Stuck at $12k MRR: Niche Down and Let Them Churn

00:00 / 01:04:29

Chapters

Published on February 18, 2026

In this episode of Indie Board Session, Pascal sits down with Antoine Minoux, founder of Fernand, a customer support tool built for small B2B SaaS teams. With co-host Sai Krishna (founder of Superblog), they unpack what it really means to pick an ICP and stick to it, even when bigger customers come knocking.

Antoine shares the real journey behind Fernand, from building ImprovMX (a freemium email forwarding tool with 100K+ users) to creating a calmer, more opinionated alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. He explains why he and his co-founder Cyril spent two and a half years using Fernand internally before their public launch, and why they are committed to staying a two-person team all the way to $100K MRR.

This conversation dives deep into the tension between growth and focus: how to handle customers who do not fit your ICP, when to raise prices (and whether to grandfather early users), and why saying no to enterprise features might be the smartest thing a bootstrapped founder can do.

In this episode:

✅ Why niching down in crowded markets is the only way to win without VC funding

✅ How to identify your true ICP and what happens when you serve the wrong customers

✅ The pricing dilemma: when to raise prices and how to treat early supporters

✅ Why opinionated, calm software beats feature bloat for lean teams

✅ Go-to-market strategies that actually work for bootstrap founders, from cold email to viral stunts

Connect with Antoine Minoux:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoineminoux/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getfernand/

Website: https://getfernand.com/

Connect with Sai Krishna:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/s-kris/