How to Build a Profitable Lifestyle Business without Chasing VC Funding
Learn How to Dominate B2B SaaS with SEO and the Power of "Build in Public" Strategies.
👋 Hello everyone — this is Ankur from ByteSizedBets with another exclusive edition of the newsletter. A very warm welcome to all of the new members.
Each month, I write about software engineers, tech founders, indie hackers, software engineering, startups, developer tools, writing, career growth and small bets.
First of all, I’m sorry for not being regular on newsletter. It’s been pretty intensive days since last month and guess what I love to do work in such intensive sprints 😎
If this strikes a chord with you, please ❤️, share, or leave a comment (in simple words, let the Substack algorithm know to spread the word).
Today I’m going to share a founder story who built a lifestyle first business instead of chasing VCs.
If you have only been following VC funded companies, their founders, their funding stats, their progress, their lawsuits, all this via mainstream publications, then this dream may seem distant, even unpractical but there is a wave of founders who are showing us an alternative path by choosing to do things differently.
They don't want VC funding.
They don't want HyperGrowth.
They don't want Large Teams.
They don't care to be on Forbes 40under40.
They rather watch TED talks on their plasmas than give one all they want is to be independent and be in control of their own destiny 😀
These people are as cool, as calculated, and as important to the GDP as the folks from HyperFunded companies.
They make enough $$ for themselves and build a comfortable online business.
In today’s post, I’ll cover the story of Sai who is a developer and entrepreneur.
who has made a significant mark in the lifestyle business with his innovative project.
So let’s jump in:
From here on, Sai and I discuss his journey as an entrepreneur.
Each question is followed by answers from Sai.
About The Company:
What's the story behind the superblog.ai of your company, and how does it reflect your journey?
Sai:
Being a techie, it’s tough for me to do sales. So I relied on SEO heavily as I’ve been a blogger since 17.
I built multiple SEO properties since then for my previous products.
Every time I needed to set up a WordPress blog or build my own blogging module and then optimize it for design, speed, SEO, scale, best practices for readability and clicks.
One fine day I decided to turn all of my experience into a blogging platform so that everyone can just focus on writing content.
Everything else is handled by the blogging platform.
I was an indiehacker since 19 years of age (didn’t know the word back then).
Built products (apps and games for windows, android, ios) until 22.
After that, built two startups (and failed) with a cofounder and team, raised small fund. Superblog made go back to my solo indiehacker journey
Building the First Product Version:
Walk us through the challenges and breakthroughs you experienced while developing the initial version of your product. How did your vision evolve during this phase?
Sai:
Superblog is a JAMStack blogging platform.
Meaning there is no server compute or database required for your blog.
And that’s why it is crazy fast. Also, I can fix the technical SEO errors during the build phase.
For developers, it is a common thing to wait for the code to be built and deployed. But for non-tech bloggers, I had to get the UX right because they are typically used to “Publishing” and not “Deploying”.
This was the most important and difficult aspect.
Cracking this was the biggest breakthrough. Vision remained the same.
Launching The Business:
Describe the emotions and strategies involved in launching your startup. What were the major hurdles, and how did you overcome them?
Sai:
This is my first SaaS product (and also b2b).
It is much harder to get paid customers. Even harder to find customers for blogs because it is “high-barrier to entry” product.
So, my launch plans didn’t go as expected.
So I had to choose the “Build in Public” route to solve the trust layer.
Potential customers need to know that there is some chatter about the product, and that the product will continue to exist after they jump in (superblog is an “all-in” product).
Existing customers need to know that something positive is happening with the company.
Build in public solved these factors.
Growing The Business:
How have you scaled your business from its initial days to its current state? Share some insights on key growth strategies and pivots.
Sai:
I wanted to grow superblog in a calm manner.
I was working really hard from 2011 to 2020.
Combine that with major personal problems, i decided to grow superblog slowly, sustainably, profitably from day 1.
So I stuck to SEO and Build in Public.
They suit my mental model of growth.
As a bonus, Word of mouth has been incredible. So that became a steady channel.
Revenue + Financials:
Could you discuss your journey to financial stability? How did you manage funding or if Bootstarp how much initial money you’ve invested and revenue models, and financial planning?
Sai:
Even before starting superblog, I had a clear idea of how my journey is going to be like. Especially the financial journey - extremely hard.
I had small savings from my previous job as CTO at a funded startup.
I kept a 12 months runway at INR50k/mo burn rate which includes personal and business expenses.
But universe is funny. Due to covid lockdowns I decided to stay at my parents’ house in my village. So essentially, the burn rate fellow down to less than INR 5k/month. That increased my runway and by the time I moved out of my parents’ house, superblog was making decent revenues to not burn my savings.
Also, it helped majorly to estimate the cost of building the product in advance.
Lessons Learned:
Reflecting on your journey so far, what are some unexpected lessons you've learned about entrepreneurship and leadership?
Sai:
Solve for 80%.
No need to think of every possible edge case while building.
Trust is the most important factor when building b2b SaaS.
Recommended Tools:
What are the essential tools and technologies that have been instrumental in your company's growth and efficiency?
Sai:
I just use Github Issues, Google Keep.
Books & Resources:
Share your top book recommendations for aspiring entrepreneurs and any resources that have been pivotal in your journey.
Sai:
Almanack of Naval Ravikant has been an eye opener for me which reinforced my mental models. And also I’m not good at articulating. This book helped me with frameworks.
Advice For Founders:
What advice would you give to someone starting their entrepreneurial journey today, based on your own experiences and insights?
Sai:
Always build what you want for yourself
B2B is a different beast. Risk and rewards are in equal ratios. (or may be more)
Never be afraid to charge more. I wanted to charge superblog $1/mo. But I launched with $9/mo on a friend’s advice. Then increased it to $19/mo. Now the same plan starts at $29/mo.
Hiring Needs:
Are there specific roles or skills you’re actively seeking to add to your team? What qualities do you look for in potential team members?
Sai:
I’m not looking to hire at the moment.
Ankur:
Last but not least, anything special you want to mention.
Sai:
Take most risks when you are 19-25. It carves our your 25-35 and thanks for having me and for the opportunity to share my experience with you.
This interview is a great reminder that success in online business is not just about technical skills but also about adaptability, continuous learning, and community involvement.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed Sai’s interview.
If you have any questions for Sai feel free to drop a comment for him here and If you found value in this post, I’d be grateful if you shared it with colleagues, batchmates, new grads, friends.
If you’re eager to share your journey, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at hello@theankurtyagi.com
Together, we can continue to build a community of learning and growth.
Highlights and Interesting reads:
Professional:
I have crafted over 10+ professional articles in last 60 days and made over $20,000 USD in all of my small bets so my advice is “Play what you're good at not the other way around.“ read more on Twitter.
Bought a new domain and work is under progress and it’s about “roasting” 😉
Started a new fractional DevRel/Growth role at team AgentCloud we’re building an open source platform enabling companies to build and deploy private LLM chat apps (like chat GPT), that can enable teams to securely talk to their data.
Agent Cloud is like having your own GPT builder with a bunch extra goodies.
The Top GUI features Are:
RAG pipeline which can natively embed 260+ datasources
Create Conversational apps (like GPTs)
Create Multi Agent process automation apps (crewai)
Tools
Teams+user permissions. Get started fast with Docker and our install.sh
we're open source so the easy way to support us is by giving a star on GitHub ⭐
I’ve written an article if you’re interested in RAG Chat App then I’ll encourage you to read How to Build a RAG Chat App With Agent Cloud and BigQuery.
Signed 3 long term writing as a service contracts so runway looking good.
Offline restaurant is just doing break even and even had conflict among partners can’t share more details but just one word “offline business is hard, it’s not everyone’s cake“
I’ll be a speaker at TIL conference in May.
I found a very interesting blog written by a Andreas Klinger and he shared his views about new India on his recent visit. I’ve shared bullet points here on Twitter if you don’t have time to read the full blog.
It feels like the world needs a software update.
China is no longer cheap outsourcing.
Japan is no longer the tech superpower
India is no longer the India of the 80s or 90s and not even of the early 2000s.
and this is not going back.
Personal:
now it’s time for some sunshine in Sweden so good days are coming.
we’re moving from this cold, grey and white: 😩
To this warm, sunny and beauty:😁
Work with me:
I’m adding 2 more people in my team who can work as technical freelance writers just hit reply and send your portfolio and why you want to work with me. I’ve a diverse range of topics for e.g LLMs/RAG/APIs, React, Auth, DevOps, MLOps, and ML.
No meetings, work from wherever you want and no commitment. you can choose the topic and get paid based on the complexity.
and at last my 2 cents on AI, AI and AI.
whenever you’ll feel your future in tech is in danger❗️
or you feel anxiety—just take a printout of this picture and put into your wall in your room. the amount of tech debt, complexity in tech is enough to last a lifetime.
so most of us are safe, but build a strong coding fundamentals if you want to stay in the game 👊
Thank you, Namaste 🙏 See you in the next month's newsletter.
PS... If you have any questions feel free to send me an email; replies go straight to my inbox and I love getting mail 😊
Until next time,
Stay awesome,
Cheers.
- Ankur Tyagi