A 12-hour hackathon build that became a $15K/month solo AI business
A part-time, non-developer founder in Goa shipped four tiny AI tools in a week. He kept the one people loved, and it has been profitable since day one.
Part of Indian SaaS builders
Business snapshot
Monthly revenue
≈₹14.2 lakh/mo
$15,000/mo · reported May 2024
- Business model
- AI app · B2C · Subscription
- Time to MVP
- ~12 hours
- Started
- Mar 2023
- Team
- Solo founder
- Based in
- Goa, India
- Launch tweet
- 84.9K views
- Paid ads
- None
Tools
- Bubble
- Figma
- Loops (email)
- AI APIs
Founder-reported figures, not independently verified. ₹ amounts use the ECB reference rate rate of Oct 2026 (₹94.82/$).
Who built it, and what they built
Louis Pereira calls himself a part-time indie hacker. By day he works in his family's offline business in Goa; at night he builds products on the internet.
His most successful one is AudioPen, which turns rambling voice notes into clean, readable text. It makes about $15,000 a month.
Where the idea came from
Louis had been dabbling online for years: newsletters, websites, web apps, even web apps for other people.
In March 2023, while experimenting with the newest AI APIs, he built four tiny products in a single week and hosted them all on his personal website to avoid paying for domains. He shared each one on Twitter. One clearly struck a chord, so he rebuilt it as a standalone product: AudioPen.
How they built the first version
Builder Copilot
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