{"id":458210,"date":"2025-04-30T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T09:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/savepearlharbor.com\/?p=458210"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T21:00:00","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/savepearlharbor.com\/?p=458210","title":{"rendered":"How I Created Perfect Wiki and Reached $250K in Annual Revenue Without Investors<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi, my name is Ilia. I founded\u00a0Perfect Wiki<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a SaaS product for creating internal company knowledge bases that works directly within Microsoft Teams. We created a simple and convenient tool for storing, editing, and sharing knowledge within companies. It all started with the idea to resolve one specific pain point: the built-in Wiki in Microsoft Teams offered was inconvenient, and there was no worthy alternatives with full integration to the platform.<\/p>\n

In this article, I want to share how the idea came about, the mistakes I made, how I found my first customers, and how I gradually grew to a steady income of $250,000 a year over five years. All of this \u2014 without investors, a 20-person team, or a \u201cSeries A\u201d round.<\/p>\n

How It All Began<\/h4>\n

In May 2020, I lost my job and started thinking about new projects to launch or where to direct my efforts. The pandemic drastically changed the market: the mass transition to remote work boosted interest in online communication tools, and everyone wanted to launch their own video conferencing service. It felt like a gold rush, and I decided to follow the principle: in such times, those who sell shovels win, not those who search for gold.<\/p>\n

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Zoom became hugely popular during the pandemic. I decided to try making a small app \u2014 a translator \u2014 and published it on the Zoom Marketplace. But it turned out people were only interested in the Zoom app itself, and the marketplace had almost no traffic.<\/p>\n

After that failure, I moved on to Plan B: I tried publishing the translator app on the\u00a0Microsoft Teams Marketplace<\/strong>. It seemed like there were significantly more users, apps there had lots of ratings and installs. The platform felt \u201calive.\u201d My intuition didn\u2019t fail me \u2014 just a few days after publishing, someone bought a paid subscription. But I soon realized the translator app was very limited with no room for growth. Microsoft could easily replace it anytime.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I decided to dive deeper into analyzing what other problems Microsoft Teams users were facing and what kind of service I could offer them. I was confident I\u2019d find a niche because the traffic and activity on the marketplace were high \u2014 a ready-made customer base was just in front of me. I just needed to find a product idea that would solve a real problem.<\/p>\n

I started reading forums, comments, and online discussions. It turned out the built-in Wiki in Microsoft Teams annoyed users really a lot. It was slow and inconvenient. That\u2019s how the idea came about \u2014 I had to create a fast, user-friendly knowledge base built directly into Microsoft Teams. The main goal was to make it simple and intuitive for people who weren\u2019t tech-savvy \u2014 just regular PC users.<\/p>\n

I Got My First Paying Customer Just a Few Days After Launch<\/h4>\n

I created and published the first version of the product in a fairly short time \u2014 it took me about three weeks. It already had page creation and editing features, and most importantly,\u00a0full-text search<\/strong>\u00a0(a much-requested feature the users lacked in the built-in Wiki).<\/p>\n

I used technologies and tools I was already very well familiar with:\u00a0Node.js + Express<\/strong>\u00a0for the backend and\u00a0React<\/strong>\u00a0for the frontend.<\/p>\n

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Just a couple of days after publishing\u00a0Perfect Wiki<\/strong>\u00a0on the Microsoft Teams Marketplace, I got my first paying user. My assumptions were confirmed \u2014 people were actively looking for an alternative to the built-in Wiki, and they searched for it directly in the Teams marketplace. They found my app using the keyword \u201cwiki.\u201d It was an awesome free acquisition channel. Perfect Wiki was always the top search result because there were no competitors. That\u2019s when I realized I had found a real pain point \u00a0\u2014 and I could make money by solving it.<\/p>\n

Perfect Wiki Is Now Used by Over 500 Companies<\/h4>\n

Today, over\u00a0500 companies around the world<\/strong>\u00a0use Perfect Wiki. Our main markets are\u00a0the<\/strong>\u00a0US, Canada, the UK, and Germany<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Over five years, the product has grown significantly. Revenue is now about\u00a0$250,000 a year<\/strong>. However, it wasn\u2019t always smooth sailing \u2014 there were months with no growth, times when everything felt stuck. We had to change plans, improve the product, and look for new ideas.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Microsoft even featured us at\u00a0Microsoft Build<\/strong>\u00a0as an example of an app that\u2019s top-rated and highly valued among Teams users and the one the really works \u2014 a big milestone for us.<\/p>\n

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Why Do People Choose Us?<\/h4>\n

Many of our clients came to us after trying the Microsoft built-in Wiki. It was clunky, inconvenient, and didn\u2019t do the job well. We focused on simplicity: the essential features only, nothing extra \u2014 and everything should function\u00a0inside Microsoft Teams<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Integration with Microsoft Teams is the key. Unlike other knowledge base platforms, Perfect Wiki doesn\u2019t require switching to a separate site or tab. It\u2019s available right where employees already spend most of their day \u2014 in Microsoft Teams. It saves time, doesn’t add any difficulties, and makes working with a knowledge base a natural part of the workflow.<\/p>\n

Microsoft tried to address this issue via products like Viva and Loop, but they turned out to be too bulky and confusing. Competitors like Confluence or Notion just aren\u2019t integrated into Teams in a way that\u2019s convenient for users.<\/p>\n

Perfect Wiki was built\u00a0specifically for Microsoft Teams<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 and that\u2019s been our main advantage from day one.<\/p>\n

Only Two People Work on the Project<\/h4>\n

Currently, the team behind Perfect Wiki is just\u00a0two people<\/strong>. I handle the development and product, and my colleague manages user support. Despite having a tiny team, we manage to achieve a lot: we launch new features quickly, communicate with customers, test ideas, and maintain stable service.<\/p>\n

We outsource some marketing and content tasks, but everything related to the product and code we do ourselves.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we bring in new people if we feel it’s time to grow. Right now is one of those moments: if you\u2019re an experienced developer familiar with Node.js + Express + React \u2014 send us your CV at\u00a0hello@perfectwiki.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

How We Understand What Customers Need<\/h4>\n

It all starts with communication. We have an internal app chat \u2014 people regularly send us questions, suggestions, and feedback. We also do demo calls, discuss use-case scenarios, and every quarter, we reach out to active loyal users asking for feature and improvement ideas. This helps us to deeply understand user needs.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t implement features just because they\u00a0seem<\/em>\u00a0useful. Every new functionality in Perfect Wiki must be genuinely requested and needed by users. For example, I wasn\u2019t sure whether a \u201csearch within a page\u201d was necessary. But after several complaints about documents getting longer, and Ctrl+F not working in Teams \u2014 it became clear the feature was needed.<\/p>\n

Another example: users suggested a\u00a0weekly digest<\/strong>\u00a0with a list of new or updated knowledge base articles. They wanted to stay in the loop about changes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how we improve the product \u2014 not by simple guessing, but in collaboration with our users.<\/p>\n

And we actually use\u00a0Perfect Wiki ourselves<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 that helps us spot areas for changes and growth. All our internal documentation, tasks, and plans are stored in Perfect Wiki. Even our public Help Center runs on our platform. This way, we test the product in real use and quickly notice what needs fixing or tweaking.<\/p>\n

Every time I check out competitors’ sites \u2014 those who also build knowledge base or customer support platforms \u2014 I notice something odd. Almost all of them use third-party tools like Intercom or Zendesk to support their own customers. That surprises me. If your product is so great \u2014 why don\u2019t you use it yourself? For me, that\u2019s a golden rule: your product should be so good you\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0to use it yourself. If not, that means something\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

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A Bit About Money<\/h4>\n
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Right now, I earn around\u00a0$25,000 per month<\/strong>. My monthly expenses are pretty modest:<\/p>\n