Journey from under block, to tech underdog 😂

This is as detailed as the "journey thus far" that I am going to be posting for this project. Some might find that I may be repeating myself, but I hope you understand I am trying to post original content (no A.I.) on all my social platforms, catering to the different audiences. It's also just me emptying my thought process somewhere and if it sparks an interest in anybody like it did for me, at least they know what to look out for. And that they are not an odd-ball.

If the title brought you here, it's not just clickbait. Growing up in and around Yishun, which most locals consider as "hard" as a neighbourhood as it gets in Singapore, my whole teenage years, I did spend an incomprehensible amount of time under the void decks chilling with friends after football or drinking by the BBQ pits and things like that.

Now, I am on a pursuit of the indiehacker journey, where people like myself, put together small solutions for their own problems, usually working solo and releasing to a niche audience. Why underdog you ask? Because one of the rites-of-passage is launching on Product Hunt (an app popularity contest), where you are competing with thousands of apps launching daily with huge VC fundings and massive teams with top talent from all over the world.

In tech, it does not get any more David vs Goliath than these indiehackers.

Like every good superhero movie, there was a villain that got me started.

As much as I would love to get into the details of this, a matter so personal, I dare say it changed me as a person. The amount of self-doubt that creeped up on me after that, almost kept me paralysed, occupationally speaking. Over the months, I reflected and eventually came to terms that whatever happens, it happens for me and not to me. So I crept up into a corner of my house and went MIA on all social platforms to work on myself.

"We know how to take it on the chin and build another door when one closes.."

I also off-loaded this person from my mind because he was living rent free in my head. He was losing no sleep. Sh*t he might not even know the negative effect he had on me. But see, where I come from, we built different. We know how to take it on the chin and build another door when one closes. Getting creative probably stemmed a lot from the times spent under those blocks. So I guess it is not all in vain after all.

Why now?

I knew one thing, i always wanted to launch an app. But I never had the technical chops. Yea I did a Diploma in IT, but trust me I was mediocre compared to some of my cohort's top students. Every VC pitch, every tech person I spoke to, every startup competition, mentioned the one thing being, I am not an Engineer. I am just the "idea" guy. I truly hated that. No hate on "idea" guys, but I knew I was not merely just that.

"What would my boys ever take away from me if I am no longer around?"

Getting comfortable at a job was really tempting. Friends and peers who started out after me in the Product space were raking in the big bucks. But like i said before, a lot of self doubt kept me from even trying for the big tech companies.

Being a father of two boys, there were moments I asked myself, "what would my boys ever take away from me if I am no longer around?" Begged me to ask the question, is there any way I can impart some knowledge that somehow translates to "chase your dreams no matter how big and scary they are".

Turning 36, I knew this was probably as close to pre-mid-life-crisis as it got. Time was still ticking, and there is no better time than now. So I took the decision to drop any client work for about 1 month (ended up being over 6 mths), running on a really tight runway of budget and learning every thing I could to making this app launch thing possible.

Why SvahaMe.ai?

Fortunately, I had the honour of serving another religious group, by means of my previous role as the sole-PM for an app. Although I loved coming up with features and learning more about the beauty in another religion, the one thing that comforted me the most was knowing I had a part to play in helping millions around the world get closer to their God, just using tech.

"..Like, does it count?"

Some days, I asked my cab drivers or my colleagues, even though I am not part of that religion, does this service that I am doing wholeheartedly, with sensitivity and respect, count for anything? Like, does it count? Not looking for brownie points, but just out of curiosity. Although the answer was never straight forward, every person that I spoke to who was from that faith, always blessed me in their own way right after the conversation.

As I left employment and was handling client work as a consultancy, I quickly realised I cannot keep "building" for others and keep hoping that some day a VC in shining armour decides to take a shot with me, which will result in me becoming the technopreneur that I always wanted to be. So, I took my experience and the comfort I found in the previous job and tried to find a common ground to some of the problems I personally faced as a 2nd-gen Hindu in Singapore, happily married to a Catholic.

What started off as a scramble to find out my first son's vedic zodiac and birth star during his first ever puja at the temple, initially became a simple calculator idea. But as soon as A.I. was catching steam, I was watching other indiehackers on X making a killing in the gold rush. Again, I took what I learnt there and started to apply to my own project. That was how I was learning from their experience and also how this project took way longer than it should have.

Problem?

For as long as I can remember, all our family's prayers held at the temple, one problem persisted through out the years. Someone would have forgotten or mistook their Raasi (vedic zodiac different from western zodiac) and Nakshatra (birth star in vedic terms). It is essentially a planetary address of an individual based on the planetary positions in the sky from their birth place as the point of perspective.

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Everyone is as unique as it gets. These calculations are then interpreted based on the Vedic scriptures that has been in practice since 1500BCE. Everyone has a fixed birth chart and multiple divisional charts (different categories).

"..the common trend with them all is they were built for another audience.."

Vedic astrology sites have long existed, even the A.I. ones. But the common trend with them all is they were built for another audience. An audience that is familiar with the topic in general and already have a base understanding. For someone like me, who does not have access to highly skilled and trained astrologers who I think only reside in the Motherland, it almost feels like getting an appointment is as hard as meeting the President.

Each time a reputable astrologer is in town, somehow it is a friend's friend who will have to "get you in". Getting access is hard and controlled in some sense. The friends will tell you the person will not accept payment, but you may choose to donate. Ask that same friend how much he donates, and he tells you about $50 bucks/reading x 4 (family members).

How then would anybody other than a Hindu, ever want to see themselves through the eyes of vedic astrology? To look at it like how they casually glance over the Western and Chinese astrology (at least in my region), whether they actually believe in it or not. We needed to have an easy way to introduce people to the world of vedic astrology that we have been blessed with, coming from the minds that probably brought along practices like yoga, meditation, mindfulness, vegetarianism, ayurvedic meds, and even calculated the Earth's circumference and the length of the solar year with impressive precision for their time.

"..missing 5 deadlines to launch.."

Using whatever I had learnt, I started to throw things together. The idea started growing in monstrous scale. I toned it down a notch and came back to reality. Idea was to ship an app out in record breaking time. Many have done it, and I have seen it. After accounting for delays and some hiccups along the way, I gave myself a month. And here we are 1.5 years later after missing 5 deadlines to launch.

How I started work on it.

Pencil sketches and did not bother with all the usual PM type tasks like complex kanban boards, storyboarding, customer persona, etc. I just decided to wing this one. It was an itch I had and solving it the only way I knew how. No pitch decks, nothing.

Coming up with the name was a tough one, and it was partly due to me remembering a part of every puja where the priest repeats this word "svaha" each time he was reciting the mantras. The 'Me' was added because the initial brain dump I had was an entirely different app when starting off. Though it is the intended grand roadmap for this product, I wanted to release something "simpler" first. It was a funny coincidence when it actually sounded like Swamy and the product went this direction in part due to A.I. That was never the intention at all.

"..Jyotish (vedic astrology) is otherwise, or formerly called the "Science of Light" (i.e. stars = light).."

We are notorious for using images to give life to an idea. So I created the logo. Did not do as many drafts as I usually do, but I just imagined the prayer hands we throw up when the priest shows the jyoti (lamp with camphor) towards the crowd as he chants the last bit of the mantras towards the deity. Quite fitting considering Jyotish (vedic astrology) is otherwise, or formerly called the "Science of Light" (i.e. stars = light).

As I was drawing it, I also noticed that it started looking very much like the 'Vel' (Lord Murugan's spear). I know I should not read too much into things, but I so happen to live in an apartment that literally overlooks a world-famous Lord Murugan's namesake temple, situated here in Singapore. I will leave that as that.

Additionally, I needed a character that would be the A.I. agent and as a word play, (even though it does not mean anything), I thought of SvahaMe Ji-PT. To those unfamiliar, in our culture, it is common to address a Yogi or Guru as Swamy Ji. Not that we are impersonating a Guru or anything, but just as a fun lil' Easter egg.

Fun is over as soon as the proof of concept works.

Since it was my first solo-project without any external help or guidance other than the likes of ChatGPT, my mind was all over the place. It was like constantly chasing the next shiny object. My brain was full of ideas, and as soon as I got something to work in its barebones format, I moved on to the next thing. Being somewhat of an introvert, I knew running a real business would require putting yourself out there to some extent and actually doing the boring parts as well.

"This time I decided to run through the fire."

It started feeling like I was well over my head with this one. Who was I kidding? I was not ready for this. Yea, I wore multiple hats in real-life and that is due to my male pattern hair loss, but this... This one was difficult, the pros just made it look easy.

This feeling was all too familiar. I have been here countless times before, when the future is clouded with doubts and uncertainty, so you just take a step back and save that battle for another day. This time I decided to run through the fire. I just told myself to show up every single day and God willing, to see this through to launch.

How I built it.

Remember I said I caught myself shying away from doing the actual work? I had initially started building the app on Bubble.io Right after I was done with the parts I was most familiar with (design, elements, etc), i successfully found another reason to push it back. Bubble had just announced a new pricing model and Twitter was going nuts. Everybody started suggesting moving away from using them and started listing down some alternatives.

And that was when my love affair with WeWeb started. WeWeb was a dream come true for someone like me who is well-versed with design and can pseudo-code rather well but not good enough to be an actual coder. But of course I did not know this when I was making the switch. I was basically avoiding the boring work.

"..the initial idea was too minimal to be competing in such a crowded space."

It was supposed to be a one-page calculator app with no sign ups, nothing. Just a form and a result. As I got better with WeWeb, I started pushing myself a little further and found myself writing code and using integrations that I never intended to do but was able to, like using cloud functions. I knew the initial idea was too minimal to be competing in such a crowded space. Before I knew it, I had to build a backend.

I was already knee-deep in this project and learning another platform just so I have a backend that does the added features I needed to stand out, was not on the cards. It started draining me mentally and physically. I think my family would attest to that. Sleep pattern was wrecked. Then came Xano. It was the perfect marriage with WeWeb, that I instantly knew my character had just levelled-up. I was going to be able to build so many ideas with that stack alone.

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1 x Key Feature, FREE. 3 x Paid Add-on Features, Optional.

Because of how fast apps were being released and mostly thanks to A.I., I felt that if your product did not have a couple of features ahead of time, you might just end up being one of the many others in that category. You cannot cry foul when inevitably there would be copycats in an instant. But they cannot out-hustle you.

A personal opinion, to showcase your idea in pictures, 4-5 images within 4 key touches from a user should provide the most clarity without losing their interest.

The origin and the problem I wanted to solve for my family, was a way to store and retrieve every family member's raasi/nakshatra easily. It did not make sense for me to be charging for something that is easily attainable elsewhere. And the primary motive of the passion project would not make sense anymore, it was to HELP.

But end of the day, whether you like it or not, there are costs involved in these things. So in order to sustain that feature, I had to cook up 3 other paid add-ons. The motive always remained clear, as such I made a rather odd decision to not push the sale of the in-app coins (MOOL$) extensively, or not at all.

Using that data and gathering feedback from the early adopters, I am now working towards adding more tutorial videos on my socials and improving the overall product offering. The 3 other features are only thanks to A.I. and how I would have used it to solve another one of my pain points in this area.

A personal opinion, to showcase your idea in pictures, 4-5 images within 4 key touches from a user should provide the most clarity without losing their interest.

Vedic astrology is wide and deep. On my side of the world, there is no one way to get introduced to it without being affiliated to someone who knows someone who knows someone. By the time you get even slightly interested in it, some factors could come into play for you to lose interest in it.

The exclusivity, the technicalities, the elusiveness, are some of the things that makes it harder for us to continually approach this cultural practice and use it in our daily lives.

If I may be honest, SvahaMe.ai is not trying to replace a physical trained professional astrologer in any shape or form. It is also not claiming that it is the best at what it does. It is a service that is put together to solve a personal problem. It is also a service intended to stoke the interest in the general population that also consumes other forms of astrology just because it appears in front of them in a palatable format. If anything at all, to introduce more people into the world of Vedic Astrology and increase the interest in people seeking actual professional advice from practitioners eventually.

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As usual, a rookie mistake was to end up building 3 other paid features even before I did any customer research. So, at the end of the day much of it is on intuition and it could all go to waste if people do not have the same problems as I do. I admit it as a mistake only because ask any seasoned indiehacker and they would tell you so.

How No-code and A.I. Levelled the Playing Field?

Thanks to no/low-code platforms, all of a sudden I felt unstoppable. See, I always admired Programmers. I tried being one. I did everything they did. Tried the music they did. Nothing worked. It was just a little too mundane or rather heavy for my brain. I always had the ability to pseudo-code, and explain workflows with APIs, webservices, etc. That's as far as the brain capacity seems to go.

A.I. and how it sped up the scene

When coming up with features for already established apps, you must be very careful not to piss the wrong tribe off. Changes will be received in mixed feelings, but it is your duty to protect their best interest at heart, while fulfilling the company’s.

Even if I was not building an A.I. product, it played a huge part in me seeing through this project. The code assistants and the number of times I used ChatGPT and Claude for writing snippets of JS and even basic HTML/CSS, cannot be understated. I think it would have taken me twice as long to push to Production.

Where we at with the project?

The Beta launch to friends and family was a little over 2 weeks ago (23 Jul '24) and a public roll out was done a few days later on 27 Jul '24. It has been about 9 days now, and there has been about 1k unique visitors, and over 500+ unique calculations made as well as 12 sales. These are vanity metrics and do not really count.

Been busy fixing all the bugs these current users have been reporting to me. Beauty and curse of being indie is you have to fix the bugs as they come.

Along with my marketing efforts (IG boosts ~$5/day), one other rite of passage was to enter into ProductHunt (daily app popularity contest). Gaining top spot there will solidify the product in some way or another. Your backlinks and domain rating will increase as a result too. Being a first-time founder, not sure if I am ready for this especially since the current numbers aren't really promising and it is not easy at all to win Product of the Day.

To ProductHunt or not to ProductHunt?

When coming up with features for already established apps, you must be very careful not to piss the wrong tribe off. Changes will be received in mixed feelings, but it is your duty to protect their best interest at heart, while fulfilling the company’s.

As we speak, the PH launch is scheduled for 1st September 2024 (already moved it back thrice). This is another one of the moments I am in between my fight/flight mode. Brain is saying wait this one out, heart is saying go for it, come what may.

We shall see.

If you came this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Oh and please check out https://www.svahame.ai

Stay Blessed,

Moolah