Built From 10pm to 2am for Years: A Stay-at-Home Mom's School Auction SaaS Sells for 7 Figures
Frustrated by how inefficient school fundraising was, stay-at-home mom Kristi Saucerman built an auction-management SaaS in 2007, running it solo from 10pm to 2am for the first two years and growing it to nearly $1M in annual revenue with a team of 9. After pivoting to livestream support during COVID, the business sold to nonprofit-tech company Lumaverse for 7 figures in 2022.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
Yen figures are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD (annual revenue of $1M ≈ ¥150M).
How the Business Evolved
| Period | What Happened |
|---|---|
| 2007 | Saucerman, a stay-at-home mom frustrated by the inefficiency of running school charity auctions, founds the company. For the first two years she works alone from 10pm to 2am, after housework and childcare |
| Growth phase | Expands by word of mouth from schools to churches to national nonprofits. Supports events of all kinds — golf tournaments, 5K runs, galas |
| 2020 | In-person events vanish in the pandemic → she responds immediately with a hybrid auction + livestream model, enabling nonprofits to broadcast nationwide |
| March 2022 | Sold to Lumaverse Technologies (a nonprofit-tech roll-up) for 7 figures. Saucerman stays on as CEO |
The Numbers (at Sale)
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Annual revenue | Just under $1M (≈¥150M) |
| Team | 9 people |
| Customers | Schools, churches, local charities and national nonprofits across North America |
Reading Between the Numbers
An event that happens every year without fail is the most stable form of recurring demand. School auctions take place annually regardless of the economy or trends. This event-driven demand barely even has a concept of churn, and it powered 15 years of compounding. It belongs to the same family of “recurring work that never goes away” as Radius’s insurance operations and DashThis’s monthly reports.
“Two years of 10pm-to-2am work” is the most honest record of the time constraints of starting a business on the side. Founding a company alongside full-time family responsibilities means you can never win on sheer hours. What made it winnable was that the founder was the customer herself (an organizer of school events) — there was no way to get demand validation or feature priorities wrong. It is the same structure as the education app that started as a tool for the founder’s own cram school.
Crisis response (adding livestreaming) is what created the sale value. The pandemic looked like a death sentence for an events SaaS, but the immediate hybrid pivot instead expanded the addressable market nationwide. Alongside Pack Hacker’s niche redefinition, it is a real example of turning a crisis into market expansion. Her advice: know your why, get your finances in order early, and don’t let the business become your identity.
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Sources
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