From $0 to $1M+: Inside Tiny Host's Bootstrapped Journey with Elson Barretto

TinyHost started off as a simple static web hosting tool.

But now it's basically a very simple way to share your work online.

So you can think of it as the simplicity of WeTransfer meets the power of Google Drive.

So very, very simple interface.

Drag and drop 100 different file types and get a link to share in literally 10 seconds.

I remember when back at Indie Beers, we were in the pub years ago, you showed me like a prototype of this and it looked super cool.

I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds interesting.

And here we are five, six years later, a million ARR plus.

But going back to the beginning, like what made you create it in the first place?

Honestly, I did probably what you shouldn't do and did zero market research.

Didn't do the mom test, any of that stuff.

But what I did do is scratch my own itch.

So I thought it was too difficult to put HTML online back in the day.

Turns out it was a validated space.

Web hosting is a huge industry.

And really, I mean, from a personal standpoint, I got really good at building stuff, but I knew nothing about marketing apps.

So I wanted to build a SaaS where I could build something simply in one month, like part-time, and then spend the rest of time marketing it.

And that was the objective of Tiny.

Yeah, so kind of scratching your own itch, wanting to learn marketing, and you just kept going because you got some good vibes and signals from people using it.

Yeah, honestly, just pulling the thread.

And, I mean, a good way to understand how loosely I thought of this project was I, at the time, the domain with two I's was like, I don't know, $10 a month, a year?

For those who don't know, it's spelled T-I-I-N-Y dot host.

And then the one with one I was like $150.

So I was like, let me just get one with two I's.

And then I had to buy the one with one I back for like, I don't know, one and a half grand.