Learning to code and building a $28k/mo portfolio of SaaS products

Samuel Rondot quit his job, learned to code, and built several profitable businesses. His current portfolio — which includes StoryShort.ai and Capacity.so — is at $28k/mo.

Here's Samuel on how he did it. 👇

From optician to indie hacker

I've been building websites since college, long before I knew I could make a living from it. In high school, I even created a small streaming website for fun. But eventually, I chose a career path outside of tech — I became an optician.

I worked as an optician for about three years. I loved the job, but I couldn’t deal with being physically stuck in one place. I lived in France, right next to the Swiss border, and from my apartment, I could see the airport. Nothing on earth physically prevented me from taking the next plane — except my job.

So, every morning before work and every evening when I came home, I built side projects. And in 2017, I launched my first “business” — an Instagram automation service. It wasn't even coded. Actual humans in India and Bangladesh performed the automation tasks behind a WordPress landing page.

It was called MathPlanner, and despite its simplicity, it grew to about $30,000/month.

At that point, I quit my job and finally took that plane I’d been staring at for years.

• StoryShort.ai → around $20,000/month

• UseArtemis.co → around $5,000/month (down from before due to LinkedIn tightening automation limits)

• Capacity.so → new product, already at $3,000/month and growing steadily

Capacity is my most ambitious project so far. It's an AI website builder I’m building with a high-school friend.

The love of building things

Like I said, my main motivation was always freedom. But I also genuinely love building things: beautiful interfaces, apps that people use, and products that grow. Watching revenue graphs go up is incredibly motivating. I love the energy when something starts taking off.

StoryShort started a year ago when I discovered a tool that automatically generated short faceless videos. At the time, it felt magical: type text, get a video.

Capacity started because before learning to code, I was exactly the target user. My first Instagram tool was “no-code” only because I couldn’t code. WordPress was extremely limiting, and I always wished for a tool that could build real custom software without hiring developers. That’s exactly what we built with Capacity.

A simple tech stack

The early versions of my products were always extremely simple. For each project, I try to validate demand as fast as possible, build the minimum viable version, get users, and then iterate.

Capacity was an exception because the underlying tech required more time and R&D, but even then, we quickly launched an early prototype to test the core idea.

My tech stack is super simple and always the same:

• Next.js for the frontend

• Node.js for the backend

• MongoDB for the database

• Frontend hosted on Vercel

• Backend hosted on AWS

Leveraging AI tools to build

My biggest challenge early on was simple: I didn’t know how to code.

I fought with messy WordPress plugins to hack together something that barely worked. Customizing anything was painful.

Learning to code changed everything. It gave me the freedom to build whatever I wanted.

If I had to start again today, I would still learn to code — even with AI coding tools. Understanding code is crucial. But I would use AI tools heavily to build the first version faster. It would have saved me months.

Two-pronged growth

For almost every project, I follow the same two channels:

• SEO is the best long-term driver of business growth. It takes time, but it compounds and becomes the strongest growth channel —  six months later, you’re always glad you invested in it.

• Paid ads bring predictable SaaS traffic. I mostly use Meta and Google. I haven’t experimented much with all platforms, but these two have always been enough to validate and grow.They bring predictable, scalable traffic.

Choose your battles

We only fight wars we can win.

Since most competitors have raised funds, we need to be more creative. We post videos on YouTube, do SEO, and optimize for AI engines. Those techniques get us around 400 clicks per day, allowing us to get some steady growth

We had to pivot our ads too. We initially started with ads on Meta, but we discovered quickly that our competitors do not mind spending $200 to get a $30 sale.

Recurring revenue

All my apps use the SaaS subscription model. Revenue grows by:

• Acquiring new customers

• Reducing churn

• Improving the product to increase retention

Some niches, like StoryShort, have naturally lower lifetime values, so churn is always a challenge. But overall, recurring revenue is extremely powerful.

Verify intuition with data

I have two main pieces of advice:

First, Use AI coding tools to build your MVP fast.

Even if you plan to code everything yourself later, tools like Capacity or others help you get the first version out much quicker. Speed matters.

Second, don’t build anything before validating demand.

I'm surprised that so many indie hackers — even very smart ones — don't know how to validate if an idea can make money. They just build random tools.

Then, they quit because they spent weeks building something that never earned a single dollar. And without money, they lose motivation.

So, don't start a project without checking:

• Search volume

• SEO metrics

• Competitor strength

• How competitors get customers

• Whether there is demand

Then, prove that people will pay. If you can’t clearly see the path to money, don’t build it.

I trust intuition, but I also verify it with data. This avoids months of wasted work.

What's next?

My main focus is growing Capacity.so to $100K/month. I believe the market is huge — many people want to build tools but don’t want to write code. Other tools exist, but we’ve built something different, especially with how we handle context. Capacity's apps are much more consistent.

For StoryShort, there’s still room to grow beyond $20K MRR, especially through SEO. Getting to $20K MRR is “easy” — going beyond is where the real work begins.

You can follow along on X and on YouTube. And check out Capacity and StoryShort!