Api Alam

I’m betting everything on myself and building my own SaaS. – Current Followers: 24 – Current Revenue: $0 – Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh 🇧🇩 It’s scary, but I’m committing to the process. My goal is to master the art of shipping products from 0 to 1, no matter how hard it gets. Here we go. 🚀 Follow along to see if I make it. 📉📈 #buildinpublic #SaaS #indiehackers

@robj3d3 Bro that was a different person looks to me 😑

Getting laid off at 21 was the best raise of my life. It was October 2022. I'd just graduated and started my first corporate job as a software engineer. Six weeks in, I was still in "orientation" (didn't know those could run that long, but apparently they can). Me and three other grads got pulled into a boardroom for a video call with someone from head office in Norway. The meeting was to brief us on what progression looked like at the company. Basically, what we'd get back for being loyal. My salary was just over $50k, which is very good money for a new grad in the UK. But post-tax, post-insurance, post-inflation, post-everything-else, there still wasn't much left. About 20 minutes in, we got to the topic of promotions. "Your salary is fixed for the first year. After that, you'll go through an annual review." Everyone in the room nodded along, and I nodded with them. But underneath my nodding, my gut sank. Everything I'd gotten in life up to that point had been a direct result of what I put in. If I worked harder at school, I got better grades. If I put more time into my side hustles, I made more money. And now I was being told that no matter what I did, my reward wouldn't even be looked at for a year. Am I being too impatient? Is this just what normal people do? Should I ask if there are any exceptions? Why does everyone else seem so chill about it? Nope. I kept my mouth shut, nodded one more time, and walked back to my desk. 1 month later they laid me off. 1 year after that I started my first agency and made $38k. 1 year after that I started my first SaaS. 10 months after that it hit $10k MRR. 3 months after that it hit $30k MRR. Your output is a function of your inputs. I understood that part at 21. But what took me longer to learn is that the inputs with the most leverage aren't the hours you put in. They're what you tolerate, who you spend your time around, and where you choose to live. My old corporate job used to review my salary once a year. Now I review my salary once a month.

@dudufolio Some risk should be taken, Its worth it 🤞

"You're a founder? Aren't you afraid of the risks?" Me:

@tibo_maker 🫡🫡🫡

5 years ago I would have never done this ❌ but last month, I took a 2 week vacation in Vietnam and thankfully my SaaS didn't crash 😮‍💨 I used to think taking a break meant falling behind. every hour away from the laptop felt like money left on the table but I was wrong I was forgetting to build a life worth living this time I actually took a real break, first one in a long time - and the business ran like usual 🤩 not because I wasn't needed, but because I spent years building systems that don't depend on me being online 18 hours a day async team across time zones, clear processes and automation everywhere the photo here is me and my wife in Vietnam - and this time I was fully there not half present, thinking about conversion rates (or b2b sales 😅) if you're a maker reading this and you haven't taken a real break in months, I'm not going to tell you to "touch grass" or "find balance" I'm going to tell you something harder: if your business breaks when you leave for 2 weeks, you don't have a business. you have a job you built for yourself 🤷🏻 build the systems, trust the processes - then go live your life

@tibo_maker Looks interesting. If I can afford even 0.0001% of it, I'm in 😅

who would be interested in buying share of my holding company? not just a single product but the entire portfolio collectively they do $1m / month with very decent margin you should not look for a quick exit more for growth and dividends

@denk_tweets @beehiiv Is that a Million with M ?????

we just crossed $30M ARR @beehiiv here’s the “overnight success” that took 4 years: 14 months: $0 → $1m 12 months: $1m → $5m 9 months: $5m → $10m 6 months: $10m → $15m 5 months: $15m → $20m 5 months: $20m → $25m 4 months: $25m → $30m and the $30M doesn't include the ~$15M of annualized revenue from Ads/Boosts 😏

@sergeynazarovx Seriously ! I hardly see indie makers from germany

best indie hackers

I analyzed Stripe vs Lemon Squeezy's SEO 😱 Stripe: ~4M organic visits/mo Lemon Squeezy: ~11K/mo Stripe: 94 DA Lemon Squeezy: 91 DA 370x traffic gap but just a 3 point DA difference 🧐 Lemon Squeezy is 82% organic. they've built a pure SEO moat 👀 and they rank for keywords Stripe wouldn't even compete on: - "into design" (33K searches/mo) - "sell digital goods" (5K/mo) - "gtm strategist" (3K/mo) - "selling digital items" (4K/mo) these aren't blog readers. these are buyers searching with intent the tool I used even flagged moves for Stripe. keywords Lemon Squeezy ranks for that Stripe doesn't, with ready-to-go action plans and that's the playbook for small teams beating giants at SEO - find what they're too big to care about - then own it 🎯 found all this in 90 seconds with a free tool we just shipped 💥 drop two URLs, get a full breakdown with a ranked action plan link below 👇

@tibo_maker -344k wtf 😑

outch France hit hard 😅

Need a wife though 😅 Hopefully I can find one soon.

@tibo_maker Picking whatever: What's the end goal? Without money, SaaS, or business, what does success look like to you at the end of your life? 🤔

AMA I've built & sold 2 startups for $8m. now I run 5 SaaS doing $1m+ mrr ask me anything in the replies 👇 about building, marketing, SaaS, AI, SEO, whatever I'll pick the top 10 and answer them properly in next week's newsletter

@alexcooldev So what should you expect from a coder to a co-founder role ?

Funny how some vibe coders offer me a “co-founder” role: They build the app. I do distribution, marketing, content, positioning, sales, growth, users, revenue… Current MRR: $0. My equity: 50%. Bro, at that point I’m not a co-founder. I’m your entire go-to-market department with a discount code 💀 Especially when I can vibe code the same app in 3 hours.

@tibo_maker @robj3d3 @eugZolotarenko @pbteja1998 Yes, it’s truly lonely until you meet another lonely builder. Then suddenly, both lonely people are happy together 😄

just came back from hacker residency in Vietnam 18 days. 20 builders. one villa. met @robj3d3 and @eugZolotarenko in person for the first time after building SuperX and Outrank together for 18 months even met @pbteja1998 who built feather before I acquired it. → worked out at 7am with co-founders → made decisions in 3 minutes that would've taken 3 days over slack → remembered what it feels like to be around people building the same thing I didn't want to leave. scheduled my flight months ago and regretted it alot last week 😅 because I forgot how lonely internet money is until i wasn't lonely anymore if you're building alone from your bedroom every day, you're missing this tomorrow's newsletter: why remote works but isolation kills, and what to do about it sign up below. 100% free 👇

@robj3d3 "Making builder friends will 10x your revenue." Thats 🔥

“because I forgot how lonely internet money is until i wasn't lonely anymore” 🥹 Making builder friends will 10x your revenue

@01ayushgarg Its inspiring !!! rooted for you, man <3

Am I Doing Enough? I ask myself this question almost every day. Not in a dramatic, staring-at-the-ceiling way. More like a quiet hum that runs in the background while I'm working. While I'm on a call. While I'm eating dinner. While I'm doing absolutely nothing. Am I really doing enough? I'm 28. I run growth across five SaaS products for a portfolio that's crossed a million dollars in monthly revenue. I'm building my own product on the side, SignWith, which just crossed 800 users. I've freelanced, built agencies, started and shut down companies, and worked with some of the biggest founders and creators on the internet. And I still don't have an answer. If you've ever felt this, even once, you'll relate. Because I've been chasing this question my whole life. And I think I finally understand something about it. It started when I was a kid. I grew up in India, which means your report card is basically your personality. But it wasn't just marks for me. I'd look at the kid who was better at cricket and think, I should be doing that too. Then I'd see someone killing it at hockey and think, wait, I'm not doing enough there either. So I played everything. Cricket, hockey, football, even indoor stuff like shooting. And I got decent at most of it. Not a prodigy, not the best on the team, but I played well. I held my own. But here's the thing. Every time I got good at something, I'd spot something else I wasn't good at. And the question would come back. Am I doing enough? Maybe I should be doing that thing too. I wasn't chasing excellence. I was chasing coverage. Like if I could just do enough things well enough, the question would finally shut up. It didn't. College was the same story, just louder. I went to an engineering college, and suddenly the game had more players and more dimensions. Some people were stacking internships. Some were playing sports at a competitive level. Some were partying every weekend and having the time of their lives. And I'm sitting there doing the math on all three. Am I getting good enough grades? Am I building enough skills? Am I even having enough fun? That last one is the funniest to me now. I was literally anxious about whether I was having sufficient fun. That's when you know the question has its hooks in you. Then I got a tech job. It was boring. I knew it was boring. Everyone around me seemed to know it was boring, too, but the "smart" ones had a plan. They were prepping for an MBA. Studying on weekends. Talking about Ivy League, IIMs, and ISB like it was the next logical step. So naturally, I started prepping that too. Not because I wanted an MBA. But because I didn't know what else "doing enough" looked like at that stage. And if these smart people were doing it, maybe I was falling behind by not doing it. That was the pattern. I didn't have my own definition of enough. I just borrowed whatever definition the people around me were using. Then I found Twitter (now X) in 2021. And everything broke. Because suddenly I wasn't comparing myself to the kid in my class or the guy in the next cubicle. I was comparing myself to the entire internet. Someone's doing $20K a month as an indie hacker. Someone's raised $2M for their new startup. Someone's freelancing from a hotel room in Bali, making more in a month than I've made in my life. Someone's running an agency doing $5M a year just by writing threads for founders. And then Elon shows up and says he works 90 hours a week minimum, like that's the baseline. 🤯 For the first time in my life, the question "am I doing enough?" had a clear answer. No. Not even close. So I started running faster. I freelanced. Made good money. Burned out and quit. I started a mental health company. We connected people with psychologists, built real things, and made decent revenue, which was profitable. But it didn't work out. Took an exit. I started a dev agency with a friend. Never landed a single paying client. With 2 other people, I started another agency. Hit $10K a month in 3 months. Then it fell apart because we just weren't good partners to each other (that's the polite version) I built a SaaS product, SignWith. It's been about a year now. Around 800 users. About $1,400 in revenue. Slow. Real. Mine. Through all of this, there was a pattern I didn't fully see at the time. Every new thing I jumped into required me to learn something I had absolutely no business knowing. Like, why would a bad developer who has just quit his job decide to start a mental health company in India? But somehow I did. To run an agency, I had to understand client management, deliverables, scope, reaching out, pitching, and pricing. To market a SaaS, I had to get into SEO, UX, product thinking, finances, and positioning. Starting a business in India is relatively straightforward; running it is worse, and closing it is a nightmare. The paperwork, the compliance, the loopholes, the sheer number of moving parts that can drain your energy for months. I was always struggling with something completely new and executing it on the go. So naturally, things would sometimes blow up in my face. I was like, okay, this needs to get done, so I guess I'm the person who's going to learn how to do it. And still, after all of it, am I doing enough? So, after the agencies and the burnout and the chaos, I went quiet. I had 1 small gig. 3 hours a week. That was my only source of income for almost a year. The rest of my time was spent pondering the question. Not "am I doing enough" this time, but "what do I actually want to do?" And after a lot of uncomfortable silence, I realized something. I can't do just one thing. I'm not wired for it. The kind of job where you're at a position and you're supposed to do that one thing, do it, and go home. I've done specialized work before. I've been good at it. But I don't enjoy it. Not fully. Not in a way that makes me want to keep going. I'm a generalist, and that's not a weakness. That's just what I am. So I started thinking like one. What does a generalist do when they want to help a business grow? Here's what I got: they do everything they can. They look at content, product, distribution, SEO, community, positioning, partnerships, retention, activation, churn, and whatever else needs attention that week. I went deep into the world of growth. Consumed content from people like Lenny Rachitsky, Andrew Chen, Elena Verna, etc. Studied what great growth operators actually do. And you know what I found? I sucked at almost all of it. So I started learning. Again. Like I always do. Piece by piece, executing at whatever scale I was at, figuring things out on the go. Today, I work as the Head of Growth at a holding company with @tibo_maker. 5 SaaS products. The portfolio has crossed a million in monthly revenue. I work across content, lead management, SEO things, affiliates, product launches, banging my head on analytics dashboards and thinking about growth features, and whatever else needs to happen that week. And I'm building on the side too. It's the most aligned I've ever felt with work. And almost every day, I still ask myself: Am I doing enough? I see other growth operators shipping harder. I see founders building faster. I see people my age who seem like they're 3 chapters ahead of me. The hum is still there. But here's what I've realized, and I think this is the thing I've been circling my whole life. The question is never going away. It's not supposed to. "Am I doing enough?" is not a bug. It's the thing that made me play every sport as a kid. It's the thing that made me start companies I had no qualifications to start. It's the thing that made me get into content, SEO and UX and compliance law and client management and product thinking, all because the situation demanded it, and I refused to sit still. The question was never the problem. The problem was thinking the answer would one day be "yes." Because if I ever genuinely felt like I was doing enough, I think I'd stop. And stopping sounds a lot worse than the discomfort of always wanting to do better. But the realization is - someone will always be ahead. Someone will always be doing something I can't even imagine yet. That used to bother me. Now I think it's the whole point. The answer to "am I doing enough?" is no. It's always going to be no. And I think I'm finally okay with that.

@tibo_maker Need a wife who supports me like this too… especially for writing the prompts 🤣

if you want to be rich, your job is to build the tools that AI will buy when this prompt runs 👇

Bro gave him a heart attack first, then tried to recruit him 💀

@tibo_maker always excited for new product ideas 😄

there are so many products I wish I had created you guys build great stuff 👏

@hridoyreh @tibo_maker @marclou @jackfriks @levelsio @robj3d3 @kalashvasaniya @chrissyinspace Maybe you missed me 😄 No worries though, I’ll earn my spot there one day.

These guys are cool, you should follow: 1. @tibo_maker - great indie hacker 2. @marclou - great indie hacker 3. @jackfriks - great indie hacker 4. @levelsio - cool indie hacker 5. @robj3d3 - indie hacker 6. @kalashvasaniya - indie hacker 7. @chrissyinspace - indie hacker 8. @mddanishyusuf - indie hacker 9. @Timb03 - indie hacker 10. @AlexBelogubov - indie hacker 11. @nickbakeddesign - great designer 12. @BrettFromDJ - cool designer 13. @seo_wins - SEO hacks 14. @brodieseo - SEO updates 15. @Charles_SEO - SEO guy 16. @jakezward - SEO guy 17. @hridoyreh - SEO guy 18. @shiri_shh - latest AI news 19. @harrydry - great marketer 20. @im_roy_lee - great marketer 21. @DanKulkov - cool marketer 22. @romanbuildsaas - cool marketer 22. @natiakourdadze - marketer 23. @starter_story - startup stories 24. @mikefutia - AI automations 25. @claudeai - Claude updates Who did I miss, guys?

Indie building looks cool online. But honestly, some day feels lonely 🥺 Just you, your laptop, coffee, bugs, doubts, and that tiny hope that someday it will all be worth it. Still building anyway. ☕️

@pablolleonart @tibo_maker @AlexFinn @robj3d3 Sent you the link in DM 🙌 Would love your feedback on it

@codebyapi @tibo_maker @AlexFinn @robj3d3 XGROWTH

Yeah, @AlexFinn is right, X growth shouldn’t feel like gambling with the algorithm. So I helped build a tool for superx.so & @robj3d3 that turns your profile into a personalized roadmap: → what to fix → what to post → how to grow faster Comment “XGROWTH” and I’ll DM you the link.