I reached $10k MRR with my AI SaaS product in 1 month. AMA
Hello everyone,
I launched an AI product called SiteGPT (sitegpt.ai) on Twitter and grew it to $10k MRR in 1 month.
SiteGPT is a platform that allows you to create AI chatbots trained on your own website content.
When I launched it on Twitter, the launch tweet became viral.
Then the next day, the product got onto the front page of HN for several hours.
Then the following day, it became the #1 product of the day on Product Hunt.
These all contributed for getting that initial traction needed for the product to take off.
AMA!
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What were the other channels that contributed to the initial traction of the product launch?
Twitter, HN and PH are the main ones. Once it gets on these platforms, there will be ripple effects. A lot of people would automatically find out the product. I remember many saying that they found me on PH and some saying they found me on HN.
These days, people are coming mostly through Word Of Mouth. People who are following this space already know now that something like SiteGPT exists...
Thanks a lot for your comment. Do you think we need to prepare carefully for a huge launch or just breakdown to different small launches on PH?
3 Tips for anyone starting his indie journey aside from coding
Coding would be the easiest part among everything else. Everything is about distribution.
I would say to try and get the working product to the hands of the actual customers as fast as possible.
You can always iterate later once you see actual customers using it.
Once someone actually uses the product, the product roadmap will get built on its own based on what that user needs. Everything becomes super clear after you get actual paying customers. At least, that's what happened in my case for all my products.
Can you tell us the stack you used to build it? where is hosted etc...
Amazing stuff, congrats on the successful launch! I follow you on Twitter but wanted to ask on here so others can see: when you say train a chatbot on a website, do you mean you summarise the website content and upload it via a system prompt to ChatGPT, or do you actually train a GPT-3 instance and then turn that into a chatbot? If the latter, how?
It’s neither of them. It’s more complicated than generating a summary and less complicated than fine tuning.
I'm very curious about the specific method you used, as I would like to "train" chatGPT on some content of my own but actual training looks extremely labor intensive. The best option I could find is using embeddings. Is that what you are doing?
Amazing work Bhanu! That’s a dream come true 🥳
It really is!
Thank you so much for sharing this!
I am still trying to wrap my head around the user acquisition. I have seen a big account launching a product and it went nowhere (because for some reason people didnt like the product even though I thought it was not bad).
Then I see your case and it looks like that if a product is great, people start recommending the product immediately to their friends if it's good (and you have a huge user base practically over night). Is that what's happening?
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. We can’t just conclude that if the product is good, people will share it…
There are so many factors that won’t be in our hands when we launch. I just got lucky. Right people were there at the right time when I launched the product who retweeted it. If I launch another product again which is as good as the current product, I can’t say for sure that I would get the exact same result. I don’t think it’s as predictable as that.
In my case, the main thing that helped me was the product went viral on Twitter. It then went viral on HN and PH. These things can’t be timed even if you plan for them. It just happened like that in my case. Each one of these things compounded the effects of others.
Overall what I’m trying to say is, even if I tried, I don’t think I can replicate this again with another product.
Thank you!
I hope it is the case that people saw a quick win and found your product useful, hence they shared it with other target customers.
As you said, the huge spike in traffic could be because of this or because people love new shiny things. The churn rate will tell.
I am sure with all the learnings you can obtain from the data you are collecting (i.e. what do users typically ask etc.), you can fine tune prompts and build a differentiated product - one commit at a time :)
I’d also like to know how this happened.
How do you manage taxes and all the legal stuff?
I use Paddle and it handles everything.
is there a huge difference between Stripe and Paddle when it comes to the legal stuff?
This may be an uncomfortable question, but I'm curious what the margins are like for AI products, since you are charged for pay per use but your customers only pay a flat fee monthly.
Would you mind sharing more details on what your margins are if possible? Or perhaps how the margins compare to your other SaaS product?
Right now, my cost for running both Feather (my other SaaS product) and SiteGPT combined is around $3k-$5k per month.
I am not sure about the individual costs as I pretty much use similar hosting and similar databases for all my SaaS apps, so the costs that I have is the combined cost.
Thanks!
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I love everything about this. Like the product, execution and result. Keep up the good work man :D
Thank you!
Congratulations Bhanu! Way to go! 👏
How long have you been in web dev? What is your tech stack.
What web stack do you recommend to build and iterate on the product fast?
I wrote my first line of code in 2015. I think I started doing web dev one year after I started coding.
So I have been doing it for quite a while now (more than 7 years).
My tech stacks have changed quite a bit during this time. I remember using Django, Ruby on Rails, Laravel for most of my early years.
But today, I use Javascript and Typescript for everything. To be even more specific, my current tech stack is Remix. I have started using Remix for everything now.
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Regarding your other question, what stack to build and iterate on the product fast, I would say, choose the stack that you are already familiar with. There is no one good tech stack that is universally better than others. I think you can get very far with almost any tech stack you choose.
Interesting to hear about your journey Bhanu, it's very commendable! Amazing work.
I'm currently working my way towards getting good at Django - will keep at it.
All the best for the coming months. Wish you hit a stellar ARR as well! 👍👍
Thank you!
How did you create the embeddable widget? Do you have any resources on how to do that?
Very inspiring Bhanu!
2 questions:
Thanks,
Tal
@pbteja1998, what are your plans moving forward with the app?
I’m not sure what you mean… planning to grow it, build it and improve it.
I’m getting constant feature requests and improvement requests from the customers, so just going to focus on what the paying customers want. It’s as simple as that.
Sorry, I meant, what are your plans moving forward regarding marketing the app to acquire more users? @pbteja1998
Congrats. Really happy for you.
well done indeed! It's very encouraging to see how other piers are becoming successful. I would actually love to hear more, and I'm certain the rest of the IH community would like the idea too. Would you accept an invitation to do a twitter spaces? I'll DM you on twitter 😝
I am not sure what else is left to say here...
If you change your mind let us know!
Who is “us”?
The indie hackers :)
Excellent work man! I interviewed you too soon, haha
nice one
How many followers did you have before on Twitter? Any tips on how to make your Twitter go viral?
Before what? When I started this journey 3 years ago, it was zero.
Before the tweet went viral. I don't even have a Twitter yet, so it's on my to-do list now :) Very inspiring & motivating story to get me started with it.
Great work!
inspiring, thanks
How many chatbots should be there ideally on a website?
one.
Really helpful. Good answers regarding the competition.
What were some of the tactical work you did to generate traction on Twitter? Have you found most of your leads are coming from your existing audience? Or you engaging with popular channels/Twitter profiles and chatting about your products?
Everything has been organic so far. I haven’t tried engaging with popular channels/Twitter profiles. I have been building in public for so long now, it’s my second nature now. I don’t even think about it. It’s just a normal thing that I do.
Loved the product bhanu! been helping out SaaS founders over the years and you can grow more
Nice and love the name btw.
Amazing work! one question, in total how many users use the tool?
Right now, I think I have a little over 200 customers.
Wow. I built this before you and didn't launch it due to laziness and there already being 3-4 other competitors.
Huge congrats!
Yeah, I usually don’t look at competitors when working on a product. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. To this day, I still don’t know what all things the competitors are doing. I just launch what I think is the minimum usable version, and get it to the hands of the customers as quickly as possible. Once actual paying customers sign up, the product builds itself based on their feedback.
While I was building this product, I found out similar products exists and I have also seen similar products got launched during the 2-3 weeks I am building. I didn’t know how big or how small they are doing. I did not see any point caring about them. I knew I wanted to launch it and I was going to launch it. In the worst case, it would just be 3 weeks of wasted time. In the best case, well… we are witnessing the best case scenario right now.
Love the piece on not worrying about competition. If anything it validates the market. Ideas are cheap anyways - it's all about execution.
One of my favorite quotes is: "Ignore your competitors. You're more likely to die by suicide than by murder"
Two question:
1.What's your MRR projection for the future? Do you have any?
2.What was better in terms of traffic volume: Twitter, PH or HN?
and of course, BIG congrats! 👏👏👏
I don’t have any MRR projections. Churn is very high for AI products. Unless I address that, it will always a leaky bucket and MRR won’t grow.
In terms of traffic volume,
Twitter >>> HN > PH
thanks 👌
Congratulations for the implementation
Are you planning new ways to do marketing for your product?
Which would you consider most effective for this kind of SaaS?
Yeah, I don’t know any other kind of marketing. For the first time ever, I tried sponsoring a newsletter to promote the product. Even though I got 500 visits from the newsletter, I did not get any sign ups. I get way more than 500 visitors just from one of my tweets. So don’t think this works.
I’m still trying to figure this out. For now, my goal is to retain the existing customers.
Which source did you see the most organic growth come from?
Twitter
Hey Bhanu, been following your journey on twitter for so long, and i have to say it feels great to see you succeed. More power to you man
Happy to see i have seen your tweet wish you best of luck for your success!
Hi Bhanu - been following your journey ever since you launched. Recently, you tweeted that you brought on an additional person to help.
2 questions:
How did you onboard your first employee, providing a knowledge-dump of your product and codebase, while trusting the employee would not screw you over?
What challenges have you faced so far with having an additional team member, and any tips you can share for other founders looking to make their first hire?
Specifically, I am looking to hire our first customer service agent, but unsure how to go about training them and providing them with all the right tools and knowledge that I have about our product to delight the customer, but also ensure the employee doesn't go rogue and compete against me.
Yes, I am still struggling with this too. The person I hired hasn't worked on anything real yet. I am still trying to do the knowledge transfer to that person. He will be working on an actual real task in a few days.
I am still figuring this out. For now, the person hasn't worked on anything real yet related to SiteGPT.
Got it. Appreciate you taking time out to respond. Best of luck with SiteGPT... rooting for your continued success!
Gerat work - was wondering when you say you tried to get it into the hands of users as early as possible - what did you mean by that? Did that mean sharing it with a few communities first and getting feedback there? Or existing clients (or something else?) Curious how you rolled it out and tested it before launching publically (in regards to time frames etc.)
No, I mean just launch it as soon as possible. Just launch it.
For SiteGPT, one day, I decided to work on it, learnt everything I needed to build the product, and within 2-3 weeks, I have a product ready, which had a lot of bugs, but I just launched it on Twitter with a tweet.
It had a LOT of bugs.
The next week or so, I spent every day a lot of hours, making the product stable. You will experience some kind of bugs only when you reach a certain scale.
During this time, I had to stop a lot of bad actors doing a DDOS attack almost every day on SiteGPT. The initial few weeks were very crazy. I had a lot of sleepless nights.
But yeah, eventually everything became stable. When I say get it into the hands of users as early as possible, I meant, if you have the coding skills to ship things fast, then just ship it, and worry about everything else later.
I really love the "SHIP IT" mentality. That's awesome – keep up the great work and wish you continued success.
Also a couple of more questions
Has Your User Growth Depleted since Launch or it's growing
Biggest Mistake you regret making with SiteGPT and your launch
Marketing Channel you used to Launch it
There is nothing like a launch month.
The pace has certainly slowed down, but I am still getting new customers every day.
But there is no match for how good it did during the first few weeks of launch.
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I don't have any regrets about the launch. Even if I tried, it wouldn't have gone any better than how it did.
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I launched it through Twitter.
This is the launch tweet 👇
Congrats Bhanu
Loved your Journey So far it's quite inspiring
I am curious are there Any Awesome Communities Or Groups you've been part of who supported your journey
I am part of a lot of communities on Slack and Discord.
But one thing I consistently come back to and stay on is Twitter. There is nothing else like it when you follow the right people and curate the feed in the right away.
Without Twitter, I wouldn't have made anything on any of my products.
You are quite True Twitter Stands Out
Any Advice for anyone building an audience
I don't know if it works for everyone. But what worked for me is not trying to build an audience. I just started sharing about my business on Twitter, building things in public and the audience grew automatically because of that.
It did not happen overnight. I have been tweeting about my business(es) for more than 3 years now. So, it certainly takes time. But it has been so worth it in my case.
Thank you, Bhanu. Your journey is truly inspiring, and I wish you even more success in the future. I'm curious about a couple of aspects of your business.
Could you share which acquisition channels have yielded the best results for you? It's always interesting to learn about what strategies work best in different contexts.
Regarding your customers, do you find yourself working primarily with large corporations or more so with smaller businesses that require a certain level of customer support?
I would greatly appreciate if you could share your experiences on these topics. Thanks in advance!
I have very very few large corporations as customers. It's more small businesses than corporations who are using it at the moment.
Right now, Twitter and Google are my main acquisition channels. In Google, people are directly searching for "SiteGPT". Almost all of the traffic I get from Google is through these kind of searches...
Congrats! How do you ensure that the costs incurred from calling the OpenAI API won't burst your pockets?
I can’t ensure anything…
So far, it’s going ok. It’s a lot of usage, but since the product is already doing well, I can afford to pay for the usage…
I also didn’t have any free plan or free trial for this exact reason. The product became so viral during the launch time, it would have cost me several thousand dollars, if I had a free plan.
ah i see. so its kind of a balancing act to price the monthly plans such that its profitable?
Yes, like I said, everyone who is using it is paying for it.
How big was your churn rate after first month?
I think it’s around 20%
Have to check again.
Right now, my dashboard shows the churn is 10%, but it takes 2 or 3 months to get the exact churn rate.
Apart from having an amazing product (which you do) any tips on Product Hunt launch?
I haven’t done anything extra for PH launch. It was an on the spot decision for me at that time. On that day, I felt like launching it on PH, and I went to PH, filled the launch form, and clicked on Submit. That’s all I did. There is no launch video, no launch email, no DMing people to support the launch. It’s just fill the form, click submit.
Maybe a testiment to "great products sell themselves" or rather the right kind of idea at the right time.
inspiring, thanks
Give those content exporters a good way to train their AI-Bot, and help them achieve value conversion, you deserve that MRR
i want ask : with this product, are you an individual entrepreneur or have your own small team to reliaze it
Big congratulations Bhanu. Keep do more. Krishna wirbots.com
Inspiring work bhanu
How long did it take from an idea to the launch date?
And then there was me...believing that the age of chatbots was over. Interesting product and interesting comments here!
This is incredible!
Where should I start if I want to build a chat based app with Langchain?
I am not using Langchain.
would you mind sharing in high level how you built the chat based app?
What was the hardest challenge in the building journey, and what kind of solution did you come up with?
What is your preferred tech stack for sitegpt and feather?
Which hosting provider do you use?
Cloudflare.
Amazing product! Congrats!
I’m wondering how much time would it take to build a product like this, and more importantly how to validate the product idea?
BALLER
How are you handling website crawling? Any specific packages or tools you are using? @pbteja1998
I'm a developer, but I'm unsure how to incorporate an ai model into a new app. Are there any resources out there to help me get started? Certain github repos?
You've inspired me to start my own app, captain. Thank you.
One question I do have is about how the whole pinecone thing works for training customer-specific data, do you think you'd be willing to share that?
I'm sorry I'm calling bullshit on these numbers.
I have been studying SaaS companies for years and this very much looks like a false claim.
My own SaaS company fabform.io a forms handler grows slow and steady month on month nothing even close to these numbers.
That's the magic of product-market fit. People go "uhu mmhhmm interesting" when you tell them about your form handler but go "wow super cool, actually I know someone who needs this" when they hear about the ai website chatbot.
I'm not trying to shit on your product but people often underestimate just how much easier it is with a great product that people actually want to immediately buy.
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