Building a Micro-SaaS to Scratch My Own Itch: Say Hello to You Learn Now
Beginning the journey of becoming a Solopreuneur
Hello world,
I'm excited to share my journey building my first micro-SaaS: You Learn Now—an app that quickly turns YouTube videos into actionable summaries. This project marks my first real step toward becoming a solopreneur.
Introducing You Learn Now 🎉
You Learn Now lets you:
Paste a YouTube link and get a concise summary with clear action steps.
Chat directly with an OpenAI-powered assistant for deeper insights.
Why this idea? I often struggle to sit through long YouTube videos, especially during busy days. I wanted a faster way to get key insights and quickly ask follow-up questions. Yes, similar tools exist, but that means there's already an existing market. I'm building this app specifically tailored to my own learning style, believing others will resonate with my approach.
My Solopreneur Journey
If you’ve been following my newsletter, you know I'm on a mission toward financial freedom, aiming to leverage my software skills and eventually move to Malaysia with my family. Previously, I tried achieving this through Amazon KDP (read about that below).
Breaking Free with Amazon KDP: My Attempt Journey to Financial Freedom
It was the end of 2023 and like the age-old cliche, I was and currently am pretty tired of my 9-5. I work as a software engineer with a pretty decent salary for a London UK-based developer. My Goal is to replace my income with the passive stream.
However, during my research, I discovered something even more aligned with my strengths: becoming a solopreneur.
What's a Solopreneur?
In short, a solopreneur independently manages every aspect of their business—from product creation to marketing—without hiring employees. The appeal? Complete independence and flexibility and be able move to Malaysia.
Discovering the Solopreneur Path
While researching how to achieve financial freedom or become financially independent, I came across the term solopreneur. Mostly from within the tech community. These were formerly employed software engineers who decided to venture out and build things they like or scratch their own itch by building products they care about, solving problems they face, and earning money through subscriptions or one-time payments.
This really sparked my interest because I am a software engineer and have the knowledge on how to build things 😶. I came across two really unique and awesome software engineers who turned into solopreneurs by building their own sasses.
Inspired by Amazing Stories
Firstly,
who went from making about $1000 a month living off savings in a small room in Bali to making over $100k a month with his SASS-like ship-fast. I was inspired by his message of build, ship, and earn. His idea was simple: he used the all the tools he had learned to build his previous Sasses and then bundle them together and sell them. His story of persistence, shipping often, and going from nothing to making over $100k a month opened my eyes to a whole new world 🌍.Secondly, I came across
who built products like DevUtils, TypingMind, and BlackMagic, documenting his journey transparently and passionately on Substack. Tony’s story was particularly inspiring—he built something small, had some success, and eventually quit his job to follow his dreams full-time. The day he quit his job and went to a park outside his office, experiencing true freedom, is something I dream about every day.These stories opened my eyes to a new way of approaching software: build quickly, iterate often, and prioritize customer needs above everything else.
Lessons Learned
After reading about their journeys on becoming solopreneur or indie hacker, I learnt the following:
You don’t need clean code (sorry Uncle Bob 😭)
Don’t need tests 😱
The application doesn’t need to be perfect
ship small features and iterate.
If you are working as a software engineer or are a software engineer, the above first 3 points, in particular, most likely sent a shock through your body 🤯, put a knot in your stomach 🤮, and say, YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!!
Well, my friends, I hate to say it, but what I realised after researching this magical new world is that when you embark on this journey, you cannot call yourself a software engineer; you have to call yourself a product engineer, where your entire focus is to build apps that customers will love, you need to shipt fast and then iterate so anything that slows you down or the customer doesn’t care about throw it in the bin 🗑️. 100% test coverage? How about 0? Types and interfaces for your typescript code? Just use any and ignore type errors orrrrrr even better, just use plain old simple JavaScript 😭.
Taking Action: You Learn Now
But anyways, I digress. So now you must be wondering what I have been doing to implement my learnings rather than just doing mental masturbation (where you read, watch educational pieces trying to make yourself feel smart without implementing anything). Well, I am pleased to tell you I have not been doing that; rather, I decided to take action.
Say Hello to You Learn Now, It is a simple app where you can post a YouTube link and then get a detailed summary and action steps to implement the advice in the video. It also allows you to chat with an openAI model to get further insights about the video.
Now you may be thinking, wait wait Mr Khan I swear there are other tools that do something similar, right? And yes, you are correct that there most certainly are; however, my eagle-eyed reader, that just means that there is an existing market for this already, i.e., the market is validated with an existing customer base 😁.
The other point is that I am building it how I want and how I like to learn. I heard a quote that says you are your best niche, meaning there will be someone who has the same issues as you with the current tools and may like my solution instead.
Finally, according to
your first 3 businesses will most likely fail, but you will learn a ton, in terms of building the product, marketing, selling fixing issues etc. If you have played Dark Souls, how many times did you die before learning how to beat the boss (Unknown King still gives me nightmares 😭)? So it is okay even if I make $0. I have already, up to this point, learnt a TON of things and have leveled up.Balancing Life and Building
As a husband, father, full-time employee, and active community member, I build whenever I can—in my spare moments, early mornings, or weekends. The solopreneur lifestyle fits perfectly into my busy life.
Curious about the name? “You Learn” was taken, so I playfully went with something familiar to many from their childhood: "You Learn Now!" 😂
The Tools I’m Using
Now, I am building this with the following tools:
Since I am a backend developer, I cannot build great looking frontends, (css hates me and I also hate it and no I cannot centre a div), so tools like V0 and Tailwind make it super easy to build amazing looking frontends, and I can use my backend skills to integrate with OpenApi, setup the APIs and database for smooth functionality, basically work on what I enjoy and let Ai do what I do not like so much. Using these tools, tasks that previously took months now take weeks, and honestly, I'm enjoying every moment of building again.
Next Steps and How You Can Help
I aim to launch You Learn Now by next month on LinkedIn, Reddit, X, Substack, HackerNews, and Product Hunt. If you’re interested, please:
Subscribe to my newsletter for regular updates and launch news.
Reach out if you’d like early access or have feedback!
Stay tuned—I’ll share part 2 detailing my launch experience and insight
Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control (Epictetus)