Working towards financial independence with an API SaaS while raising a family

Dmytro Krasun, 32, thought having a baby was the perfect time to launch his screenshot API, ScreenshotOne.

Despite the pressure, he's built a SaaS that's on track to hit $10k MRR — all while looking after his growing family.

Here’s how he did it👇.

Starting out

I was always building and exploring things for fun. I was curious about how much I could achieve on my own.

Today, my core expertise is software engineering. I have a master's degree in computer science and have been writing code for more than 17 years.

I worked as a software developer for about a decade and became passionate about building APIs.

I was leading API development in companies, managing documentation, establishing communication between teams, and of course writing API services — from tiny to highly loaded ones. But I never had enough time to seriously launch something alongside my full-time job.  

I didn’t know then, but APIs would become my key to financial independence.

New baby, new business

I discovered IndieHackers.com and listened to the podcast. I think it’s fair to say that changed my life. It showed me that I could build everything on my own, without any funding.

Then the stars aligned. My partner and I had a baby and I thought I it would be cool to try bootstrapping both — a new baby and a new business.

I didn’t think about how hard that would be at the time.

The product

ScreenshotOne is a screenshot API for developers. It may look simple, but don't rush to that conclusion. 

It was one of the many random ideas I gathered while building APIs and encountering problems.

I thought it would be cool to do something with browser automation. I didn’t check out my competitors (of which there were many), but luckily it wasn’t too difficult to find my niche in the market.

The product helps businesses (from small to big) to automate screenshots in areas like website competitor intelligence, open graph image generation, automating personalized videos at scale and much more.

Over-engineering for success

My tech stack is pretty simple. I use Next.js for the dashboard, Astro for my marketing website, Puppeteer for rendering screenshots and Go for API key management and rate limiting.

I’m often tempted to try new tech, but business-wise it’s not worth it. It would make it harder to hire devs and support the product in the future.

But I do use three different servers, which will probably make most indies laugh. It might look like over-engineering.

I did start off with just one $5 server. Then I moved to Render which allowed me to scale a bit when I started to get customers. Next, I moved to Google Cloud, because I got free credits and it scaled easily.

That ultimately became too expensive, so I moved to DigitalOcean. I still use their managed Kubernetes. Cloudflare handles my edge caching, computing, storage and more. They actually interviewed me once.

I also use Hetzner’s GPU servers and I have Google Cloud Run in case I need scaling.

A simple pricing model

I launched ScreenshotOne just over two years ago and my MRR is now around $8,500. You can check out my monthly reports on X for a detailed breakdown.

The pricing model is simple. I have three paid plans based on user needs. The higher-paid plans give you access to more screenshots and costlier features like video generation.

I haven’t changed the business much since I launched, but I was forced to raise prices to cover server costs.

However, I did add a pay-as-you-go option to each payment plan. Once you reach a certain threshold you can pay extra for more access.

I’m also considering adding a pay-as-you-go option starting at $0/mo, but I’d need to make lots of changes to the code to do it. In my experience, most customers don't need that anyway.

Nail your customer profile

My business grows relatively slowly, but that’s a feature of the market I’m in. But two things did really push my growth.

Firstly, I launched on Product Hunt. ScreenshotOne made it to the top products of the day. It brought more credibility and customers and it improved my SEO. That’s my main acquisition channel.

Secondly, I started consciously positioning my product to my ideal customer
profile. All my features, marketing campaigns, designs, and content are now focused on that specific customer profile.

Define your ideal customer profile and this will make your life so much easier. I found these resources on positioning particularly helpful.

Don't quit, be curious

I thought about quitting every week when I started.

I had a huge runway of more than two years, but I was still stressed. You see your money burning daily. No matter how much time you have, deep inside you know that one day it will run out.

I eventually found a gig to cover my family’s expenses, but I wish I’d started it earlier. And then gradually switched to my own products once the MRR grew.

I was determined not to give up. I wrote about that once in my newsletter. Ultimately, I’m just curious to see how far I can go.

Curiosity is a superpower.

There’s also plenty of indie hackers out there willing to chat to you and offer support. Daniel Nguyen was so kind to me. He changed my thinking patterns and introduced me to a lot of people on the scene. He’s one of the best indie hackers out there.

Freedom is worth it. But don't be delusional

My goal starting out was to reach $10k MRR. By the looks of it, I’ll be there in a couple of months.

These days, I’m thinking about what I want to achieve in the next 10 years. I’m weighing up all the possibilities. I could launch a new product in a larger market or add more markets and pivot my current product a bit.

Still haven't decided, sorry.

Since I became an indie hacker, I’ve got more freedom in some things. And less freedom in other things.

I don't need to ask for permission when I want to fly to Italy for a week. I can play with my kids whenever I want.

But on that vacation, I did spend some time on my laptop. Don't be delusional, you won't have complete freedom from anything.

But you will able to choose who you want to serve and what problems to solve for them. And that's completely worth it.