From a Nobody to 1000 Active Users With $0 in Ads

Started with 0 subs and 0 followers.
Spent $0 on ads.
Now my SaaS has 1K Monthly Active Users (~10K total).

Intro

Hi, I'm Ravi. I'm originally from Brazil, but I've been living in Japan for the past 8 years, working full-time as a web developer at a Japanese company. And on the side, I've been building a small bootstrapped startup - plus occasionally posting on my YouTube channel, which somehow ended up with 14,000 subscribers.

Just a few years ago, I had no idea how any of this worked.

How it All Started

Back in March 2022, I was basically a complete beginner in anything related to startups, making money online, or content creation. I didn't know the first thing about investing or entrepreneurship. But I was curious.

While going down that rabbit hole, I started reading a book called Rich20Something. I was already turning 30 at the time - so I guess I missed the mark on the title 😅 - but it was the first time I read something that introduced me to the idea of building value instead of just trading time for money.

I got motivated and tried making my first YouTube video - a programming tutorial. It wasn't great. It took way longer than I expected, and the result was kind of… meh. I told myself I might give it another shot later. For now, I decided to try building something.

The First Startup Idea (That Didn't Work Out)

My first real project was called SalonTopia. The idea was to build a website builder specifically for Japanese salons - many of which didn't have a decent online presence. I imagined this platform that came with online reservations, a CRM to keep track of conversations with clients, maybe even payments and other tools later on.

The MVP came together pretty nicely, and I planned to charge around $200/month per salon. The math made sense: even getting a few customers could bring in decent revenue.

But the hard part wasn't building the product. It was getting people to use it.

I realized I had no connections in that industry. Cold outreach didn't feel right to me. I read books and tried to psych myself up for it, but it just didn't click. And since I had no cofounder to handle sales, I started to consider other options.

At the same time, something else had caught my attention.

The Problem Behind the Problem

One small feature in SalonTopia's MVP was a file upload functionality. Getting it to work - with S3, CloudFront, a custom dropzone component - was surprisingly annoying. I remember thinking: "This should be easier."

That thought kept growing.

As a developer, I knew I wasn't the only one struggling with this. Uploading files should be simple. And I realized I might be more excited about solving this specific technical problem than about building a salon-focused SaaS.

That's when I decided to switch gears and start working on what would later become EdgeStore.

Building Something for Myself

Unlike the salon idea, EdgeStore was something I could deeply relate to. I was the target audience. I knew the pain points. I loved the idea of building tools that help other devs build better things.

Of course, it came with its own trade-offs. I couldn't charge $200/month per user anymore. But I also didn't need to cold-email anyone. Dev communities are everywhere online, and I figured if I could get the word out, maybe it would catch on.

So the new plan was: grow my YouTube channel with web dev content, share my progress, get early feedback, polish and build the idea, and eventually make a good video showcasing EdgeStore.

Sudden Competition

At some point, Theo - one of my favorite web dev content creators - had released a product that was very similar to my idea. That made me hesitate for a bit. I didn't want to feel like I was competing with someone I admired.

But when I shared those thoughts on my channel, the response was incredibly supportive. I ended up deciding to keep going. I didn't want to pivot again, and I still believed in the value of what I was building.

Around that time, I was also in the middle of making a YouTube video I thought had real potential.

My First Viral Video

It was a video about Tailwind CSS tricks. It took me over a month to make, but the effort paid off.

It got 3,000 views on the first day - which was more than any other video I had made until this point. Today, it's sitting at over 300,000 views and brought my channel to over 14k subscribers. It also got me monetized on YouTube.

I learned so much about content creation and editing from that video.

Launching EdgeStore

Using what I learned from the Tailwind video, I made a launch video for EdgeStore. It also got quite a lot of traction. Some well-known dev YouTubers like "Josh Tried Coding" and "Code With Antonio" noticed it and reached out. Antonio even used it in his Notion Clone tutorial, which drove a lot of traffic.

That launch video (along with the one from Code With Antonio), ended up being the only marketing I really did.

And they worked.

The Results So Far

After the EdgeStore video went live, user signups started climbing. One month in, it had 1,400 users. Today, it's passed 10,000 users - with about 1,000 monthly active and 60 of them as paying customers. Monthly recurring revenue is currently around ¥63K, or about $450 USD.

The service is stable, the documentation is clear, and I don't get many support questions. So even during the periods when I take a break from it, the numbers keep slowly growing.

Resting Without Guilt

People often assume that building a startup means working 24/7 and having zero free time. But it doesn't have to be like that.

I work in waves - a few intense months followed by some quiet ones. I still answer questions and fix bugs quickly, but I don't force myself to always be "on."

And honestly, that balance is one of the things I'm proud of. This journey is meant to be sustainable.

Books That Helped Me

I read (or listened to) a lot of books at the beginning of this journey. There are many different ways to build a startup, and I think the right books can vary depending on your personality and goals. If you feel like building things the way I have, here are a few books I enjoyed.

• Show Your Work
• OverSubscribed
• Rich20Something
• Start Small Stay Small
• Company of One

What's Next?

I've mostly been focused on improving the service, but lately I've started shifting my attention back to content creation. I'm planning to share more of what I'm building on Twitter (X), and hopefully start making more videos for developers again (including some about EdgeStore).

For the future, I'm thinking about two possible options:

1. Sell the startup to someone who wants to make it grow.
2. Try to grow it myself - maybe raise some funding and build a small team.

I haven't made up my mind yet.

Final Thoughts

I'm not an expert. I'm still figuring things out as I go. But if there's one piece of advice I can give, it's this:

DON'T OVERTHINK IT. Just start.

Don't wait for the perfect idea. You can always switch them later. You'll learn a lot of things that you can reuse in your next project if the first one doesn't work out.

So if you've been thinking about building something of your own… maybe today is the time.

The important thing is to keep making progress with consistency.

Want to Connect?

Here are my links:

• Twitter (X)
• YouTube
• EdgeStore