I Built and Launched My Micro-SaaS to Solve My Own Problem
Finally finished my sass - Officially a solopreneur now, kind of
You Learn Now is now Live 🎉
You may remember from a newsletter a few weeks ago that I had started my building my first micro-sass, You Learn Now - an app that quickly turns YouTube videos into actionable and interactive summaries. You can read it here
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.
Well, after months of initially starting it, I officially launched YouLearnNow. In this newsletter, I will discuss all the features, pricing decisions, and hurdles I faced in launching this sass.
The Idea 💡
The idea for YouLearnNow actually came from my own issues. I love learning from YouTube, whether it be how to start a business, how to manage finance, how to market, etc. However, oftentimes I would struggle as I had no way to quickly get the summaries and main points of the videos in order to take action on the advice. That is when the idea of YouLearnNow was born.
From Idea to reality 💭 → 🚀
Now this was by far the hardest bit, after I got the idea, it actually took me 7 months to finish. Why do you ask? Basically, I had that initial motivation and spent 2-3 hours on the first day building out a basic UI and simple logic. After that, as life happens, I lost motivation and didn’t work on it too much.
I would make excuses like I am tired after working on my 9-5, I have to look after the kids, I have to help my community, etc, etc.
However, in the last few months since launching Substack, being more engaged in the build in public communities on Twitter and, Reddit and most importantly of all, getting really fed up with my 9-5, I realised that the only way for me to achieve freedom was to utilise my skills as an engineer and build micro sasss’ that solve my problems as well as others.
So in the last 3 months, I started working hard on getting my first sass out to prove to myself that I can actually finish something by myself from start to finish, bring my ideas to life, and help solve problems for other people. I also had a colleague at work who I told what I was working on when I first started 7 months ago. He was also one of the people who kept pushing me to get it done, asking me is it live yet, is it live yet. I honestly think if I didn’t have him constantly pushing me I wouldn’t have been able to get this out at all. Thanks Jason 😁
In short, all my content on social media and everything I would watch would be people building successful start-ups and sass’, this gives me the push I needed to finally get it out the door.
Another thing that helped was waking up early. I woke up and am still waking up early to work on my sass and try to build an audience. For the last 5 days, I have been working from 6 am to 9 am. I realised if I want freedom, I have to sacrifice time to build and work on things I actually love before I start working for other people.
The Tools I Used ⚒️
Now, I am building this with the following tools:
Tailwind( Me and CSS have a complicated relationship 💔)
Stripe (for payments)
Kinde (for authentication)
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 made it super easy to build amazing looking frontends, and I used my backend skills to integrate with OpenApi, setup the APIs and database for smooth functionality, basically I worked on what I enjoy and do best and let Ai do what I suck at. Using these tools honestly helped me a lot in getting YouLearnNow. If I didn’t waste time, this would have been out into the world in like 1 or 2 months due to the simplicity of the tools and the great help they give.
Pricing Strategy
For the pricing model, I decided to break away from conventional monthly subscriptions as I prefer a one-time payment. However, since I use AI models I get charged for each query or lookup. So I decided to use a “Pay Once and Have Lifetime Access” pricing model, but the user has to use their own API key. My concern for this approach was that users may be intimidated by creating their own API key, which may cause friction. In order to tackle this, I added the following in my pricing page, which tells the user the benefits of using their own API key and that they do not have to worry, as we will guide them through the setup. The guide can also be found here
My hope is that people would prefer to have lifetime access for a single payment and use their own API Keys rather than having monthly recurring payments. But only time will tell 🕝. For the pricing, there are 2 options: Basic and Pro.
Basic uses and older AI model, and allows you to have 100 summaries a month.
Pro uses the most advanced model and gives you unlimited summaries per month.
How YouLearnNow works 🧑💻
You learn is simple to use
Go to YouLearnNow
Click on Get Started
Sign up using your own email or use single sign on using your google account
Select your pricing plan
Follow our guide to set up your OpenAi Api Key
Copy and paste your API key and save it.
Click on Back to Dashboard
Paste in the YouTube link.
9. Click Summarize and get your summary and action steps
10. Download your content or chat to the Ai model for further advice on the video and how to implement the advice for your own business or idea.
Final Thoughts and how you can help.
Building YouLearnNow has been an amazing experience. It has given me hope that I can utilize my own skills to build my own business, and at the same time, help people who want to learn and grow. This tool not only scratches my own itch but also exposed me to a world of new possibilities and a road to financial freedom.
If you feel like you are stuck in the 9-5 grind then try building your own business, whether it be a few hours before work or a few hours at night, what I have realised is no matter how high your salary maybe in the 9-5 you will always be expendable, and tied with golden hand cuffs which become unbearable to wear after a while.
You can help me by:
Try YouLearnNow—your feedback is incredibly valuable!
Subscribe to my newsletter for regular updates.
Share YouLearnNow and my journey with friends and colleagues.
Until next time 🤞
Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control (Epictetus)