How 18 year old Gurwinder grew his Threads scraper to 100+ users on launch week

Meet Gurwinder Singh.

18 year old Gurwinder is from Punjab in India.

Here’s what three years of coding on a cramped mobile screen taught Gurwinder about turning obsession into impact.

In Gurwinder’s own words:

“Be Mean (to bugs), Be Humble (in learning), Be Obsessed (with outcomes).”

That is how he ended up building ThreadSnatch.

The story told by Gurwinder Singh

Learning to code

It all began in ninth grade when I stumbled on Elon Musk’s story. A curious kid from South Africa who changed the world through code.

I downloaded a basic code editor onto my phone, taught myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No AI and no computer. I set out to build a simple site that generated QR codes, fetched YouTube thumbnails, and generated random quotes.

It was December 2022.

I would code sitting on the chair outside my grandfather’s room until 11 PM, then wake up at 5 AM to do it all again. I didn’t understand half of what I was writing, but my “delusional self‑belief” kept me going. Six months later, my friends bowed out; I abandoned the project myself, drained by frustration and sadness.

Depression and distractions

Tenth and eleventh grade were a blur of limited resources, distractions, and a creeping depression no one saw coming least of all my family. I switched schools by choice, dove into PCM (Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics) without a clue, and barely scraped by with good marks that masked endless overthinking.

I kept my struggles secret, but the silence amplified every doubt.

A spark of hope

When the eleventh‑grade results came in, they surprised me and cracked open a door of confidence. That summer, I resolved to channel my obsession into something that mattered.

I taught myself web‑scraping in seven days, then dove headfirst into building a Meta Threads scraper. From Cheerio to Playwright, I wrestled with IP blocks and elusive bugs.

By September 2024, I’d settled on Puppeteer and against all odds had it pulling media flawlessly, no matter how often Meta tweaked their code.

Building ThreadSnatch

By year’s end 2024 I’d mastered the MERN stack and Docker, wrapped my scraper in a container, and hunted for free cloud hosts until rate limits and suspensions forced me to think bigger.

In February 2025, a friend helped me migrate to AWS. Four‑second responses, 99.9% uptime, and “ThreadSnatch API” was born: a production‑grade scraper built in three months of relentless iteration.

I was happy and I knew that I made it - but it was just the beginning. So I planned further and designed the interface of the website in the middle of my boards exams.

Launch and early traction

In mid‑March 2025, during my boards exams, a friend devleoped the homepage.

On April 9, fresh from a two‑day trip that turned my hope into full‑blown obsession, I hit “Publish.” I sacrificed late nights and even strained friendships. People didn’t understand why I couldn’t just “chill.”

I got some serious traction right from the start:

• Day 1–2: 50 + users

• Week 1: 2.3 K visits, 100+ users

Today (ultimo April 2025) - Steady growth - and plans to hit 1K users within a month, plus three B2B clients on free trials.

I got these users from majorily from X and other social media platforms.

I first focused on what I wanted to post on X and I chose the communities like software engineering, indie hacker etc. I engaged heavily not because I was eager to show my website but because I genuinely love to learn different things from different people on X.

I think it’s a profound experience to get feedback for your product and seeing it grow. It's just purely consistency and intentionality that drove the growth.

The business model

Right now, my media-scraping API for Meta Threads is entirely free up to 5,000 calls per month. I chose this unlimited-trial approach to accelerate adoption and collect usage data without any friction.

Once a user exceeds 5,000 calls in a month, they can continue using the API under a paid plan - details of which I’m finalizing based on insights from early usage patterns.

Value drivers

• Zero friction
  Free access encourages developers to integrate and test.

• Scalability & reliability
  Proven performance under load ensures trust when they scale.

• Data-driven pricing
  I’ll tailor paid tiers based on real consumption patterns to match customer willingness to pay.

After the free 5,000-call tier, I’ll roll out a direct-to-consumer model where individual developers can subscribe to monthly plans (or purchase pay-as-you-go credits) to unlock higher call volumes, advanced features, and premium support.

Why it matters (and why you should try it)

I built ThreadSnatch because every creator deserves more time for ideas, not manual downloads. At 18, I’m proof that persistence outmuscles resources.

If you’ve ever wrestled with slow scripts or paid four‑figure fees for media‑extraction, please give ThreadSnatch a spin.

You can find Gurwinder Singh on X.

Just one final wild fact about Gurwinder’s way of working …

He actually still writes most of his code on his mobile, since he does not own a personal computer yet. This month (April 2025) he gained access to his institution’s desktop lab for about two hours each weekday (the weekends are closed).

He uses his phone for writing and testing API code, then when it’s time to deploy especially to AWS services, he switches to the lab computer. Having that scheduled computer time has let him integrate proper deployment steps, CI/CD scripts, and more robust testing into his workflow.