How Sev Leo went from zero code to a growing SaaS in 2 years

Meet Sev Leo.

Sev is a Saas founder, full-stack dev, and new dad. He is 33, and lives in Vietnam with his wife and newborn son.

Just two years ago, he had a well-paying job he hated. He had never written a line of code, but in early 2023 he decided to try learning, and he fell in love with it. A few months in, he quit his job and started coding full-time.

Currently, Sev’s main focus is on Publora.

The story told by Sev Leo

Starting out

At first, I didn’t have a plan. I just knew that if I kept doing what I loved (coding), something would eventually work out.

Two years later:

• I failed my first SaaS

• I discovered indie hacking

• I built Publora, my second SaaS. This time done right.

What is Publora?

Publora is a social media scheduler with an emphasis on content creation. I would even go as far as to say it's not a scheduler. It's a note-taking app with scheduling features.

It's designed to serve as a content creation hub - so you can keep and re-use all your content inside Publora, and don't need to switch between Notion/Obsidian and scheduler all the time. That's why I designed it to look and feel like Medium (or even Google Docs).

Whatever you write or modify saves automatically. Well and of course it has AI to help you create more content 🙂 It analyzes your previous posts and suggests new posts based on your posting history.

It also has AI editor tools.

Building and promoting

I started working on Publora in November 2024.

Before I wrote a single line of code, I shared a waitlist on Reddit, X, and LinkedIn.

This I shared on LinkedIn - and the one below on X.

This early Reddit post brought in 10+ users alone:

How do you stay consistent with social media?

I launched a public beta 1 month later. Here’s the first demo I shared on X.

The next few months? A blur of coding, SEO, and product polish.

Launch and sales

I officially launched Publora on X on March 28, 2025.

Just one week later, I made my first sale - from a Reddit post that wasn’t even about my product. I had to share that on X.

Then more started rolling in, one by one.

Stats (as of 1.5 months post-launch):

• 12 paying customers (most on yearly plans)

• 30 active free users

• 400+ total signups

What’s working for me

As a developer, marketing has always been the hardest part. I’d rather ship 10 features than write one sales page.

Here’s what I’ve found most effective so far:

• Reddit → Sharing my journey + real questions = free traffic

• SEO → Slow to build, but pays off over time

• Affiliates → The most scalable passive channel

SEO

Well, first I acknowledged my poor branding decision.

Originally I called my product Brandcraft and it was competing with other names like this in Google. So I decided to rebrand it into a more distinct name Publora. I lost some momentum but it's winning long term.

Secondly, I did a lot of page optimizations:

• Making sure the pages have all the metadata necessary for optimal SEO

• Worked a lot on the copy

• Added different content

• Added blogs (40+ articles)

• Added some free tools

• Made sure Google can index everything, that it can read robots and sitemap.xml

Then I put Publora on a handful of relevant directories, including a few paid directories such as Toolify (requires AI features to pass verification).

I had no idea about SEO before so I spent a lot of time learning about all of that and then implementing and re-implementing.

Some people from X even helped by giving suggestions and finding gaps in my SEO, e.g. my robots used to point to a wrong path for sitexml and I had no clue.

Now Publora has 21 DR and 13k+ impressions on Google. Every day Google brings anywhere between 1-10 clicks.

Affiliates

I have integrated Affonso affiliates and promoted it on Reddit.

Affonso is an automated platform which helps you launch, manage and scale affiliate programs.

I have 10+ affiliates so far which are just starting out. I can't really share any significant progress as I just did this 1 week ago (early May 2025).

The business model

Publora is a SaaS so it's a subscription based model.

I try to keep it simple and offer just 3 plans divided by monthly/yearly commitment. Most apps do like that and I think it's a good practice since it brings familiarity.

Life update

Right after my first few sales, I also landed my first full-time job as a full-stack developer at a startup.

I didn’t plan on it, but it felt aligned. It helps me improve as a developer and gives me financial breathing room to grow Publora at my own pace.

What’s next?

Right now, I’m focused on:

• Improving Publora’s core UX

• Expanding affiliate partnerships

• Continuing to invest in SEO

Eventually, I want to explore short-form video (TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts), but one step at a time.

Publora isn’t paying the bills yet (it pays for itself though!). It has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever built. It’s teaching me about product, marketing, persistence, and what it means to actually serve users.

You can always reach out to Sev Leo on X.