The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS 462: Polly: Lessons on Building a 7-Figure SaaS on Slack's Platform - with Bilal Aijazi
Nov 20, 2025
Bilal Aijazi, co-founder of Polly, recounts his journey from creating one of the first Slack apps to building a multi-seven-figure SaaS business. He highlights how a clunky installation process still led to strong adoption and reveals insights on transitioning from small fantasy football clients to enterprise HR deals. Bilal discusses the importance of becoming a platform to survive competition, and the need to identify paying buyers early. He shares valuable lessons on monetization strategies and driving user engagement within collaborative tools.
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Painful Install, Viral Result
- Bilal launched an early Slack app with a five-step copy-paste install and still saw 80% completion.
- A Product Hunt post then drove thousands of signups despite zero initial revenue.
When Slack Built A Competing Feature
- Polly expanded off Slack after Slack launched overlapping workflow features that threatened their product.
- They rebuilt for Teams, Zoom, Slides and PowerPoint to reduce platform risk and grow.
Free Users Can Be Productively Nonpaying
- Only a minority of users become creators, and that's okay for a horizontal product.
- Free responders act as pollinators that seed adoption toward paying creators and buyers.
