The Resume Game Is Rigged. This Founder Built a Cheat Code.
In this interview, you'll discover how one founder turned a personal pain point into a growing SaaS business with 300+ paying users.
👋 Hello, Idris here! Welcome to this week's Indieniche newsletter. Each week, I feature tips and stories from successful self-made founders, share insights on building great products, talk about growing your business, and showcase essential tools to help you build and scale better.
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This week's Issue is sponsored by Max Musings
What happens when someone building a $100B company decides to share the journey week by week? Max Musings is a raw look inside the mind of a founder navigating scale, setbacks, and strategy in real time. These aren’t recycled startup tips, they’re hard earned insights as they happen.
In this interview, you’ll discover how Rohith went from an idea sparked by a friend’s pain to launching on Product Hunt, growing a team, and building a product that simplifies the modern job hunt.
Rohith shares:
His backstory and how he started.
How he got his first free and paid customers for his product.
What was effective in attracting customers to his product?
His competitive advantages, what gives him an edge, and insights that have proven beneficial to his operations.
Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on him.
Advice he'd offer to entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
Q. Hello! Who are you and what product are you working on currently, and who is your target audience (Age range)?
Hi, I’m Rohith, the co-founder of ResumeUp.AI, an AI-powered resume creation and optimization platform. We help job seekers ensure their resumes are tailored for ATS systems, increasing their chances of landing interviews. ResumeUp is designed to make the job search easier, smarter and effective.
Q. What is your backstory and how did you come up with your idea? What year did you start?
The idea for ResumeUp.AI came from a very personal experience. Despite being highly skilled, a close friend of mine kept getting rejected by top tech companies because his resume wasn't optimized for ATS. This got me thinking and researching about the process and came to know about ATS systems that most of the people are not aware of. That was the starting point for ResumeUp.
Q. Take us through the process of building the first version of your product MVP
I took a couple of months researching about the recruiting process and talked to numerous HR professionals. After that, I hired a front-end developer and started working on this project. In just four months, we had our first version live and began testing it within our internal circle.
Q. How many employees do you have working on your product? Do you have any co-founders?
We are a small, but passionate team. As of now, we have 5 full-time employees, including developers, and a marketing lead. My best friend, who was working with me part-time, has joined full-time as a Co-founder in April 2025
Q. How much monthly traffic do you receive?
We are currently receiving around 25,000 unique visitors each month. The majority of this traffic comes from SEO-optimized content and social media channels.
Q. How did you get your first customers for your product and how many free/paid customers do you have currently? (Feel free to list them out).
Getting our first customers wasn’t easy, but our Product Hunt launch was a game-changer. This gave enough push to attract new marketing channels and get decent traffic to the site. Right now, we have surpassed 300 paid subscribers.
Q. Since you launched your product, what has worked to attract customers?
We’ve implemented an AI-first approach to tailor resumes to job descriptions, coupled with a robust resume checker that mimics ATS systems. Our commitment to help users with a exceptional personalized support has definitely a factor.
Another thing worth mentioning is, our price point is almost 60% cheaper than the top 10 platforms in the niche.
Q. How is your product performing currently, and what are your plans for the future? Can you share your current metrics and revenue figures?
ResumeUp.AI is currently growing steadily, with a revenue touching $6,000. Our primary goal is to improve our offerings by introducing more features like AI-driven interview prep and job-matching capabilities.
Q. Since the inception of your business, have you gained any insights that have provided you with a competitive advantage and proven beneficial to your operations?
One of the key insights I’ve gained is the importance of understanding the needs of both job seekers and recruiters. By focusing on ATS optimization and user-driven features, we’ve managed to provide value in a way that directly addresses the pain points of our target audience.
Q. What tools have helped you grow your product?
Reddit, IndieHackers, PostHog, and Intercom.
Q. Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on you?
“The Art of Thinking Clearly” and “How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling” are my recommendations.
Q. What advice would you offer to entrepreneurs who are looking to start or have just begun their journey?
Focus on providing value first, and never underestimate the power of marketing.
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions! What is your contact info if people would like to inquire about your services? You can add all your links.
Awesome! Here are links to the website and my LinkedIn.
Let me know what you learned from this interview and have a productive week! 🙏
Indie Tip of the Week
No one really cares that your product is “AI-powered.” People pay for things that save them time, make them money, help them escape, or make them feel something. Focus on the outcome, not the tech. As Greg Isenberg puts it, build for what people crave, not what sounds impressive.
Indie Product of the Week
Max Musings: Max is building a $100B company and writing about it as it happens. The wins, the weird moments, the stuff most people don’t talk about. It’s one of those rare newsletters that feels like a conversation you weren’t supposed to overhear.
Check it out and share your thoughts in the comments!
Indie Trivia Of the Week
Bill Gates Co-founded Microsoft with which of his childhood friends?
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