He Made $0 for a Year. Now His SaaS Makes $20K+/Month

0:06Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining for the third podcast session. So I have a very special guest here. So Rob, I think a lot of people know Rob on X and he's just such a legend. So I'm super excited to have him on and talk a little bit about his journey and then any advice and tips he would want us to know as new founders and builders. So, thank you so much, Rob, for joining and um really appreciate your time. So,

0:31thank you. Thank you, Maya. I'm I'm thrilled to be one of the first few as well. I'm really uh inspired by what you're working on as well with all of this. I've tried it in the past. It's hard, so I respect the uh grind. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I'd love to know a little bit about your journey because I know like you've started on the journey like a while ago and you used to post a lot of videos and you still do. And I'd love to know like what really drove you to starting this journey and I know you have mentioned in the past like you tried like five times

1:02or six times and you failed and I want to know what kept you going as well. So I'd love to know a little bit about that. Yeah. So I started uh I have a technical background. I studied computer science at university. I was following the very traditional path most of my life. I became a software engineer in 2022. It was from an internship that I had while I was at uni. I got I graduated. Um this was just postcoid because I graduated in

1:252022 and I became the software engineer. I based myself in reading in the UK and I followed the it was the very traditional path. I was on a good salary. Um not amazing compared to some of my friends but it was good for what the UK is and uh I really did not like what I was doing. I was uh it was the closest I was to being depressed I would say because it was October 2022. The weather was terrible. Uh, I didn't enjoy what I was doing. I didn't get along with any colleagues. I didn't really connect with my housemates that I was living with. I didn't have any friends

2:00in the area cuz I was new and I didn't find any. So, I was very like isolated. I was overworking trying to prove myself in a job, a job that I didn't like. So, I was already looking for outs within a month or two. Um, and then came a blessing which was at the end of November 2022, a few months into into my my job, they did some cost cutings and I got laid off. So, I got a little bit of a package, a little bit of a pay package to sort of send me on my way. And I took it as a sign to go to go all in on

2:32what I wanted to do given at that point I knew very much that I did not ever want to go to that ever again. And I had this lease that I was paying for. So, it was 6 months in reading. So I knew I had like three or four more months in reading. I was like, "Okay." I ended up looking at like, you know, the normal I was looking at e-commerce. I was looking

2:49at drop shipping. I was looking at SAS. I was looking at everything. And I was like, "Wow, how can I make money so that I don't have to go to back to working?" Yeah. For working for someone else that uh doing something that I don't want to do, which was software engineering at the time. Very technical software engineering. just coding while I was being told to code, you know, fixing

3:09bugs. And so I I at that point I joined a startup uh through a friend's connection that lasted for a few months. I got sort of up and up and starting early 2023 to understand what the startup was like. Um but then me and my friend, the friend who was the CTO of the company at the time, it was a very small very small startup. They ran out of money. It was originally like an investment that they got. They ran out of it. It wasn't very man very well managed by the people who were in charge in the business. We were

3:38like okay we can handle this ourselves. So at the same time this was August 2023 I was looking on X and I saw this guy that you might recognize the name of Mark Lou who launched this thing called Shipfast. Yep. And I saw him making millions of dollars on X just through his audience and I was like holy crap what like there's another world out there. Um, and I was following him for a few months prior seeing that he was do he had like 5,000 followers. I joined a live stream with him and he there were only like two or three people on the live stream. Um, and

4:12then I saw this explosion and I was like, "Wow, uh, this guy's life this guy's life changed effectively overnight." Of course, it seems like an overnight change, but he was hustling for a long time before it. But uh yeah, and I went um so my friends and I who were from the startup 2023 decided to start sharing what we were doing on X and that was when I started quote unquote indie hacking uh about September 2023. And the first product that I launched was called Index on X which was an index like a directory of indie hackers. um because I wanted to meet other indie hackers and I thought

4:48it was a cool cool idea and I tweeted about I was like who would like this and the like got like I don't know 50 likes which for me at the time was crazy I had about 100 followers so I took it as validation and I was like okay let's build this and it took like 4 months to ship but eventually got out and then everything sort of cascaded there from there so that's kind of my origin story that's awesome yeah I think a lot easier to kind of ship faster now because of vibe coding and that's awesome. Like I remember back in the day like I think

5:18when I joined X Mark was like at like 14,000 followers and like he was just getting started. So that's like an incredible inspiration for like I think everyone. So yeah for sure. I wanted to ask you, so I saw one of your tweets like I think a couple months ago when you were talking about like, you know, you had five failures and your sixth product was the one that like took off. And one point you mentioned on there was, you know, try to offer your kind of product as like a service initially to get validation. So I wanted to know if you could delve a little bit deeper into that because as a

5:49small kind of creator like how would you recommend um kind of going about that? It's a good question. Uh I think the biggest problem that or the problem that I face that I see a lot of other people facing when you're starting out is cash flow because obviously if you have no cash flow you have to work a job unless you come from money. You have to work a job or whatever to get cash and then therefore you're working on the weekends. You don't have much time. So you're either strapped to cash or you're strapped to time or both. And so I have this exact same problem. I just after I launched

6:28Indidex, I had a year where I made no money at all. Um, literally zero dollars. I remember I was this at this point I was traveling. I just started traveling and I got a bit caught up with backpacking and I enjoyed the traveling and then I tried building some stuff but I wasn't making any money at this point and I would literally watch these vendors on the side of the street selling you know pomegranate juice for $1 being like damn that guy's making more money than me and I was like a little bit envious. I was like, h I could do like a couple dollars right now

6:59just like to feel like I'm contributing something, have some purpose, you know, I was lacking purpose. So, of course, my money was running out. I needed the cash flow. And everybody, you know, when you're starting out, you need cash flow. So, either you work a job or what I did was I started an agency. And this didn't happen randomly. This happened because I made a tweet saying, "I've made no money in 12 months." if anyone wants to hire me as a freelance developer, let me know. And someone said, "Hey, you should sell your skills, not as freelance, but create an agency and spin off the back

7:34of this tweet." So, I did that. So, instead of freelance, which I'd done kind of in the past, I I created this new agency. Um, and a little bit like my my recent sort of success with Can I Vibe Code? This new website that I built, I took the momentum of the viral tweet and I launched immediately. I took action and I got my first client for $3,000. It's $3,000 for a month, but I was like, "Okay, this is cash. First time I made made money in a year." And uh and then I started compounding, but the cash flow gave me the the validation, but also it gave me the runway, right,

8:10the the time to start working on these things. And so I followed both the validation, but also I had the cash flow at that point. So I think the hardest thing at the start is to to have the cash. So either you work a job and then you work on something on the side until that thing pays enough so that you can quit your job or you do something like an agency which is what I did at the start to build up enough runway. Um and then yeah SuperX which was is my main product spun off the back of that agency

8:38which we can talk about. Yes, would love to talk about that and yeah that's really good advice actually. I've never kind of heard it put it put that way because I think for me right now like I'm struggling a little bit with marketing my products and I think like an agency is probably like a better approach when you need like a runway to like actually go fulltime on it. I think that's a great tip. But yeah, I'd love to actually like, you know, talk about SuperX and kind of also how you marketed your products when you were getting started out like right when you switched out of like the agency or like

9:08continuing the agency and um would love to chat a little bit about that is like for small creators like what the best way to market. Yeah, I mean the thing with marketing marketing is changing so much nowadays with like AI and agents and everything. Um, one of my friends, Nevo from Posters, talks a lot about this and what worked 2 years ago doesn't work

9:30today. Yeah. But there are so there are so many ways you can market. Yeah. Right. Cuz marketing just means getting in front of people. So, how do you get in front of people and getting in front of the right people? So, back in the day when I was doing Index, it didn't make me any money cuz I didn't monetize it. That was a problem at the time. Um, obviously you need a buy button on something to be able to take people's money otherwise it's not a business. Um, but I was posting it in front of the people that I was selling it to, which is on X, Indie Hackers on

10:00X. And then the next thing that I did, this agency, um, I was sharing on X. And this has been what has worked for me because I love sharing what I do. It feels very, um, natural to me. I tried a lot of things. I tried outreach. Um, obviously in the past I've done like software engineering, realized I didn't like being in the weeds coding. I prefer the marketing side of things. I prefer sort of going out there. And so

10:27obviously on on X, it's worked for me. Um, but with with marketing, you just need to find a way to get in front of your ICP, in front of your ideal customer, right? So you can do SEO. SEO is dying and sort of turning into AEO. people are talking about. You can think of outreach some some sometimes it works for some people. For example, I know Goji Berry, I talked to Roman from Goji Berry who are now doing almost I think $4 million a year and they grow over the last year. They uh they do a lot of outreach, but now they've sort of split out into doing X

11:04and outreach and a bunch of other stuff and ads. Um ads is another thing if you have cash flow. A lot of indie hackers and sort of people on X don't. So, I think if you have no money, you're limited to things like SEO um and AEO, which the con of that is it takes a lot of time to compound,

11:22right? Yeah. Building in public, which has the con of if you find something that's working, people will copy it, right? So, if you don't have a proper moat, and what is a moat? Well, if you don't have a proper moat, you might struggle. I know a lot of mobile app founders have that because a lot of the time with mobile app founders the moat is the viral format that is that they're using to market their stuff. So if they share that on on X then it's going to get ripped. Um so there are all these kinds of things that you can do. I don't I don't think

11:55there's one specific marketing channel that is the the one everybody should do. But I think especially when you're starting you should do as many different marketing channels as you can. Try as many different things. see which one works because you will find like a a synergy between what you enjoy and what works for the specific business that

12:14you're doing. And you need to find that. And when you find that and if the the thing you're selling actually Yeah. double down. If the thing you're actually selling solves a problem that is painful enough, then you have that problem, you have the marketing and something that you enjoy that motivates you to keep going. Cuz that's the other thing of being an indie, right? You're in it on your own. So you need to be self motivated. So you find those three things then uh it's like fire. It's like

12:37uh just cascades from there. Not easy but yeah volume just experimentation. I've been watching like the postess founder like he posts a lot of good videos. So I've been watching those as well. So that's awesome. And I think that really helps to kind of get like an idea of all the different stuff that's there and there's probably even more. So thank you for giving an overview of that as well. Um, yeah, I I think I'd love to dive into SuperX and how you kind of got into that and um I know you'd mentioned you're working on B2B as well. So would love to talk a

13:10little bit about SuperX. Yeah, that's an interesting that's an interesting one. Um, so SuperX came off the back of this agency that I was doing because at the time I was doing this agency, I was marketing it through posting on X, which like I explained, I love posting on X. I love sharing the journey. So, this has been my main marketing channel for a while because I found that it fits the ICP that I build things that I sell to. Um, and then I love doing it. Um, and it, yeah, it resonates with my ICP. So, I started posting the way that I found all of my clients through my agency was

13:43inbound. So, I posted on X about sharing the wins. People would DM me and say, "Hey, we'd love to work with they'd book a meeting and then I would uh sign them and then I'd post about that and then I get more clients and I was doing this through making content on X. So I had this itch that I wanted to scratch which was okay this was where as AI was bad at writing tweets but it was helping me get a lot of volume in tweets and I don't recommend at all. I don't suggest using

14:10AI to automate your personality on X. Um, but it was helping me craft tweets and learn at the time sort of an intuition that I built now, but at the time it was helping me learn what goes viral and what doesn't because it was helping me analyze the data, right? So I was like it would be great if there was a tool for this and there were tools but they hadn't like you know tweet hunter type flee but they hadn't integrated AI at this point. So I was like okay. So, I built a product that scratched my own niche that I also knew was validated because there were these products in the

14:40market already. And during my competitor analysis, I found this tool called SuperX. And it was a Chrome extension. And as luck would have it, a few months later, Tibo acquired my now co-founder acquired SuperX as an extension from the old founder. And their collaboration didn't work. And so, Tibo fully acquired it. and said, "Hey, OnX, looking for a co-founder." And at this point, id built a product called Brandcast that I was working on internally like to compete with them. And I showed him and I sent him a loom and then we worked together for a week and then we agreed to sign on. And then from there, from the itch

15:19that I had initially with the agency and the agency started with that initial tweak with the earning $0 in a year, which started from, you know, the indie decks and everything before it. So I had the agency. I felt the scratch. I built Brandcast. I then saw the tweet from Tibo which was luck and luck comes into it. I hopped on the opportunity. I then started building super tibo. 6 months of grind and then it started working and then yeah so that's that's kind of where where super came from. It was the uh it was the solution that I wanted that scratched my itch but also scratched other people's

15:55itch itches. Um, and yeah, it it paid off in the end. Yeah, that's awesome. And I also love to hear like how like, you know, the hard work and luck, it has like a snowball effect. So, you just have to keep going cuz you never know when something's going to work. And I've kind of experienced a little bit of this in my life, but I think it's a good reminder for everyone who's watching that like, you know, you have to keep going like no matter what. So, yeah. But yeah, I'd love to I know we're um approaching time as well, but I'd love to kind of end on

16:24like a sort of fun question where like I know you've been traveling and you've traveled to a lot of places and you've you're like living like the nomad lifestyle. So I'd love to know a little bit about like like your favorite place you've been to as well as like what any tips or recommendation for people who

16:38are looking to move um to Asia. Good question. Oh my my favorite country. Have you traveled much? Have you been out of traveled a lot but not to Asia? I want to move to Thailand like next year. So that's the goal. That's like um like something I'm keeping in mind and that's like I'm working towards that. So yeah, because if I was going to answer I was going to answer my favorite country in the world that I've visited so far is Thailand. I would say for sure just because it has everything. Um, I actually applied for my DTV, which is a destination Thailand visa, which is like

17:14a five-year visa that lets you stay six months at a time. Um, just so I can move there. At the moment, I'm in Vietnam. Um, I love Thailand just because it has everything. Uh, it's super safe. It's super modern. Uh, they have some of the best hospitals in the world, some of the best infrastructure in the world. Um, you go to cafes and they'll have 300 400 megabytes per second Wi-Fi. Um, you have everything from the mountains, it's very clean to the the beaches in the south where you can get like very packed beaches, but you can also find like tiny little bays on little islands. There's

17:49like a million islands. There's like literally everything you could want and imagine. Um, like I've learned how to scuba dive in Kottow in in south of Thailand. It's one of the cheapest places to do it in the world, but also one of the most beautiful places to do it in the world. Um, Thailand just has everything. So, I love Thailand. Um, I also love Latin America. I visited Latin America um last year. I spent most of the year there in like South America and Central America, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, um and Panama. And uh I love

18:19Colombia. I love Brazil. Mhm. But I felt like my nervous system was a little bit more on edge just because you can't go out. Yeah. You can't go out at night as much. You can, but you have to be a bit more witty. You have to think about which roads you're going down. You have to think a little bit. you have to prepare in advance and you you always

18:38have to be careful. Um just a little bit mindful. So yeah, I would recommend like if you're starting, someone wants to travel the world, Southeast Asia is one of the best places in the world you you can you can go to to do it to start just because it has everything and it's like a little playground. It's the first place I came to. First place I ever traveled to that was like a super far away from home place was Bangkok and then I traveled around Thailand from there and then from there went to Vietnam, Cambodia and all

19:04of that. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great to hear because that's what my my husband and I are planning like you know next year like because I think KP like I don't know if you know him but he was always like telling me before like you know don't attach like you know taking like a big risk to that to like a financial thing. You just have to take the risk at some point and I've always struggled with that a little bit but I decided I'm next year is the year. So

19:27yeah. Yes. Yeah. Do you know where you're going to go in Thailand? No, I haven't figured any of that stuff out yet, but I have to. But I'll probably like um ask for recommendations at some point. So, yeah, for sure. One of my my favorite places, Chiang Mai in the north. A lot of nomads there, but also it's very chill and uh and yeah, good lifestyle. I'm now past

19:47the point of like backpacking, you know. There's the traveling somewhere every two weeks. I I can't do that anymore. I've been here for 4 months. I'll be here for a bit a while longer now. I'm like done with that. So, Vietnam and Chiang Mai and Thailand are very good places for settling down long term. Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much and I really appreciate your time and um yeah, thank you. Your tips were really valuable and I'm sure it's going to help me as well as a lot of people just

20:12getting started out. So, thank you. Thank you, Maya. And respect to what you're doing. I love this. Thank you. Keep going. Thank you. Thank you.