I Accidentally Built A SaaS in 10 Days & Quit My 9-5

Fernando Pessagno

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Published: November 28th, 2023

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Fernando Pessagno

Founder, aiCarousels

$5K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

aiCarousels

aiCarousels.com

from Malmö, Suecia

started April 2023

$5,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

Hello! My name is Fernando Pessagno, I am an Argentinian product designer with a passion for coding.

I am the founder of aiCarousels.com, which I started kind of by accident during a 10-day #buildinpublic challenge.

aiCarousels is a tool that helps non-designers create social media carousels for LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok using AI.

Currently, it’s generating $5,000 MRR.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

Around 6 months ago, just one day before my vacation was about to start, I got some not-so-great news that I could be let go from my full-time job.

What an amazing way to start my break…

Living in Sweden as a foreign worker who relies on a work visa, losing my job was my worst nightmare.

I simply couldn’t relax and enjoy my vacation. I needed to keep my mind occupied.

And I may not be what you'd call a 'proper' developer. I have no formal programming education. If you could see my code, you might laugh or cringe, but still, I've always been drawn to coding.

To me, it's like ritual or meditation—headphones on, coding, and everything else just fades away.

So, I decided to take on a personal 10-day #buildinpublic challenge on X and YouTube to ship something — anything! (You can binge-watch the entire saga here)

I chose 10 days because that was the duration of my vacation, and I did it in public to hold myself accountable.

The main problem I wanted to solve wasn’t just to make things look nice, but to save people’s time. What I’m selling is time, not just designs.

The inspiration struck when I noticed how popular carousel posts were on LinkedIn.

As a former multimedia designer who has worked with marketing teams for startups and created carousels myself, I know firsthand how time-consuming they can be, even for experienced designers.

So, I thought, why not create something that simplifies the process for everyone, especially non-designers, to create beautiful carousels?

Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.

The main problem I wanted to solve wasn’t just to make things look nice, but to save people’s time. What I’m selling is time, not just designs.

Templates look great at the start, with their default colors that match their pretty images.

But when you get into customizing them with your fonts, choosing your brand colors, and resizing the text, they can be a headache. It often takes too long to make something that looks great.

How It Started -> How It’s Going

It’s hard to know what changes to make if you’re not a designer, and, ironically, having too many choices can complicate the process.

Also, it’s tough to compete directly with big players in the template market like Canva or Envato. That’s why I chose a different approach.

I aimed to stand out by offering minimal design choices, focusing on saving time while still ensuring the carousels look good enough.

I built and launched it in 10 days without relying on any fancy frameworks, using Outseta as the no-code tool for handling authentication, billing, and ticket support. With OpenAI's super easy-to-implement API, I only needed to focus on the rest.

Here’s a summary of what I covered each day:

Day 1:

Developed the basic UI and carousel navigation and editing, coded the font auto-resize feature, and added the download carousel feature. It was barebones in terms of functionality, but it was working!

Day 2:

Started improving the UI. I added the ability to hide/show and customize slides, and the ability to reorder/add/remove slides.

Day 3:

Added the sidebar from where users can manage all the template settings, including carousel type selection, color palette, text options, and branding customization. All are very basic still, but functional.

Day 4:

Coded the save/load feature and started to work on the background design options to add some visual flair to the carousels.

Day 5:

Polished everything I had until then, added a collection of color palettes, font combinations, more background effects, and slide “types”: text, text + image, and image only.

Day 6:

Worked on the AI Content Generator, which at that time involved only setting the number of slides and generating content based on a given topic.

Day 7:

Focused on the SaaS monetization strategy, added the integration with Outseta, and locked some of the features behind the paid wall.

Day 8:

Designed a logo and a simple landing page, which has remained almost unchanged since launch 6 months, besides minor new content added.

Day 9:

Prepared for the Product Hunt launch.

Day 10:

Launch day!

The tool automates a lot of the design work (locked positioning of the elements, font auto-resize, etc.) with minimal input from the user, and the cherry on top is the AI Carousel Generator feature that assists in writing the carousel content.

It started with generating content from a topic. Nowadays, it can also generate a carousel from freeform text, a website URL, or a YouTube video, all in seconds.

Looking back, adding these AI features was a smart move to ride and take advantage of the AI hype train.

And don’t get me wrong, the hype is real, but I believe that if you want to have a competitive edge, the AI only needs to be a thin layer of awesomeness on top of an already awesome product that can stand on its own without it.

Describe the process of launching the business.

The launch day was filled with conflicting feelings. I was extremely happy with what I had accomplished in 10 days.

Still, the competition in the template market is brutal! I thought it was most likely going to be a flop.

But there’s beauty in not investing too much time in a single project.

Imagine working on something for six months or even a full year, only to have people tell you, ‘Hey, your product is trash.’

That would hurt quite a bit, and it’s hard not to take it personally when you’ve devoted so much time and effort — it could probably start to feel like part of who you are.

On the contrary, if you work on a project for just a few weeks (10 days might be a bit extreme), you can test the waters and then see if it’s worth investing more time into it.

As for how the product launch did, I launched on Product Hunt (for those who don’t know, it’s the top site for discovering new tech products) and despite my concerns, it went surprisingly well!

aiCarousels secured the 9th spot of the day, earning 154 upvotes, 64 comments, and 7 stellar 5/5 reviews.

The positive feedback was overwhelming, and I’d like to share a few of my favorite comments that, in my mind at that moment, began to validate the product:

“Nice! I’m going to have my content creators try this and see if we can move away from Canva and save some time and $! It looks slick but it seems like the creation process too is super straightforward and simple!”

“I just paid a content creator on Fiverr to make me a load of carousels and ngl the stuff that your product has made for me is much better. Oh I wish I found this a couple of weeks ago”

“As a social media manager for some Instagram accounts this tool is pure gold for me, I love it! Congrats on the launch! ❤”

“Beautiful! I was looking for a tool like that, even though I can use Figma for it. Your tool helps to make it quick, which is super beneficial.”

Particularly when it comes to social media posts with such a short lifespan, it seems users value getting something ‘good enough’ and getting it out quickly.

But the real highlight was getting 5 paid users signed up on the launch day! That equaled $50 MRR right off the bat. It's not a number to brag about, but it represents the ultimate validation.

People might say they like your product, but when they are willing to pay for it, that’s when you truly know they mean it.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

At launch, the product was quite basic and riddled with bugs, so I was getting a lot of support tickets to respond to.

First, I made sure (and still do) to reply as quickly as I could and address the issues just as fast. Once the conversation started, I also took the chance to ask for more feedback and build a relationship outside the support email. I follow many users on LinkedIn, like their posts, and never hide the fact that I am a one-man team.

They seem to value this personal touch and being able to speak directly with the founder, sometimes they are very surprised. And they respect it instead of harming the perception of the product.

Most of my users, being content creators aspiring to make it big, empathize with the struggles of an entrepreneur.

This strategy seems to be working well today too, although I want to keep tabs on all the users as the customer base grows (and as support tickets decline with each bug squashed)

To help with this, I send a weekly summary of recent updates and fixes. I speak in the first person, in an almost casual tone, ensuring that they see me as just a guy, which makes it easier for them to reply and provide feedback.

But the main goal, of sending this, is to help them realize that if they stick with the product, any issues they currently have will most likely be resolved.

Another aspect with a huge impact was having the first-mover advantage, especially with all the excitement around AI.

aiCarousels was the first AI-powered Carousel Generator and it got a lot of shares on different websites, blogs, newsletters, and social media.

Having a good domain name, along with all the attention and backlinks it got after launch, has been great for SEO.

This is currently the biggest source of traffic.

I also leveraged my LinkedIn, where I have about 3,000 followers. It’s not a huge number, but it’s still helpful. I share #buildinpublic updates and this approach makes it way easier for me. I feel more comfortable doing this instead of 'selling' all the time.

Promoting on Twitter is good too. I share more in-detail #buildinpublic posts since I am mostly in contact with indie founders there, who might not be my main targeted audience, but they help spread the word.

Documenting the entire building process through YouTube videos and blog posts was also great. The Medium post has almost 20k views. People enjoyed my updates and shared them a lot. They even got mentioned on other blogs and websites, and made it to the front page of IndieHackers, Startup Stash, and HackerNoon.

Now, I’m focusing on affiliate marketing, writing blog posts, and engineering as marketing (building free tools that are related to my audience, such as an AI LinkedIn Summary Generator). These are all quite new and haven’t made a big impact yet, but they’re starting to show some promising results.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

The product is doing well. I had a 12-month goal of reaching $2,500 in Monthly Recurring Revenue, and at 6 months in, I’ve already reached $5,000 MRR, with 95% of it as profits. And it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

The future seems bright on a personal level as well. I plan to apply for a partner visa and stay here in Sweden where my girlfriend, friends, and my new life are.

I am also extremely happy to leave the 9-to-5 grind behind and work independently on my online businesses. Although it’s a bit challenging not to neglect ResumeMaker.Online, my other product.

I’ve been trying to manage both as efficiently as possible, but during the time I only worked on aiCarousels, I see the tremendous positive impact of having a single focus. This is why both projects are currently listed for sale.

If a good offer comes, I might consider selling one of them.

Both projects have a lot of potential, but when it comes to aiCarousels, the personal branding market on LinkedIn is booming.

It can be tempting to think, “just one more feature!” in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of launching a product that nobody likes.

I believe there are ways in which it can expand into a much more robust SaaS where carousels are just a tiny part of it. I have many ideas for this, but those plans are scheduled for next year.

For the rest of the year, I want to continue focusing on improving user experience, working on SEO through blog posts and free tools, attracting more affiliates, and wrapping up the production of some videos for YouTube and TikTok.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Something I’ve learned and consistently remember every time I launch is how important it is to ship fast.

It can be tempting to think, “just one more feature!” in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of launching a product that nobody likes.

This #buildinpublic challenge was the best way to deal with it. It has kept me accountable and forced me to launch.

And that built so much momentum going forward, like never before.

Shipping an MVP so fast and knowing that you have to roll out updates because the product is somewhat broken, all while receiving valuable feedback that guides you in the right direction, feels like a secret weapon and is far more exciting than endlessly building in private and hoping people will like it.

Challenges get a bad reputation because of TikTok, but I promise, this one isn’t too bad!

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Outseta has been instrumental in enabling me to ship so fast. It handles all the authentication and billing processes and integrates seamlessly with Stripe. I highly recommend it!

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

I've recently been enjoying "The Bootstrapped Founder" podcast by Arvid Kahl. I've also been reading things that aren't only related to the startup world. It helps to clear my head. Books like "Shoe Dog" and "Creativity, Inc." have been very enjoyable and inspiring.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

aiCarousels.com almost didn’t happen. I wasn’t entirely sure about the idea, but I needed something to distract me from the potential job cuts at my 9-to-5.

Fast forward to today, and I couldn’t be happier with how things have turned out.

Sure, I lost my job, but it also marked the end of my search for a conventional 9-to-5.

What started as a small project to take my mind off things is now making $5,000 in MRR.

And here’s the thing — I'm not good at coding.
If you were to peek at my code, you’d probably burst out laughing.

But that just goes to show one thing: if I could pull it off, so can you.

With all the no-code tools and AI available, there has never been a better time to start a project. Don’t wait any longer — this is your moment.

Where can we go to learn more?

Head over to aiCarousels.com to try it out for yourself, and check out ResumeMaker.Online, my other AI project.

You can find me posting #buildinpublic updates on Twitter (@fer_momento) and LinkedIn. I would love to connect and help you out in any way I can. My DMs are open!