Member-only story
I Built a $10K AI SaaS While Working a 9-to-5
Let me be upfront. This is not one of those stories where someone quits their job on a Monday, launches a startup on a Tuesday, and makes six figures by Friday. I kept my day job. I still have it. The SaaS I built crossed $10,000 in revenue while I was clocking in and out of a regular 9-to-5 like everyone else.
I want to tell you how that happened, because I think the honest version of this story is more useful than the polished one.
The Starting Point
I live in Albania. I work as a fullstack developer. The pay is fine for here, but it is not the kind of money that lets you stop thinking about money.
I have been coding professionally for about a year and a half, and before that I was learning on my own, building things nobody used, and reading about people online who were shipping products and making real income from them.
After school I joined an internship, but I didn’t feel like it was the right place for me so I pivoted to doing online work, and learning or doing things on my own. I wanted to be a real developer to build cool things.
I wanted that. Not in a vision board kind of way. I just wanted to build something that people would pay for. That was the whole goal.
