The story of my $4k MRR solo saas — Questgen.ai
Journey of my slow cooked solo saas!
Origin story of Questgen.ai
In mid-2019, I was exploring several ideas in the AI space. I was based in Singapore and working with an edtech founder, searching for opportunities in the AI + edtech space. We considered several concepts like vision AI-based analytics for live tutoring classes, adaptive learning, and AI-generated quizzes.
Among these ideas, AI-generated quizzes seemed to have the highest growth potential, both technically and commercially. We spoke with several edtech companies and learned about the outsourcing of the quiz creation process, which reinforced our belief in this idea. So, we created Aurora for AI-assisted quizzes!
Things were looking great. We secured pre-seed funding from the early-stage VC firm ‘Entrepreneur First,’ and within a few months, we even had a lead investor for a $1 million seed round. However, as co-founders, we encountered conflicts within the team. We made the tough decision to shut down the company and return the remaining pre-seed funds to our investors.
Afterward, I moved back to India in 2020–21 and decided to take a step back from active entrepreneurship. I also had my wedding planned, so I took a six-month break during that time.
Despite this, the idea of AI quiz generation continued to inspire me. I began sharing my experiments with code and small programming prototypes through blogs and on social media.
A year later, in 2022, I compiled all my learnings in AI quiz generation into a Udemy course. The course generated $10,000 in just over two years since its launch. Meanwhile, I, along with a few interns, trained text generation models for question generation and launched a Github library for it.
In 2023, I decided to build a basic frontend where users could input text and generate quizzes. It was a simple two-text-box layout: one for input and one for output. I learned no-code tools and built my first version of the SaaS on Bubble.io, then launched it on my social media channels (LinkedIn and Twitter). There was no massive virality; I just kept working on it progressively, adding features like payments with Stripe, etc.
As SEO started kicking in, I linked all my previous blogs on question generation to the newly launched SaaS. The platform grew slowly from there.
In the past year, as AI-assisted coding became more mainstream and frameworks like NextJS gained popularity, I learned full-stack technologies and rebuilt the entire system in NextJS.
Currently, Questgen oscillates between $3k-4k MRR, with a 70% profit margin, and operates mostly on autopilot with little to no maintenance! More than the financial outcome, it has been my best test-bed for learning the art of slow-cooked solo entrepreneurship. Solo SaaS is a microcosm of the economy, as you end up understanding everything from marketing to filing taxes and ensuring compliance!
Pics from the Singapore days when it was branded as ‘Aurora’ ->
