ViralGuideAI

---

Who I am

Hey Indie Hackers — I'm Mohan, a solo technical founder from Mumbai, India. I've been building in public (mostly quietly) for a while, and I just crossed a milestone that feels worth sharing: my first real SaaS product is live, taking payments, and has paying users.

The product is ViralGuideAI — viralguideai.com.

---

The problem

Content creators are stuck in a loop. They know their niche, they show up every week — but they're guessing what to post. What hook will work? What format? What platform? What will actually go viral?

That guesswork is killing their growth. And hiring a strategist costs money most creators don't have.

I wanted to close that gap with AI.

---

What I built

ViralGuideAI takes 4 inputs: your niche, platform, content goal, and country.

In 10 seconds it outputs a complete content strategy:

- Viral angles and trending hooks

- Full video script

- Caption + hashtags

- Viral score with explanation

- Monetization plan tailored to your niche

Built specifically for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X.

---

The stack — $0/month to run

- Frontend: Vanilla HTML/JS — no framework, no build step, no bloat

- Auth + database: Supabase (free tier)

- Hosting: Vercel (free tier)

- AI: Claude Haiku API — cheap, fast, and surprisingly great for structured creative output

- Payments: Paddle

Total infra cost at launch: effectively zero. The only variable cost is Claude API tokens per generation — which is tiny with Haiku.

---

The hard parts

1. Payments as an individual in India.

Stripe doesn't support individual founders in India easily. Lemon Squeezy rejected my application. I spent weeks on this. Paddle finally approved me — and it works. If you're a non-US/EU solo founder, this is your biggest non-technical blocker and nobody talks about it enough.

2. Switching stacks mid-build.

I started with Firebase and Gemini. Moved to Supabase and Claude halfway through. That cost me a full month. The lesson: validate your stack on day 1, not after you've built 60% of the product.

3. Shipping before it felt ready.

I had a list of 20 more features. I shipped with 8. The first paying user arrived 5 days after launch. None of the 12 unbuilt features mattered to them.

---

Pricing

Free — 10 generations, no card needed

Starter — $10/month (200 generations)

Pro — $20/month (400 generations)

Growth — $30/month (600+ generations)

Simple, flat pricing. No annual lock-in, no seat-based confusion. Creators understand it immediately.

---

What's next

- Product Hunt launch this Tuesday

- Paddle webhook → automatic plan upgrades on payment

- Onboarding flow with niche + country selector

- Trend Alert email system (weekly viral trends by niche)

Building all of this with ~1-2 hours a day around other commitments.

---

What I'd love from this community

Honest feedback on:

- Is the pricing right for a creator-focused tool?

- Does the positioning make sense or is it too broad?

- What would make you pay vs stay on free?

If you're a creator or know one — try the free plan at viralguideai.com. No card needed, results in 10 seconds.

And if you've navigated the India payment processor maze — I'd genuinely love to compare notes.