How to Bootstrap to $1Million ARR [REVEALED]

Oct 1, 2025

Ish Jindal, Co-founder and CEO of TARS, took a unique path to building a conversational AI platform that reached $1M ARR. He stumbled into entrepreneurship through travel hacking and initially faced bootstrap struggles, like missing a BBC feature due to financial constraints. Discovering SaaS best practices came accidentally, which he credits as an advantage. Ish also emphasizes the power of content marketing, having created 2,000 chatbot templates, and discusses the importance of trust and video in B2B sales. His journey redefines sustainable growth through curiosity and resilience.

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ANECDOTE

From One WhatsApp Number To Product

Ish explains TARS began as a single public WhatsApp number answered manually and that it exploded to ~40–50k users in months.
They shifted from that B2C manual system to building an automated chatbot product after realising it couldn't be monetized.

ANECDOTE

Featured On BBC—But Absent

BBC covered Ish's travel startup Padharo but he wasn't in the video because he couldn't afford the flight to Delhi for the recording.
This shows early-stage resource constraints shaped how he participated in publicity opportunities.

INSIGHT

Ignorance Became An Advantage

Ignorance of SaaS metrics allowed Ish to build from first principles without chasing short-term ARR metrics.
He believes that early ignorance helped them focus on product and learning rather than rapid growth pressure.

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In this episode of Startup Strategies, Juliana sits down with Ish Jindal, the engineer-turned-entrepreneur who spent four years not knowing what MRR meant while bootstrapping TARS to $1M ARR. After discovering the internet in his second year of college, Ish went from building education websites in cyber cafes to travel hacking conferences across five countries, eventually stumbling into entrepreneurship through sheer curiosity rather than ambition.

When his travel startup Padharo got featured by BBC but he couldn't afford the flight to Delhi for the interview, Ish realized operations-heavy B2C wasn't his path. Meeting technical co-founder Vinit through LinkedIn led to building what they wanted to be "ChatGPT in 2015" - a conversational AI that started as a single WhatsApp number serving 40,000 users manually before evolving into the chatbot platform TARS.

Ish reveals why being completely ignorant of SaaS best practices became an advantage, how they built their early growth entirely through content marketing and 2,000 handmade chatbot templates, and why choosing marketers over support teams as their first customers nearly killed them during COVID when marketing budgets disappeared overnight.

This conversation challenges the venture capital playbook and shows how patience, curiosity, and building something you'd actually use can create sustainable growth over nine years of bootstrapping.

Ish shares:

How travel hacking conferences led to his first startup idea
Why he couldn't afford to appear in his own BBC feature
The transition from manual WhatsApp support to automated chatbots
Building 2,000 chatbot templates by hand for SEO-driven growth
How complete ignorance of SaaS metrics became a competitive advantage
The 10-year co-founder partnership that started on LinkedIn
Why targeting marketers over support teams was a COVID mistake
How content marketing drove growth without advertising budgets
Why most customer support bots still deliver mediocre experiences
The mindset shift from building for fun to building for business

Links and resources:

FREE Startup Marketing Cheatsheet

FREE $1M ARR SaaS Marketing Playbook

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