Punchpass
👤 Chris Patton (Art-history grad who learned to code by building this. No insider edge — just patience: 10+ years compounding one boring niche.)🌐 sitechrispa.comLinkedIn
A studio owner was 30 days behind on paper attendance cards. He built the simple class software Mindbody forgot.
Will it work? · our read
Patience compounds. Little moat beyond simplicity and a fair price. But 13 years of profitable, patient focus turned a learn-to-code project into a $600K+/yr business the giants overlook.
01How the money moves
Small studio, tired of Mindbody, signs up
→
Runs classes, passes & bookings inside Punchpass
→
Pays about $59/mo — every month it operates
02The numbers
$634K/yr
2024 revenue
Latka est
$27K MRR
by June 2017
IH · founder
50+
countries served
Punchpass
First-party ramp posted monthly on Indie Hackers to mid-2017; the 2024 figure is third-party (Latka). Latka
Bootstrapped from a $15K pitch prize; first-party ramp to $27K MRR (2017), about $634K/yr by 2024 (Latka, third-party).
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(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
Indie Hackers — Chris Patton's founder interview with the month-by-month ramp to $26,776 MRR by June 2017. first-partyPunchpass — About — founding story, fully-remote team, 1% of revenue to charity.Latka — third-party revenue: about $634K (2024), $291.6K (2023), 6 staff. treat cautiouslyWCAX (Vermont) — local news on Punchpass helping small studios move classes online.
Revenue: the only first-party figure is founder Chris Patton's own Indie Hackers post — a month-by-month ramp to $26,776 MRR by June 2017 (bulletproof). The headline about $634K/yr (2024), up from about $292K (2023), is Latka — a third-party source our standard treats cautiously — but it fits today's 6-8 person remote team and repeated price hikes. No newer founder figure is public, and competitor prices are approximate list prices. Origin, growth channels (cold email, then SEO) and bootstrapping are all founder-documented; no drama invented — Punchpass won on validation, patience and SEO, not a secret moat. We never score you.