I make $40K/month with this one website

Summary

Angus Chang, a solopreneur from Hong Kong, shares how he built a simple yet profitable website, Bank Statement Converter, generating $40K per month. He discovered the idea while solving a personal problem of converting PDF bank statements into Excel, quickly validated it with real users, and built the MVP using Kotlin and Next.js. Angus emphasizes launching fast, focusing on real user feedback, and avoiding distractions like social media or ineffective ads. His journey highlights the challenges and rewards of solo entrepreneurship, the importance of persistence, and how identifying a small but real problem can lead to a highly successful micro-SaaS business.

Takeaways

• 😀 Angus Chang built a simple website called Bank Statement Converter, which generates $40K per month in revenue.
• 😀 The website solves a specific problem: extracting data from PDF bank statements into usable formats like Excel.
• 😀 Angus bootstrapped the entire business by himself, with no employees and 100% ownership of the business.
• 😀 Angus validated his idea by quickly launching a minimum viable product (MVP) and testing it with real users.
• 😀 His initial marketing strategy focused on Google ads, but he found that ads were not profitable long-term and eventually stopped using them.
• 😀 The key to Angus’s success was focusing on improving the product based on real customer feedback rather than relying on external marketing strategies.
• 😀 Angus’s growth trajectory: 2021 launch → $6K MRR in 2022 → $14K MRR in 2023 → $27K MRR in 2024 → $40K MRR currently.
• 😀 Angus’s tech stack includes Kotlin (for core engine), Next.js (front end), AWS EC2 (back end), and Stripe (for payments).
• 😀 The solopreneur lifestyle offers flexibility but also comes with challenges, such as loneliness and dealing with skepticism from others during the early stages.
• 😀 Key advice for aspiring solopreneurs: Save enough money to survive without income for 1-3 years and focus on building a great product over social media hype.

Q & A

Who is Angus Chang and what is notable about his business?

Angus Chang is a solopreneur from Hong Kong who built a simple website called Bank Statement Converter. It focuses on doing one specific task and generates $40,000 per month entirely by himself, without any employees.

What problem did Angus aim to solve with Bank Statement Converter?

He wanted to track his spending over multiple years in a simple Excel spreadsheet but faced difficulty because his bank only provided PDF statements. This personal challenge led him to create a tool that extracts transaction data from PDFs into a usable format.

How did Angus validate that his idea could be a viable business?

He built a minimal viable product (MVP) in about a week with a friend, launched it on a domain, and ran Google ads. Immediate engagement from users uploading bank statements indicated there was real demand.

What approach does Angus use to find business ideas?

He looks for problems he personally experiences or pain points his colleagues and friends mention. He focuses on implementing the smallest possible version of an idea, launching it quickly, and observing whether people actually use it.

What was the technical stack used to build Bank Statement Converter?

The core engine was written in Kotlin, the front end in Next.js, hosted on Netlify, with the backend on AWS EC2. Stripe handled payments, and Brevo was used for transactional emails.

How did Angus initially try to market the product and what worked best?

He experimented with Google search ads, blogging, public building, and cold emails. Paid ads were unprofitable, and cold emails annoyed people. Eventually, focusing on organic users and improving the product based on feedback led to steady growth.

What is the Angus method for building a business?

It follows a lean startup approach: build a quick MVP, launch it, observe real user behavior instead of friends' opinions, and iteratively improve the product based on actual feedback and analytics.

What challenges did Angus face transitioning from a 9-to-5 job to a solopreneur?

He experienced social isolation, initial low income, and the difficulty of shifting focus from coding for fun to coding for business impact. He also noticed that people often didn't understand or value his work early on.

What are some pros and cons of being a solopreneur according to Angus?

Pros include having your own schedule, going slower than VC-backed startups, and targeting smaller markets successfully. Cons include social isolation, limited understanding from others, and financial uncertainty in the early years.

How did Angus’ revenue grow over time?

The timeline of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) was: 2022 - $6,000, 2023 - $14,000, 2024 - $27,000, and today - $40,000, with about 75,000 total users and 1,000 paying customers.

What lessons did Angus learn from his first two years of building the business?

He realized that early hard work doesn’t immediately pay off financially but builds a foundation for future revenue. Rapidly responding to every customer email and improving the product were critical, even when income was low.

What advice does Angus have for someone starting a SaaS business?

He recommends saving enough money to survive multiple years without income, ignoring social media when starting out, focusing on building a product that solves real problems, and gradually attracting real users rather than relying on followers or hype.