Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Aayush
How I Built a $13K/Month SaaS
Watch the full episode“Put more buy buttons on the internet. Lots of people build in silence for six months, have a wait list on a free signup, and nobody buys. People are too afraid to charge, too afraid to put up a real buy button. Me and my business partner combined — we have 30 plus failed projects before this. Get that failure out of the way as soon as possible.”
Put more buy buttons on the internet — 30+ failed projects taught the only thing that mattered
Aayush's core mindset: only a real buy button reveals whether strangers will actually swipe a card — waitlists and free signups teach you nothing. He and his co-founder shipped 30+ failed projects before Elephas, and credits that fast-fail rhythm of real payment tests with everything that came after.
“Make a list of all the subreddits where my ICP is hanging out — at least 15 subreddits. Any subreddit greater than 5,000 members is okay. Smaller subreddits are sometimes better — niche audiences, simpler rules, mods are more forgiving. Post on one subreddit per day, tweak the copy, repeat. Never post on all subreddits in one day — people see the overlap.”
Post one Reddit demo per day across 15+ niche subs with UTMs on every link
Aayush built a 15-subreddit list (5K+ members each, favoring smaller niches), then posted one video demo per day to a single sub, tweaking copy between posts and tagging every link with UTMs by feature, date, and subreddit. This avoided spam-pattern detection from overlapping audiences while giving him clean attribution on what actually converted.
“The focus of the post is a video demo, but wrap it in a use case or problem-solution framing — 'me or my friend was facing this problem so I built this feature to solve it. See, this is how it works. If you want to try, you can try it for 30 days for free. I'm just looking for feedback.' Reddit is a smart audience — they hate marketers, but they appreciate if you explain the reasoning.”
Frame Reddit posts as 'I built this for X problem' — never as a product pitch
Every Reddit post leads with a problem story (why this feature was built) and ends with a soft 30-day free trial ask for feedback, not a sales pitch. This 'show don't tell' framing slips past Reddit's anti-marketing reflex and turned posts into the bulk of Elephas's first $3K MRR.
“Inside Ahrefs I have a filter — anything with a keyword difficulty of less than 20 and a search volume of greater than 500 is a very good combination, especially if you're a new website. You don't have a lot of domain authority, so don't go after high volume, high competition keywords. Focus on low volume, high intent, low competition.”
Filter Ahrefs to KD under 20 plus volume above 500 for early SEO wins
Aayush sets a strict Ahrefs filter — KD under 20 paired with monthly volume over 500 — to surface keywords a low-authority site can actually rank for. He buys one month of Ahrefs ($129), burns the credits researching 30-50 topics, then writes against that list for a full quarter. New domains can't out-muscle high-DR sites on head terms, but they can win the long tail.
“We were just writing helpful articles, support articles based on the questions customers were getting. We wrote an article on how to create OpenAI API keys — just screenshots, do this, do this. We didn't realize we ranked number one on Google for 6 to 8 months. We accidentally realized Google is actually a genuine inbound traffic channel.”
Write support articles for existing customers — one accidentally ranked #1 for 6 months
Elephas's SEO engine started by accident: they wrote plain-English support articles answering real customer questions (like 'how to create OpenAI API keys') and one ranked #1 for 6-8 months. That free traffic taught them which adjacent queries to target next. The lesson: your customer support inbox is a free keyword research tool, and utility articles compound into product-intent listicles.
“As long as you can add net new information to the internet, you will win with SEO. Bring your personal insights, your user data, your market intelligence. You're not just regurgitating what the internet already has. We're getting a lot of AI traffic — ChatGPT, Claude, all the AI answer engines are referencing our articles, and that audience is even more high intent because they've already made up their minds about buying.”
Add net-new information to the internet — that is what AI engines cite
Aayush uses AI as a research assistant to scaffold what's already ranking, then layers in proprietary insights, user data, and personal flavor so the post adds something new. That originality is what ChatGPT and Perplexity now cite — and citation traffic converts faster because the user arrived with intent already formed.
“When you're doing downloadable apps especially Mac apps the customers expect a lifetime deal, expect a one-time payment thing. It's a mindset that they have, so we've stuck with lifetime deal since the beginning. We've gradually raised prices.”
Sell lifetime deals alongside subscriptions to match Mac-app buyer expectations
For downloadable Mac apps, buyers psychologically expect a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. Aayush kept a lifetime tier next to monthly and annual plans from day one and steadily raised prices over time, which captured customers who would otherwise bounce on a subscription paywall — adding roughly $110K of Gumroad revenue in a year.
“Claude Code is probably the number one AI tool everyone should be using — it does so much for $100 a month. We use it for both development and marketing. Ahrefs is $129 a month — if you can't afford it, just get it for a month and do keyword research for a quarter.”
Run as a 2-person team on Claude Code plus Ahrefs rented one month at a time
Elephas runs as a 2-person team where Claude Code handles both dev and marketing work, and they treat Ahrefs as a rentable resource — buying one month, batching keyword research for a full quarter, then cancelling. AI scaffolds the writing but they add proprietary user data and insights so each post adds net-new information, which is what actually ranks.