Vishnu Prasad S, founder of AskVerb

I'm Vishnu Prasad S, a solo founder based in Bangalore, India. I also run Auralion Labs, a software agency where we build AI products and software for clients, which is how I pay the bills while I build AskVerb.

Before AskVerb I built TradePilot, an AI agent for traders, and got it past $100 MRR in its first three months. Its agent had more than 170 tools, so I'd already learned the hard part: making an AI use real tools reliably. Around the same time I noticed big platforms like TradingView, Amazon and Cloudflare putting their own AI agents inside their products, so their users could get things done just by asking. I thought: why should only the giants have that? So I set out to build it for every SaaS.

“I thought: why should only the giants have that?”

AskVerb gives a SaaS product its own AI agent. A user types what they want in plain words, like "set up a weekly report for my two managers" or "move my team to the yearly plan", and the agent does it inside their account, as them, using only the actions the founder has allowed. Anything that changes data asks the user to confirm first, and every action is logged.

Every product I've worked on had the same quiet problem: the features were there, but users couldn't find their way to them. They'd open a settings page, give up, and email the founder, or just leave. The product was fine. The path through it was the problem.

The usual answers are onboarding tours, help docs and chatbots that explain where things are. But explaining is the slow way. If someone types "change my billing email", they don't want a link to an article about billing emails. They want it changed.

“But explaining is the slow way.”

In August I posted the idea on Reddit to see if it was just my problem. Founders started DMing me with their own versions of it: users asking for features that already exist, setups people abandon halfway, the same "how do I" emails every week. That was enough for me to start building it properly, and I've been on it every day since.

It's for SaaS founders whose products have real users and a workflow deep enough that people get stuck in it: multi-step setups, dense settings, features nobody finds.

What it does differently: it doesn't just answer, it finishes the task. And it does that in a way a founder can trust. The agent can only use the actions you allow, it asks the user before changing anything, and you can see every action it took. You also get a weekly summary of what your users asked it to do, which turns out to be a very honest map of where your product is confusing.

“It doesn't just answer, it finishes the task.”

Setup takes about 15 minutes with your coding AI agent, and you test it on localhost before it goes anywhere near real users.

Offer for 99helpers readers: a free 30-day pilot. I'll set AskVerb up in your product with you personally, no card needed. Over those 30 days we track what it actually does for your users: how many requests it handles, how many tasks it completes, and the time it saves. Then we agree on a price based on that value, not on a number I made up before you'd seen it work.

Honestly: early. I opened a beta in September. In the first 28 days I got 15 sign-ups, and one product went live with AskVerb inside it, handling real requests from its users every day.

Revenue is $0. I launched with pricing from day zero, three tiers starting at $39 a month, and when I asked that one live user to pay, they said no. They liked it; their budget had just gone into bigger servers. Fair enough.

Right now I'm in the middle of a public 30-day challenge to get 10 paying customers, posting every number on Reddit and X as I go. Team size: just me, plus a lot of help from AI coding tools.

Sign-ups in the first 28 days

15

Products live

1

Revenue

$0

Goal

10 paying customers

Building in public on Reddit, by a distance. My daily challenge posts have pulled in more useful advice than anything I could have bought. Founders told me my targeting was wrong, that I was testing too many message styles at once, and that I should track real conversations rather than messages sent. I changed my whole approach because of those comments.

“Building in public on Reddit, by a distance.”

Direct messages beat cold email for me by a wide margin. On X, about 1 in 9 DMs got a real reply. My cold emails got 4 replies out of about 60, and every one of them was a no.

Cold email replies

4 of ~60

X DMs that got a real reply

1 in 9

And the surprise: the AI agent on my own landing page. Visitors ask it questions they'd never email me. One visitor from Georgia chatted with it entirely in Georgian, went through my pricing line by line, and told it the product was too expensive. That single conversation changed my pricing.

Selling, much more than building. I can ship a feature in a day. Getting a stranger to trust a new product enough to put it in front of their own users is a completely different skill, and I'm learning it in public.

“Selling, much more than building.”

The hardest part has been finding the right founders. A lot of the founders who reply are still early: they're busy finding their own first users, so an agent for users they don't have yet isn't a priority, however much they like the idea. The founders who need AskVerb most already have real users and a product deep enough that people get stuck in it, and they're busier and harder to reach. Getting in front of them is the real work right now.

I also made a few expensive mistakes early on. I targeted founders by revenue instead of by whether they had active users, so a lot of my first outreach went to people who had nobody to give an agent to. And I sent half my cold emails to support@ addresses. Every reply from those said some version of "users can already do that themselves", which is true: support sees that the feature exists; only the founder sees the users who never find it.

The other challenge is making it effortless to start. Every step between "this looks interesting" and "it's live in my product" loses people, so I keep cutting steps: setup now runs with your coding AI agent in about 15 minutes, and for early users I do the setup myself.

Short term: 10 paying customers by the end of October. Not for the money, but because 10 businesses paying for it is the proof that this is a real product and not a nice demo.

Next: $10k MRR within three months. I've seen what it does inside a real product, so my focus is simple: get it live on more sites and keep making it better.

Longer term, I want AskVerb to be something every SaaS can switch on instead of building its own agent from scratch. Success for me is founders telling me their users stopped emailing them "how do I..." because they just asked the product and it happened.

The first sign-ups came from that August Reddit post and the founders who DMed me afterwards. My one live product came from that group too.

The first paying customer is the one I'm still chasing, and I've tried a lot: personalised X DMs to founders, cold emails, LinkedIn through an outreach tool, and daily Reddit recaps. What didn't work: asking people to pay before they'd seen it do anything, emailing shared support inboxes, and messaging founders who were still looking for their own first users.

What I'm doing now: a free 30-day pilot. I set AskVerb up for people myself, and we track what it does for their users: requests handled, tasks completed, time saved. At the end we look at those numbers together and agree on a price based on the value it delivered. It's not "free forever", and I say that up front, because I want founders who are open to paying once it proves itself.

Mostly my own time, almost no budget.

1. Reddit

   a daily post during the 30-day challenge, and replying to every comment. This is my best channel for both feedback and inbound interest.

2. X

   posting progress, but mainly replying under other founders' posts. Replies grow my audience faster than my own posts do.

3. Direct outreach

   personalised DMs and emails to founders whose products fit, roughly 20 a day.

4. LinkedIn

   an outreach tool sends a handful of connection requests a day.

5. Directories

   I've listed AskVerb on a few launch directories.

Reddit and DMs do the heavy lifting. Everything else is supporting.

Posting my challenge numbers honestly on Reddit, including the zeros. My Day 1 recap drew around 5,000 views and 15 detailed comments from founders, and that one thread reshaped my targeting, my messaging and how I measure progress. Several of those commenters became conversations of their own, and one person even reached out offering to find customers for me.

Comments from founders

15

Day 1 recap views

~5,000

People respond to "here's what failed and what I'm changing" far more than to anything polished.

“People respond to "here's what failed and what I'm changing" far more than to anything polished.”

It's early, so this is mostly about the first few. Two things so far: I set people up personally, and every week they get a summary of what their users asked the agent to do. That summary is the retention feature, because it shows the founder something they couldn't see before: the exact tasks their users struggle with, in their own words.

Both ways.

Building it: I write most of my code with Claude Code. As a solo founder that's the difference between shipping in a day and shipping in a month. I still review everything, especially anything that touches permissions.

In the product: AI is the product. AskVerb is an AI agent that understands what a user wants and carries it out inside the app.

Where it's going: I think within a few years users will expect to just ask a product for what they want, the same way they expect search today. The products that make that safe, where the user stays in control and every action is visible, are the ones people will trust with real work.

Start selling the week you start building, not the week you finish. I built for a long time before I tried to get anyone to pay, and the lessons I learned in my first week of real outreach would have changed what I built.

“Start selling the week you start building, not the week you finish.”

Talk to people who already have the problem, not people who might one day. And post your real numbers in public. It's uncomfortable, but the advice you get back is better than any course.

If I started again tomorrow, I'd find 20 people with the problem first, and build the smallest thing they'd actually use.

• r/SaaS, r/SideProject and r/microsaas for honest feedback (read the rules before you post a link)
• Indie Hackers and TrustMRR, for seeing real numbers from real founders
• X, to post content and grow connections with founders
• Claude Code, for building fast as a solo founder, and Codex for lead gen

If you run a SaaS and your users keep asking you how to do things your product already does, I'd genuinely love to hear what they ask. Message me on X or through askverb.com. I'll set up a free 30-day pilot with you myself, and we'll price it on what it actually does for your users.