I overbuilt my MRR calculator. Then I deleted 80% of it.

I set out to build an “MRR calculator” for Indie10k. Version 0 looked impressive: CAC, LTV, NRR, GRR, expansion, contraction, plan mix, annual prepay normalization, dunning recovery… you name it.

It also felt… wrong.

Not because the math was bad, but because nobody early-stage needs a cockpit of switches to answer the only questions indie founders actually care about:

How many users do I need?

How long until I hit $1k → $10k MRR (aka ramen profitability → quit-job money)?

So I scrapped it and started again.

The moment I realized I’d built the wrong thing

I asked myself (first principles style): “If I could only keep three inputs, what would they be?”

I wrote down:

Plan price ($/mo)

New users per month

Churn % (optional, because most early projects don’t even know it yet)

Everything else was either noise, investor-grade, or premature.

The core algorithm (nothing fancy)

New MRR = NewUsers × PlanPrice Churn MRR = CurrentMRR × ChurnRate MRR_next = CurrentMRR + NewMRR − ChurnMRR

Run that month over month, and you get time to $1k/$5k/$10k and users required. That’s the whole point.

What I deleted (and why)

❌ Multi-plan pricing & ARPA blending — great for boards, overkill for day 0.

❌ CAC/LTV/NRR/ARR tiles — useful later; they obscured the one thing people want now.

❌ Cohorts & seasonality — I was cosplaying a data team, not serving indies.

❌ CSV import & dunning — fun, but yak-shave territory for an MVP.

What stayed:

✅ Three sliders + one goal

✅ Milestone timeline ($100 → $1k → $10k)

✅ A clean growth curve with milestone markers

✅ One-click “turn this into a mission” for Indie10k users (numbers → action)

Example that made it “click”

Plan: $19/mo

New users: 10/mo

Churn: 3%/mo

The tool says: $1k in ~7 months, $10k in ~28 months.

Not perfect. But directionally true and instantly motivating.

Why this is better (for indies)

Clarity > completeness. You don’t need 20 dials to start.

Momentum > metrics. Seeing a date on the horizon changes how you work this week.

Action > analysis. The projection turns into a concrete Indie10k mission, not just a screenshot.

Ship link

If you want to try it (or tell me what’s missing), it’s live:

👉 Profitability Path Tool https://indie10k.com/tools/profitability-path?utm_source=indiehackers&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=profitability_path_launch

I’ll be in the comments answering Qs and collecting blunt feedback. If this helps you see your path to $1k, I’d love to hear it.