Episode 794 | From Struggling Side Project to Life-Changing SaaS Exit

Startups For the Rest of Us

B2C, low price point, one-time payments… not the typical recipe for a life-changing exit.

In this episode, Rob Walling talks with longtime listener Zamir Khan, founder of VidHug (now Memento). Zamir’s story broke a lot of SaaS “rules”: B2C, low price point, one-time payments, and years of slow growth. He shares how he nearly gave up, the pandemic surge that changed everything, and the emotional ride that led to a life-changing exit.

Episode Sponsor:

AI is completely changing how people discover brands and content online, and Ahrefs has built a full-blown SaaS marketing platform to help you stay ahead.

With over 15 years of real-world web data, and AI that actually understands marketing, Ahrefs helps you measure your brand presence, build authority, and monitor reputation across search, social, and AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AIOs, Perplexity, and more.

You can also dig into what’s driving your competitors’ visibility and spot market gaps before they do, helping you create content that ranks and drive new traffic to your business.

There's no need to juggle a bunch of disconnected tools- get Ahref’s all-in-one platform to make your brand unmissable in a fast-moving world.

Try it free at ahrefs.com/awt.

Topics we cover:

• (3:47) — From podcast listener to SaaS founder
• (7:59) — The role of luck, timing, and the pandemic in growth
• (18:37) — A birthday gift becomes a product
• (23:54) — Charging early and surviving slow growth
• (30:47) — From $1k a month to 80k daily users
• (39:58) — Support load, stress, and the edge of burnout
• (48:58) — Deciding to sell (and why timing mattered)
• (52:57) — Life after the exit: slowing down and finding balance

Links from the Show:

• TinySeed – Applications close tonight!
• MicroConf Connect – The community for SaaS founders
• The SaaS Playbook
• Memento (formerly VidHug)
• Zamir Khan (@zam1rkhan) | X
• Zamir Khan | LinkedIn

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify