My first #buildinpublic SaaS hit ~$500MRR, received multiple acquisition offers in 1 year, AMA!

Hello IH,

I've been building apps (desktop, mobile, and web), games for a decade with millions of downloads. I typically rely on SEO and ASO for inbound traffic.

I started building superblog.ai, a blazing fast and SEO optimized alternative to WordPress and Medium for blogging, in public. I launched it on 25th Dec 2020.
Right now I have over 50+ paying clients (there is no free plan) and am close to ~$500 MRR.

Over the past year, I received multiple acquisition offers (including co-founder roles) for superblog. Super glad to share my experience and learnings with the community.

AMA!

Sai Krishna

posted to

AMAs

on January 13, 2022

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2

Congrats!

How did you get from the first few you customers to 500MRR? Was there anything done on top of building in public, or did it just go from word of mouth from there?

rsam87

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2 years ago
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  Thank you! :)
  
  Almost all my clients are inbound and word of mouth. I did try sending 3 cold DMs a week in the first 2-3 months but eventually stopped doing that.
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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1. How do you plan to scale up the revenues? I believe inbound sales was good to get you first paying customers but wont be an ideal fast channel for scaling up ?
2. What percentage of the revenue goes out in handling running costs? What are they and Which one is the biggest contributor?
3. Did you code your platform end to end yourself or you used any no code tools?
4. Did you use a prebuilt template for front end or you yourself wrote it entirely with css and whatnot? Which frame work did you use?
5. Any advice for a backend engineer who wishes to create a Saas product but has never created a front end.
Baidwan007

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2 years ago
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  I'm starting to place content in the blog. I want SEO to be the major acquisition channel going forward. I might try cold DMs though!
  
  At the moment, I have credits for AWS with 2-year validity. So, operating costs are very nominal for now.
  
  Yes, I coded end-to-end.
  
  For superblog main site and customers' blog module I used svelte+ elderjs. There are no CSS framework and no UI template, I wrote the complete CSS. However, for superblog dashboard (where customers login and write posts), I used Chakra-UI. It was built with nextjs.
  
  Use multiple India saas products daily for a week. Observe how they are prioritising elements/components in the UI. Next, pick a SaaS and do a small mockup (even if it is on paper as a rough sketch). Then login to that saas dashboard and see the difference. It should be very helpful!
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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How did you find your first 20 users?

Avidity

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2 years ago
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  #buildinpublic.
  
  Almost all my customers are inbound (and word of mouth).
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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Hey Sai. Cool story. What are your plans for superblog? Do you want to sell it in the near future?

sweatC

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2 years ago
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  I want to scale it to $10k MRR. I don't actively list or try to sell superblog in the meantime. :)
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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Hello Sai,
Congratulations….wish you all the best….
I hope all is well.
My ?: what kind of thought process should an “WANNA BE” entrepreneur have to bring an idea to life?

Lumisblanc

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2 years ago
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  Thank you so much :)
  
  In the early stages, problem-solving mindset. You want to be a problem solver before you become an entrepreneur. Find a problem, check if it is valid enough so that people will pay for it. Then think if it is large enough for you to become an entrepreneur!
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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Congratulations for this milestone, Sai

Q.1 Do I need to register my business? If yes, then whats suitable out of proprietorship, LLC, etc.?
Q.2 Where are from your customers?
Q.3 Did you register your business in India or outside India?
Q.4 Are you doing this solo or as a team?
Q.5 Any more tips you can share for beginners like me who want to start small SaaS?

AtulGhorpade

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2 years ago
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  Thank you, Atul :)
  
  I don't have enough expertise on this.
  
  Twitter, Linkedin - inbound, self-serve.
  
  In India.
  
  Solo. I do hire freelance content writers though.
  
  Start building an audience even before coding. Hangout where your potential customers are active. You will get enough paying customers when you launch.
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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    These are very useful answers. Thank you.
    
    AtulGhorpade
    
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    2 years ago
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      I'm glad :)
      
      skris
      
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      2 years ago
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Are you looking to sell your company? Or looking for some form of investment?

vatsalshah

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2 years ago
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  no and no :)
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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Hey bro can you give some tips on how can a new saas owner acquire some customers on begging?

Aman26

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2 years ago
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What made you decide to start a blogging SaaS? (especially when there's existing giants like wordpress and medium)

ScarletNemesis

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2 years ago
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  I know from my personal experience that setting up, optimisizing, maintaining WordPress is way harder than it should be for having a simple blog.
  
  Medium is beautiful and practically zero maintenance. But they push their own branding heavily and try to convert your readers to their customers.
  
  So I kept on implementing my own solutions in my previous products. I figured out startups would need a such simple blog that is as beautiful as medium to read without the hassle of optimizing the blog for SEO, core web vitals, speed etc.
  
  So you can say that Superblog is my 10 years of blogging experience (writing + building) rolled out as SaaS.
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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How long did it take you to develop it? And how did you find paying clients in the beginning?

IndieHacker423

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2 years ago
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  It took approximately 3 months to build the first production usable version. To be honest, I've been building custom version of superblog in my previous products. So I had a clear understanding of what to build. So it would have been faster.
  
  I started building in public, building in community. It generated some buzz and acquired customers inbound!
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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    That's very interesting, how should one approach building in public? Did you use Twitter?
    
    IndieHacker423
    
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    2 years ago
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      One should find out where the target audience hangout and make sure that they will see our build updates.
      
      I used twitter and linkedin mainly.
      
      skris
      
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      2 years ago
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I attended your Yesterday's meet and got to know more about programmatic landing pages. I just wanted to know how to do that (in depth)

Paragpallavsingh

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2 years ago
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  Preetam's course is a good one.
  
  https://www.preetamnath.com/programmatic-seo
  
  Btw thanks for attending :)
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

TyGencer

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2 years ago
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  I'm sorry I didn't get you.
  
  skris
  
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  2 years ago
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