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 two 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. Later that night, I got home 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
The idea was born out of my own frustration. Back in 2021, I was wrestling with 10+ browser extensions to inspect, edit, and refine websites. But all these extensions either lacked features, had bugs, or had inconsistent UI. I needed something better, so I decided to build it myself.
But building this extension was a challenging journey, especially as a first-time browser extension developer, and that too while Chrome API was undergoing significant changes. I spent months diving into MDN and Chrome API docs to figure out how browsers work and read about almost everything CSS.
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 ProductHunt in October 2022; no website yet. The response was incredible: 200+ upvotes, 50+ 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) with a blog by a prominent handle and gained traction in Korea thanks to another blog post by a well-known website. 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.
Over the past 19 months, SuperDev Pro evolved from a personal necessity into a robust tool that addresses the daily challenges developers and designers face with 12000+ lines of code and 100+ updates. Seeing it used by 3000+ developers with paid users from 30+ countries 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 something people actually need, making it simple to use, and designing it well. Along the way, I’ve picked up how to create landing pages that work, experimented with different marketing channels, and dug into SEO with the help of tools like Ahrefs.
Heck, I even used AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude to get stuff done faster. The best part? Connecting with and learning from other creators’ journeys on IndieHackers and Twitter – that’s been a game-changer. So, if you’re the kind of person who loves solving problems and building stuff, my advice is just dive in! You’ll be surprised at everything you pick up along the way.
