happy with all the journey.

One of the biggest highlights? IACrea crossed €10k MRR during the year! It’s hard to believe that just 1,5 years ago, I was building the MVP for what has now become a tool used by real estate professionals across the globe. And I connected with industry leaders, with several deals in progress that I hope I’ll sign soon.

Beyond IACrea, I ventured into new territories.

• I made collaborations with other people

  • To create a SaaS for affiliate management

  • To develop a video SaaS that will be used by IACrea for real estate, and other sectors

  • A plugin to use AI within google sheets.

I was invited in several podcasts, including the famous Starter Story channel for entrepreneurs, find the video there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjCa8IFjM2E
Oh, and after 9 years working at IBM as full time job, this business relation is over.
I became a full time indie hacker 😄 

… Not without Challenges

Of course, it wasn’t all smooth. Like any entrepreneurial journey, I faced difficulties.

Reducing churn for IACrea was a big challenge. Early in the year, churn rates were around 40%. Quite huge! To tackle this, I listened closely to my clients. I introduced credit rollovers for unused photos, highly improved the quality of our outputs, and launched annual plans. And now, the churn is 4,65% :D

Collaborating with people I didn’t know before for the Google Sheets plugin the team across time zones proved trickier than expected. Miscommunication, cultural differences, and delayed timelines were frustrating at times. But these experiences taught me the importance of clarity, patience, and adaptability in partnerships.

NextJSDirectory wasn’t a frank success, I spent a lot of energy on it but the 2k earned with it probably weren’t worth the time spent building.

Lessons Learned

This year reminded me of a few truths about entrepreneurship:

1. Validate before you build. One of my past failures was creating something useful but not knowing how to find clients. Now, I start when I know how to reach the audience.

2. Personal branding matters. Growing my audience on Twitter (I crossed 20k followers!) has been a game-changer. Not just for visibility, but for finding collaborators, clients, and opportunities. I even started Bluesky (find me here)

3. Say no when necessary. I turned down a buyout offer for IACrea this year. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the offer wasn’t good enough and happened to early in my development stage.

Looking Ahead to 2025

Next year is all about scaling and exploring new horizons. Here’s what’s on the radar:

• Growing IACrea to €50k MRR. By expanding into new real estate capabilities. Anyone wants to create a virtual tours SaaS from photos or 2D plans? Reply there, we could share the revenue.

• Growing my new video SaaS to €20k MRR

• Use my (soon launched) affiliation SaaS in all my SaaS

• Continue to create collaboration on SaaS with distribution in real estate or entrepreneurs

• Take more seriously my newsletter to share more insights. I know I don’t write often, and I don’t want to write email “just” for the stats.

• Start Youtube? Follow me here to be the first to see my video if I do start :D

Most importantly, I want to keep sharing this journey with you. Whether it’s through this newsletter, social media, or new projects: your support and feedback fuel everything I do.

Thank you for being part of my journey

If you’re reading this, thank you. You’re part of the reason I get to wake up every day and do what I love. This community has given me so much—from ideas to encouragement—and I’m endlessly grateful.

Now, tell me—what are your big goals for 2025? I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to another year of building, learning, and growing—together.

Warmly,
Pauline