From 9-5 to a SaaS Product!
On a warm June evening in 2022, I was sitting with a childhood friend in a rooftop cafe alongside the Yamuna river, a rare sight in Delhi’s bustling cityscape. Having just resigned from my job 2-3 months ago, I wanted to build something with the hope of never returning to a traditional 9-5.
We discussed startups, ideas, and building products. But, truth be told, we felt stuck, nothing seemed to click, no amazing lightbulb moments. I got home later that day, and this idea of an all-in-one browser extension for web development popped into my head. Without really thinking it through, no real plan, no market research, I just... started coding. And that, weirdly enough, is how SuperDev Pro was born.
Okay, I’ll Build It Myself
This idea was born out of my own problem. Back in 2021, I was juggling between a lot of browser extensions for my own web development work. But all these extensions lacked features, had bugs, or had inconsistent UI. I needed something better and more powerful, so I decided to build it myself.
For the first 7 months of the building journey, SuperDev Pro was completely free. It felt like a long time, considering I had no other sources of income, and people started asking if SuperDev Pro would generate any revenue at all. I, too, after all, was unsure if things would work or not.
On the other hand, building this extension was also challenging, especially as a first-time browser extension developer, and that too while the Chrome API was undergoing significant changes. I spent months diving into MDN, Chrome API docs, and Stack Overflow to figure out how browsers work and learned intricate details of building a Chrome extension.
SuperDev Pro Goes Viral
After working on the extension for 3 straight months, 7 days a week, 14 hours a day 😬, I made it open-source and launched it on Chrome Web Store in October 2022 and on ProductHunt in November 2022; no website yet. The response was incredible: 200+ upvotes, 45+ comments, and 300+ installs through ProductHunt that week.
Then in December, things got even more exciting — we trended in Japan due to a tweet (96k views) along with a blog by a prominent handle and gained traction in Korea thanks to another blog post by a well-known website. I believe both of them knew about SuperDev Pro from the ProductHunt launch. All this led to 1000s of installs!
SuperDev Pro Goes Paid
February 1, 2023 marked a significant milestone 🎉: the launch of SuperDev Pro’s paid version. From day one, free users began converting to the paid version.
I also launched SuperDev Pro on a few more platforms and built a fantastic website that improved our conversion rate by 4x. It’s been a year since launching the paid version, and the goal of avoiding a traditional 9-5 job has been achieved.
SuperDev Pro Gets Featured
SuperDev Pro was again featured on the Chrome Web Store in July 2024. Over the past 2 years, it evolved from a personal necessity into a robust tool that addresses the daily challenges developers and designers face. Seeing it used by 5000+ awesome folks with paid users from 35+ countries and a rating of 4.6 stars on Chrome Web Store and 4.7 stars on ProductHunt is incredibly fulfilling.
Sharing Do’s and Dont’s
As the creator of SuperDev Pro, I was recently invited by Google Developer Student Clubs at Jamia Hamdard University to speak at the GDSC LaunchPad, where I shared my experience and insights on how to (and how not to) build startups.
This whole experience of building SuperDev Pro has been a huge learning curve — figuring out how to build a software product that people actually need, making it easy to use, and designing it well. Along the way, I’ve learned how to create a landing page that really works, write content that connects, implement different marketing strategies, tell engaging stories, and so much more.
