u/danielabinav

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Built a free traffic exchange on Sunday. By Monday a stranger offered $8k to buy it.

I turned it down. Here's my thinking:

If someone is willing to pay $8k on day 2 with zero revenue and 5 users what do they know that I don't?

They clearly see where this goes. And if they see it, why would I sell it to them cheap?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it never grows and I'll regret saying no.

But the fact that someone wanted to buy it 48 hours after launch told me more about the idea than any upvote ever could.

Still building....

Not a flex, more of a "huh, this actually works".

I created this little banner exchange network yesterday. The idea is embarrassingly simple you show another founder's startup at the top of your site, they show yours. No money, no algorithm, just mutual exposure.

I also linked one of my startup VerifiedMRR got 77 impressions and 1 click. NotepadPlus got 30 impressions and 3.3% CTR. PreShip Validation got 43 impressions with a 2.3% CTR (other founder's site).

These are tiny numbers. I know. But this is day one, with literally 3 startups in the network.

The interesting part is the CTR 2-3% is actually higher than most display ads which average around 0.1%. Makes sense when you think about it. Someone visiting an indie SaaS product is probably a founder or builder themselves. They actually care about other indie tools.

Curious if anyone else has tried traffic exchanges like this and what your experience was. Is 2-3% CTR sustainable as networks get larger or does it drop off?

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Okay so hear me out before you laugh.

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Indian SaaS founders build genuinely good products and then struggle to get anyone to visit their site. Ads cost money nobody has. SEO takes six months minimum. Posting on LinkedIn every day feels like a part time job.

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So I built the dumbest possible solution. You put one line of code on your site. A tiny 36px bar shows up at the top of your site showing another founder's product. And your product shows up on their site. That is literally it. No money changes hands. No algorithm. No dashboard. Just founders trading a tiny slice of their audience with each other.

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I know what you are thinking. This is just a banner ad network with extra feelings. Maybe. But I genuinely believe the audience that visits one indie SaaS product is more likely to care about another one than any cold traffic you buy.

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Anyway please tell me why this is stupid. I can take it. One line of code, completely free, no strings.

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Go ahead.

Okay so hear me out before you laugh.

Indian SaaS founders build genuinely good products and then struggle to get anyone to visit their site. Ads cost money nobody has. SEO takes six months minimum. Posting on LinkedIn every day feels like a part time job.

So I built the dumbest possible solution. You put one line of code on your site. A tiny 36px bar shows up at the top of your site showing another founder's product. And your product shows up on their site. That is literally it. No money changes hands. No algorithm. No dashboard. Just founders trading a tiny slice of their audience with each other.

I know what you are thinking. This is just a banner ad network with extra feelings. Maybe. But I genuinely believe the audience that visits one indie SaaS product is more likely to care about another one than any cold traffic you buy.

Anyway please tell me why this is stupid. I can take it. One line of code, completely free, no strings.

Go ahead.

Every verified startup is a boat, positioned by real revenue.

We verify revenue via Razorpay/Dodo API (not self-reported), then plot each startup as a boat on a scrollable ocean. Higher MRR = further right, bigger presence. No ghost ships, no fake numbers.

Built with React + Canvas + Supabase. The drag physics and revenue-proportional spacing were the trickiest part.

Would love your feedback

https://reddit.com/link/1u688v0/video/09zbdwegyd7h1/player

I've launched a few apps and the screenshots were always the slow part. I'm not a designer, so I'd spend an evening in Figma trying to make mockups that didn't look amateur, and they still came out average.

For my last launch I tried a different approach.. uploaded my raw screenshots, added a headline and logo, and let AI generate the store mockups. Took a few minutes and they actually looked clean. Good enough that I shipped them without touching Figma at all.

It's a tool I built, now live on the Play Store with free credits to try.

If you've dealt with the same screenshot grind, drop a comment and I'll share the link. Curious if it saves you the same time it saved me.

Every time I launched an app, the screenshots were the worst part. Hours in Figma, dragging mockups around, never looking as clean as the big apps. Hiring a designer wasn't worth it for a side project.

So I built an app — you upload your real app screenshots, add your headline/logo, and it generates store-ready Play Store + App Store mockups with AI. Stuff that used to take me an evening now takes a few minutes.

Some things it does:

screenshot → polished store mockup

pull context straight from an existing Play Store URL

your own headlines + branding

exports ready to drop into Play Console

It's live on Play Store now (free credits to try, then credit packs — no subscription).

Built it solo as an indie dev, so any feedback from other people who've fought with store listings would mean a lot.

Shot.Ai - Play Store

Soon - App Store

Question for the people here who've been through this.

Last week i went hard on Reddit. Posted on r/SaaS, r/SideProject, r/IndianStartups, r/indiehackers. Long posts about why my platform exists. Short posts. Roast-me posts. Story posts. Some hit 14k views, one hit 55k. Lots of comments. Lots of advice. Lots of validation.

Zero signups.

I was checking the dashboard 47 times a day. Tweaking the landing page. Replying to every comment within 10 minutes. Trying to convert engagement into action.

Then i went quiet for 2 days. Not strategically. Just tired. Burnt out from the constant performance of being a founder online.

When i opened the dashboard again, 5 founders had verified their startups on their own. Without me asking, without me selling, without me being in the comments. Just real founders who somehow found the platform and decided it was worth signing up for.

Now i'm sitting with two contradictory observations:

1. The shouting probably planted the seeds. Without the viral posts, those 5 founders never knew the platform existed.

2. The shouting itself didn't convert anyone. Conversion happened in the quiet.

Which is interesting because it implies the right strategy is to be loud occasionally and then shut up and let people decide on their own time. Not to be loud constantly trying to drag people across the line.

So my actual question. For those of you who've been here:

When you saw early traction during a quiet phase, did you go back to shouting because you wanted to scale it? Or did you stay quiet and let it grow on its own pace? Which one actually worked better?

Because right now my instinct is to start posting again to get from 5 to 50. But maybe that's the exact wrong move. Maybe the founders who matter are the ones who arrive when you're not selling.

Not asking for validation. Asking because i don't actually know.

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Over the last 6 months it's gotten harder to tell what's real and what's AI on the internet. WhatsApp forwards. Reels. Twitter videos. News images. Everything looks plausible. Some of it is clearly fake but a lot of it is in the uncanny middle zone where you can't tell without zooming in pixel by pixel.

Built a small Android app that runs AI detection on images, videos, and audio. Upload from your gallery or paste a link, get a confidence score on whether it's AI-generated or real.

Not perfect. No detector is perfect right now but mine has greater accuracy.

What it actually does:

• Image detection: works on photos, generated art
• Video detection: works on short clips, reels, deepfakes
• Audio detection: works on voice clones and AI-generated speech

Now it officially crossed 50 Downloads. Happy to share this

Been thinking about adding this to VerifiedMRR. A simple mobile widget founders can pin to their home screen that shows:

Current MRR (from Razorpay or Dodo)

Number of subscribers

Last 28 days revenue

New signups today

Pulls live data through OAuth from Payment Peoviders. And for signups will be using a snippet code to configure it in the site. Updates every few hours. No need to open the dashboard or any app.

Reason for asking before building: i check my own numbers way too often. A widget would save me time. But i don't know if that's a personal problem or a real founder pain.

So Indian SaaS founders, two questions:

Do you currently check your MRR / signups multiple times a day?

Would a home screen widget actually be useful or is this a vanity feature?

Honest answers either way. If most of you say "i'd rather not be reminded of my numbers every time i unlock my phone" then i'll skip it and ship something else.

Been compiling a public list of Indian SaaS startups that don't show up on YourStory, Inc42, or any of the regular press cycles.

Not by design. Just by accident. The press writes about the same 20 names. Twitter algorithms surface the same 50 accounts. And meanwhile there are hundreds of founders quietly running real businesses that nobody outside their immediate network knows exists.

So i started keeping a running list. Manufacturing SaaS. Healthcare admin tools. MSME compliance products. Niche vertical SaaS. The unsexy stuff that's actually working.

Currently the list has Factostack (ERP for MSME factories), and a few more expecting to be added this week.

The reason i'm posting here is i need help finding more names. The press has filter bubbles. Reddit doesn't.

If you know an Indian SaaS founder who:

• Has been building for 1-3 years
• Has paying customers (any revenue range)
• Doesn't get covered in any startup press
• Is solving a specific real-world problem.

Tag their name in the comments. Even if you're the founder, drop your own.

Not looking for hype. Looking for the founders who are too busy actually running a business to do their own marketing. Those are the ones that deserve to be on a list more than anyone.

And if you've got opinions on what the list is missing as a format, i'll take feedback there too. The point is to make something useful for the ecosystem, not to grow a directory for its own sake.

A small thing i've been thinking about for a while.

Most Indian SaaS coverage online is the same recycled list. The same 20 companies. The same YC alumni. The same VC-backed names that get retweeted by the same 50 accounts.

Meanwhile there are hundreds of Indian founders quietly building solid SaaS products with real revenue, real customers, and real stories. They never get written about because they don't fit the existing narrative templates. They're not selling AI. They're not in stealth. They're not raising a billion-dollar round. They're just running businesses.

So i've started a blog under VerifiedMRR's journal section that does long-form writing on these founders. The first piece went up last week, on Factostack, an ERP company building for Indian MSME factories. Not sexy. Not Twitter-friendly. But genuinely interesting once you sit with what they're actually doing.

The plan is two piece a week. Different founder each time. Different segment each time. Manufacturing, healthcare admin, logistics, MSME compliance, agritech, whatever's actually being built that nobody's covering.

Why i'm writing this here: a few reasons.

One, if you read this kind of writing and it's useful, the journal is at verifiedmrr.in/blog. Sharing the Factostack piece because it's the first one and i'd genuinely want feedback on whether the format works.

Two, if you know an Indian SaaS founder who's been quietly building something interesting and never gets written about, push your starup on verifiedMRR. The whole point of doing this is to surface stories that the existing press won't touch.

Three, this is free for the founder. There's no pay-to-be-featured thing. No sponsorship. Just writing about people doing real work because Indian SaaS deserves better coverage than what currently exists.

So, what you guys think about and would you try?

Been thinking about this for a while and i can't find a clean answer anywhere.

Razorpay is obviously the default for Indian founders selling to Indian customers. But once you start talking to founders who sell globally, the picture gets messy fast. Some are on Stripe (despite the regulatory headaches). Some moved to Dodo Payments because of the merchant-of-record thing and they have enabled UPI recently. Some are using Paddle. Some are still on PayPal which surprised me. A few are running Razorpay alongside something else for international customers.

And almost nobody has a clean reason for their choice. It's usually a mix of "this was easiest at the time", "i couldn't get approved on the other one," or "honestly i don't know, i just used what worked."

I'm asking because i've been building VerifiedMRR (a Razorpay technology partner tool, recently added Dodo integration too) and i need to figure out what to integrate next. Cashfree? Paytm? PayU? Stripe? Lemon Squeezy?

The boring way to decide is to look at market share data. The interesting way is to ask actual Indian founders what they use and why.

So if you're an Indian founder shipping a SaaS or digital product, drop a comment with:

1. Which payment gateway are you using?
2. What kind of customers do you serve (Indian, global, both)?
3. What made you pick that one over the others?
4. If you could switch tomorrow with no migration cost, would you?

Genuinely trying to learn here. Most "what payment gateway should i use" content online is written by affiliate marketers, not founders who actually live with these tools daily.

If anything in this resonates and you want to be in the leaderboard or want to join the Indian SaaS community, the tool is at verifiedmrr.

Quick update for anyone who's been following along.

I've spent the last few months building VerifiedMRR as a Razorpay-only thing because that's the dominant payment infra in India. But over the last 2 weeks i kept getting the same comment from Indian founders: "we sell globally through Dodo Payments / Stripe / Paddle, not Razorpay. Your tool doesn't work for us."

Fair point. So this weekend i sat down and integrated Dodo Payments. It's now live.

What it does technically:

• Read-only API access to your Dodo account
• 4 webhooks: payment.succeeded, refund.succeeded, subscription.active, subscription.cancelled
• Pulls real payment data and displays your verified MRR
• Same verification logic as Razorpay, just a different source

Took about 2 days to ship. Most of that was reading their docs and figuring out their webhook event structure (which is well documented btw, props to the Dodo team).

One additional thing i added: Indian phone number verification before you can list. Reason being i want VerifiedMRR to stay focused on Indian founders, regardless of whether their payments come from Razorpay (domestic) or Dodo / Stripe (international). The phone verification keeps the directory Indian-first while the payment integrations stay flexible.

Why this matters for the kind of founder reading this: if you're an Indian founder selling SaaS globally and someone asks you to prove your MRR, you don't have to send a Stripe screenshot or a Dodo dashboard share anymore. Connect via OAuth, get a verified link, share it with the investor or acquirer. Read only, watermarked, you control who sees it.

It's still free for founders. Now opening it up to Dodo-based ones too.

If you're using Dodo Payments and want to be one of the first verified Indian SaaS on the directory, the link is verifiedmrr.in. If you're using something else (Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, etc), drop a comment and i'll prioritize the next integration based on what people actually use.

Join your hands with VerifiedMRR on building Indian SaaS community.

Something i've been watching on Twitter (X) for weeks now and i can't unsee it.

Every time a US SaaS revenue tracking or verification tool gets shared, the replies are full of Indian founders politely begging. "Any plans to add Razorpay?" "Would love this for India." "Please support Razorpay soon."

It almost always gets ignored. The US founder doesn't reply or says "maybe later" and nothing happens.

Here's the funny part. Indian-built tools that solve the same problem on Razorpay actually exist. Some are even official Razorpay technology partners (Exactly me :) ). They work. They're often free. They're literally already what those founders are asking for.

But the same Indian founders who beg US tools don't even click on the Indian ones. They keep waiting.

I've been trying to figure out why.

1. There's an unconscious belief that anything American is automatically better. Even when the American tool literally cannot do the thing they need (process Indian payment data) and the Indian one literally can. The brand of being American does the convincing.

2. Trust. Founders assume an Indian dev tool will be abandoned in 6 months. The US tool feels permanent. So they'd rather wait for stripe to add razorpay than use the razorpay-native thing that exists today.

3. Discoverability. Nobody's shouting about Indian SaaS the way US SaaS gets shouted about. No ProductHunt for us. No twitter algorithm boost. So even when Indian alternatives exist, founders don't know.

4. This is the spicy one. There's something performative about begging US tools publicly. It's a way to be visible to a bigger audience. Quietly using the Indian alternative doesn't give you that exposure. So we'd rather be seen tagging Stripe than be the person who actually solved the problem with what's already available.

I think it's all four but Theory 4 is the one that bothers me the most. Because that one isn't about the tools. It's about us.

This isn't even just about SaaS verification. You can replace the example with Notion, Linear, Intercom, almost anything. There's usually an Indian alternative that's already live. The response is always "but does it integrate with X US thing." Meanwhile the US thing isn't integrating with us.

Curious what other Indian founders have noticed. Is this something we just live with or is there a way to break the cycle? Because at this rate even when we build the right thing for our own market, we're competing with a fantasy version of a US tool that doesn't yet exist.

Something's been bothering me and I want to know if other founders face this too.

Every reddit post, every advice thread, every "how to build a startup" guide says the same thing. Don't build for yourself. Build for others. Listen to users. Solve real problems.

ok fine. I've been doing that for the last few months. Posting my product on reddit, asking for honest feedback, taking notes on every suggestion. People said "add privacy controls" I added privacy controls. people said "make it private by default" I made it private by default. Someone said "build X feature" i literally shipped it in 4 hours the same day they commented.

and then? they disappeared.

The person who said they'd absolutely use it if privacy existed didn't sign up after I shipped privacy. The person who told me to pivot the whole business model didn't come back to see if i pivoted. The people who left 6 paragraph comments on what I should build didn't even checked out after i shipped it.

so now i don't know what to trust anymore.

If i build for myself, people say "you're solving your own problem, not theirs." If i build what they ask for, they don't actually use it. where's the middle?

My current theory is that reddit feedback is a different thing entirely. It's not market validation. It's a form of intellectual entertainment. People enjoy the thought exercise of telling you how to fix your startup. They don't actually have skin in the game. Their suggestion costs them nothing. Your implementation costs you a weekend.

The few people who actually pay or use something are usually the ones who never commented in the first place. They just quietly clicked the link, checked it out, and either used it or didn't. no long post about why they would or wouldn't.

Is this just me or is this how reddit works in general. Because if "build what users ask for" means "build what reddit commenters request" then we're all being led in circles.

Anyone else had this happen. what did you actually learn from it.