RitualBot

Why a ladder instead of one target

This idea is assessed at six MRR levels instead of one fixed number. Chat-app outcomes are skewed: most new Slack and Teams apps earn little or nothing, a few solo apps reach a few thousand dollars a month and stay there, and a very few become team businesses. A single "$20k MRR" number hides the most useful information: how likely each level is, and what each level costs in time.

The anchor: there is no verified base rate

• No verified base rate exists for new Slack or Teams apps reaching a given MRR within 24 months. Neither Slack nor Microsoft publishes per-app revenue or a distribution of outcomes, and no independent survey was found.
• The consumer-app base rate used elsewhere in this portfolio (RevenueCat: 17.3% of new subscription apps reach $1k/month in 2 years, 4.6% reach $10k) covers mobile consumer apps. It isn't comparable, so it isn't used.
• No revenue case for a solo, Teams-first, single-ritual app was found.

What the odds are anchored on instead (see research/10):

• Abot (solo, Slack, anonymous messages and polls): launched May 2017, first real traction March 2018 after a Hacker News feature, ~$4k MRR in June 2022 (down from ~$5k; monthly payouts $3k–6k), ~100 paying teams, 5,000+ installs, $50k total profit, ~5 hours a month, ~$50 a month of hosting. SEO, blogger outreach, Product Hunt and an agency gave "close to nothing". It is the upper end of this category.
• Anonymous Bot for Slack (solo): $891 MRR, 11 active subscriptions, $50,162 all-time since March 2020, "$0 in marketing". Payment-verified via Stripe on TrustMRR. It is closer to the typical outcome.
• Karma (team, Slack and Teams, kudos and performance): ~$744k a year in Feb 2025, $2–3 per active user, 800+ demos by the founders, and a Microsoft partnership the founder calls the "big breakthrough". The article's headline says $30k a month, which contradicts the body. It shows the ceiling for a broad team product, not for a solo single-ritual one.

Three things push the odds up:

• The build is small. A v1 is a bot, a moderation queue, Adaptive Cards and billing. It ships in 6–8 weeks.
• Margin is ~93–95%, and Microsoft charges only 3% on marketplace sales. Profitable from the first customer.
• Anonymous channel posting is not native in Slack or Teams, and willingness to pay has been proven for 8 years on Slack.

Three things push them down:

• The job is small, so prices are small: $7–199 a month across comparables.
• Install-to-paid conversion is low (~2% for Abot), and Teams IT approval adds a gate.
• Microsoft already ships anonymous Q&A in town halls and anonymous Forms, and could add anonymous channel posts.

Odds at each MRR level (reached by month 24)

The alternative columns assume full-time effort. At ~15 hrs/week, multiply them by about 0.7.

Recommended means a Teams-first anonymous-questions app built around the all-hands cycle, as set out in WHAT-TO-DO-AND-AVOID.md, with the 3 conditions met:

• you can build and support a Teams bot yourself;
• you can reach 10 organisations on Teams before building, and 3 can get IT approval for a pilot;
• you hold a steady support and release cadence for 24 months.

If any one condition is missing, multiply the recommended odds by about 0.65.

These are judgment estimates anchored to the named cases above, not computed statistics.

Notes on the alternatives:

• As described leaves the ritual open and assumes Slack. Without a chosen ritual there's no listing, no search term and no buyer. Most of the listed rituals are native or free.
• Standups face Geekbot's free plan (≤10 people), paid plans at $2.50–3 per participant, free DailyBot and Standuply plans, and AI channel recaps in every paid Slack plan since June 2025.
• Kudos faces Praise, built into Teams, and on Slack an established set of apps (Karma, HeyTaco, Bonusly, Matter). Karma's revenue shows kudos can pay, but for a team with a sales motion.
• Anonymous feedback on Slack is the proven version, but it's crowded: Abot, Anonymous Bot, Anony Botter, OpenSay, Anonymous Honestbot and OpenCulture are all listed. A new entrant is more likely to look like Anonymous Bot (11 subscriptions) than Abot (100 teams).
• The recommended version takes the proven ritual to the platform where it's less served, and to larger organisations that pay more per month.

How to read the ladder

• $1k–3k is a realistic outcome. 15–43 paying organisations. Abot shows it can be held for years on a few hours a month.
• $5k is Abot's peak. ~72 organisations at ~$70, which needs a Store listing that ranks.
• $10k and above needs a second platform or much bigger customers. Neither is proven for this ritual.
• Full-time adds little above $5k. The limit is installs, not build hours.

Portfolio definitions (for comparison with other ideas)

Tier B is slightly below the $20k rung because it also needs ≥70% month-3 retention. Use of anonymous questions is episodic (all-hands, reorganisations, layoffs), and some organisations cancel between episodes.

Fundable in current form?

No. A single-ritual chat app is a small, profitable-at-best business with no venture path. See 06. That's not a reason to skip it. It's a reason to build it cheaply and expect $1–5k MRR.

One-paragraph verdict

The instinct is right: small, paid, single-purpose chat apps do make money, and Abot proves one developer can hold ~$4k MRR on a few hours a month. But "one ritual, pick later, on Slack" is the weakest version. Most rituals are now free or native, and the proven one (anonymous posting) is crowded on Slack, where the 2025 rules also make entry slower. Microsoft Teams channels still have no anonymous posting, Teams users far outnumber Slack's, and Teams organisations are larger and used to paying on their Microsoft invoice. So: anonymous questions for Teams, built around the all-hands cycle, with anonymity you provably can't break. Expect $1–5k MRR. Treat anything above $10k as upside you haven't earned yet.