Erwin Lengkeek

Tailscan

Browser-Erweiterung in 1 Woche gebaut, $30K/Jahr verdient durch öffentliches Bauen

$3.3K MRR

Current revenue · as of May 2025

TinyStartups

21 days

Erster Kunde

Twitter / X

Growth Channel

Solo-Gründer

Founder

Erwin Lengkeek

Solo-Gründer•Technical•Bali

Commitment

Side Project

Experience

Experienced

Product

Tailscan

Browser-Erweiterung zur Tailwind CSS Überprüfung.

Type

Chrome Extension

Industry

Entwickler-Tools

Model

Freemium

Marketing Strategy

How Erwin acquired customers

Growth Channel

Twitter / X

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Tailscan

JavaScriptChrome Extension APITailwind CSS

The Full Story

Erwin hatte zwei fehlgeschlagene Projekte vor Tailscan. Er gab sich selbst eine Woche Zeit, um etwas zu bauen und es auf Twitter zu zeigen.

Virales Demo

Sein Demo bekam 70.000 Aufrufe und 500 Likes mit nur 300 Followern. Er baute es in zwei Wochen aus und startete auf Product Hunt.

Konsistentes Wachstum

Die wiederkehrenden Einnahmen sind auf fast $30K jährlich mit 95% Gewinnmarge gestiegen.

Bauzeit: 1 Woche
Twitter-Follower beim Start: 300
Demo-Aufrufe: 70.000
Jahreseinnahmen: $30K

Key Takeaways

Gib dir selbst enge Fristen, um Ideen schnell zu validieren

Twitter-Engagement kann auch mit kleinen Anhängerschaften funktionieren

Product Hunt kann mehrfach genutzt werden, wenn du Starts zeitlich abstimmst

Browser-Erweiterungen haben hohe Gewinnmargen

Originally published onIndie Hackers

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Erwin's Tailscan playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

Erster Kunde

Channel

Twitter / X

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Erwin's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Twitter / X
A risk check before copying the Tailscan playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Erwin's journey? Generate a business idea in the Entwickler-Tools space using AI and real founder data.

Against every documented journey

The median of the 364 documented journeys with this milestone is 30 days; this one took 21 days.

This journey

21 days

Median of 364

30 days

Benchmark yourself against the dataset

Erwin's Path to Erster KundePremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Erwin actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Erwin's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Side project spinoutPivot from Base Styles (a branding platform Erwin worked on for about 9-10 months with roughly 100 trial users and no paying customers)

Tailscan began as a small internal tool Erwin built for himself while working on his prior product, Base Styles, because he found it frustrating to switch between his editor and the browser to see how Tailwind CSS changes would look.

“I'm not good at visualizing how changes will look while I code and switching between my integrated development environment and browser was frustrating.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Validation

Validated before building

MvpValidated

Rather than building the full product first, Erwin built a rough extension in about a week and posted a demo on Twitter to gauge interest before investing further.

Erwin's stated goal was to build something in a week and post a demo on Twitter specifically to test for interest.

“Give myself a week to build something and showcase it on Twitter after to see if there is any interest.”

Tailscan blog: Starting the journey with Tailscan

First test users

Existing audiencePaying from day one

The audience that became Tailscan's first users came from the pre-launch Twitter demo momentum and a newsletter Erwin grew alongside it, which he says drove the Product Hunt launch performance.

“That gave me a big boost for upvotes when I launched on Product Hunt.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

First paying customer

Existing audiencePaywall from launch$39

The first paying customers came from the Product Hunt launch, buying yearly licenses at $39, converted directly by the Twitter/newsletter audience Erwin had built beforehand.

“I think I got maybe 40 customers or so on yearly licenses at $39 each.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Twitter / XPre-launchWorked

Erwin posted multiple product demo videos on Twitter every week in the run-up to launch and linked them from his newsletter.

Per Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Erwin credits Twitter, including some viral moments, as a channel that outperformed his expectations.

“Posting on Twitter has worked far better. I had some viral moments that really helped.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Product HuntLaunchWorked

Erwin relaunches on Product Hunt periodically for major updates, saying it reliably brings a traffic spike.

“I also launch consistently. You can do product launches every six months or so on Product Hunt if you have a big update.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

SEO / ContentScalingWorked

Growth came partly from a large set of low-traffic-individually technical documentation pages covering Tailwind CSS classes.

“Part of this comes from having lots of pages on the site with technical help like info about Tailwind classes.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Erwin frames consistent content writing, not just one-off SEO tactics, as the differentiator between founders who gain traction and those who don't.

“I think the single biggest thing that separates successful indie hackers from the ones who aren't is writing content”

Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

Other · Content creator collaborations (YouTube, Twitter)ScalingWorked

A web-dev YouTuber made an unpaid product video after Erwin's Product Hunt launch, and Erwin separately paid a Twitter Tailwind-tips creator to sponsor tweets mentioning Tailscan.

“James is a well-known content creator in the web development space.”

Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

Erwin describes both collaborations as successful for exposure and sales.

Per Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

Paid ads · Tailwind newsletter sponsorshipsScalingPartially worked

Newsletter sponsorships in his niche drew weak click-through and even weaker conversion, roughly breaking even at best.

“I sponsored a couple of newsletters in my niche, but the click-through rate was low and the conversion even lower.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Paid ads · TikTok influencer partnershipsScalingDidn't work

TikTok influencer deals in particular did not translate into profit, unlike some other influencer collaborations.

“But others — especially those on Tiktok — just didn't really result in any profit.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Word of mouthScalingWorked

Organic social mentions (e.g. a TikTok creator featuring Tailscan) and inclusion in third-party developer resource lists added incremental traffic during a 4-month period where MRR grew from $580 to $1,600.

“Tailscan has been featured on social media a couple of times”

Tailscan blog: From $500 to $1,500 MRR and riding the wave

What didn't work

Product scopePre-launchCost: time

Base Styles, Erwin's prior product before Tailscan, never converted its trial users into paying customers.

“I fell for a classic indie-hacker pitfall: Building a product without validating the idea and market first.”

Tailscan blog: Starting the journey with Tailscan

What they did instead: Validated Tailscan's core idea with a 1-week build and public demo before committing to the full product.

Tech choiceFirst customersCost: time

A shipped update leaked Tailscan's own CSS onto users' websites, causing visual bugs that went unnoticed until users reported them.

“Shipping fast is good, but not at the cost of quality”

Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

Erwin attributes the bug to not having thought through the architecture and its consequences carefully enough.

Per Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

What they did instead: Fixed the CSS-leak bug after user reports and drew an explicit lesson about not sacrificing quality for shipping speed.

ChannelScalingCost: time

Erwin submitted thousands of programmatically generated SEO pages to Google all at once, which backfired.

“What I did not know was that submitting 8062 pages at once to Google isn't necessarily a good idea.”

Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

The site's crawl budget was exhausted quickly and most of the thin-content pages were never indexed.

Per Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing

What they did instead: Cut the sitemap roughly in half and is spreading page submissions out over time instead of submitting them all at once.

PricingScalingCost: money

Adding a monthly subscription tier grew MRR but also introduced churn, producing negative-growth months (-2%, -5%) alongside strong ones (18%, 28%) over a five-month stretch.

“I think part of the negative growth has to do with the introduction of the monthly subscription.”

Tailscan blog: New version and the SaaS roller coaster

What they did instead: Planned better onboarding to reduce churn and shifted emphasis toward perpetual (one-time payment) licenses instead of relying on monthly recurring revenue.

How it changed as they grew

Today: 1 person (Solo founder (Erwin Lengkeek), no co-founders or employees mentioned in any source)

Bootstrapped

Pricing new tier: Yearly license only ($39/year) → Added a monthly subscription and a perpetual (lifetime) license

The yearly-only price worked out to about $3/month, which Erwin judged as needing far too many customers to add up to a real income.

“At some point, I realized that works out at about $3 a month and you’d need a thousand users just for a decent personal income.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Pricing restructure: Landing page emphasizing monthly and yearly plans → Landing page emphasizing the perpetual/lifetime license

After the landing page was changed to push the lifetime option, it began outselling the monthly plan.

“after changing the landing page to emphasize the perpetual license, it started selling much better and the monthly slowed down.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

Pricing decrease: Original monthly price → Lowered monthly price

Erwin lowered the monthly price to test whether it would help recurring revenue.

“I lowered the monthly pricing a little recently to see if it would improve the recurring revenue.”

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek

What broke as they grew

Tailscan's recurring-revenue growth became volatile once a monthly subscription tier existed: new monthly sign-ups in one month were often offset by churn the next, producing negative-growth months even amid an overall upward trend. The founder's stated response is to invest in onboarding/retention and to lean more on perpetual (one-time) licenses and more stable acquisition channels rather than relying on monthly MRR growth.

“I think part of the negative growth has to do with the introduction of the monthly subscription.”

Tailscan blog: New version and the SaaS roller coaster

Sources (7 in the founder's own words)

Indie Hackers interview with Erwin Lengkeek · founder-authored · 2024-09
Tailscan Open Startup metrics page · founder-authored
Tailscan blog: Starting the journey with Tailscan · founder-authored · 2023-03
Tailscan blog: Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing · founder-authored · 2023-03
Tailscan blog: From $500 to $1,500 MRR and riding the wave · founder-authored · 2023-08
Tailscan blog: New version and the SaaS roller coaster · founder-authored · 2024-01
Erwin Lengkeek LinkedIn post: Tailscan is now an Open Startup · founder-authored · 2023-03

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Tailscan make?

Tailscan reports $3.3K MRR as of May 2025. Tailscan ~$3.3K/month May 2025. Company phased out subscriptions, shifted to one-time payments. Peak $30.4K/month October 2024 (one-time spike). Source: TinyStartups.

What is Tailscan?

Browser-Erweiterung zur Tailwind CSS Überprüfung. It operates in Entwickler-Tools.

How long did it take Tailscan to reach erster kunde?

Erwin Lengkeek took 21 days to reach erster kunde with Tailscan.

Was Erwin Lengkeek a solo founder?

Yes. Erwin Lengkeek built Tailscan as a solo founder.

What marketing channel did Tailscan use to grow?

Tailscan grew primarily through Twitter / X.

What industry is Tailscan in?

Tailscan operates in Entwickler-Tools.

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Erster Kunde Twitter / X Entwickler-Tools Solo-Gründer

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