when i started my build in public journey about a month ago, i never expected that it would turn out to be like this. with the MyDiary AI app I have crossed the $100 revenue, which is kinda cool honestly. and i do hope that it will keep growing and i am working on the updates and optimization tricks too.
i am learning so much stuff these days and i have now started reading a book called as The SaaS Playbook. i will share the lessons learned from this book in the upcoming newsletters.
but the most important thing i have learned so far is this.
your first app will be embarrassing as hell. but ship it anyway. but your second app will also fail with a disaster. your third will not be the so-called charm you expect to. your most of the apps will fail. so just build it fast. fail fast. and you might get lucky with one. and that will be worth all the failures you will see.
i talked about this for the first time in a session i gave recently called “shipping mobile products with ai”. it was a very casual 2-hour conversation with about 60 people on a google meet, and i talked about how to choose ideas, how to build it, whether to go with web or mobile and so on. here’s the video recording of the session if you are curious to watch. please note that this is in Urdu language.
honestly it was surprising to see that so many people have ideas but they are locked secretly in their laptop folders and github private repositories. but here’s something i read from Tibo other that your “unique idea” has been built 3 times already.
someone’s building it right now.
someone’s failed at it last year.
someone will launch it next month.
so, stop wasting time for perfecting your products and start shipping it and validating it in the wild instead of assuming that customers will love it.
so many people in last week has asked me about payment methods over and over again that it made it’s way to the newsletter this week. if you are building a web app, then you definitely need a stripe account to collect subscriptions and one-time payments. but stripe doesn’t support Pakistan, so there’s another option which I have heard works in Pakistan is called Polar. i haven’t personally tried this yet, so i can only say what i have heard from my friends who have used it and they say that it works in Pakistan.
if you want a stripe account in Pakistan, then you would have to register an LLC in US or a company in Dubai. getting LLC is a kind of easier option as you won’t have to travel to US in-person, but it becomes a bit more complicated. for the Dubai option, due to shadow bans on Pakistan visas, it’s kinda become hard sadly at this point.
the best and safest option for LLC is through Stripe Atlas service. but be careful of this that stripe is NOT a virtual bank or wallet. it will not store your money. stripe is a gateway. it will collect payments from your app users securely and route it to your connected bank account. so if you choose LLC in US, then you need a US bank account. people often connect payoneer’s virtual bank account but that’s a bit risky and often stripe blocks accounts and freezes funds your app earns.
if you go with the stripe atlas, then stripe is going to give you a virtual US account in the Mercury Bank. but last year in july 2024, Mercury Bank announced that they will not allow bank accounts of few countries which included Pakistan as well. so when you apply with stripe atlas, it will process your whole application and when the time comes for the mercury bank account, it will terminate the process and will refund you the money you paid. so it’s basically a wastage of time for developers in Pakistan. believe me i wasted 1 and half month on this.
if you search for LLC registration, you will find plenty of agents on google like northwest agent, firstbase, legalzoom and so on. but all of these will get you mercury bank account, thus you will get terminated at some point in these procedures. so Polar is the best option right now for web apps in Pakistan.
if you go with the mobile apps, which i am doing currently, then it’s a lot easier from payment wise but a bit harder from development wise due to app store processes etc. i talked about this in the above session in details, so you might check that too.
google play and apple app store don’t need any stripe or LLC etc. google play will ask you for your individual CNIC or passport and will verify your account with the home addresses, bills and so on. once your account is ready and you have published the apps, then you can create your payment profile. this will ask you for a bank account details with IBAN. you will share your local bank account (in my case it’s Standard Chartered PKR current account) and google will verify it by sending test amounts and once verified, you are done. now google play will send you payment every 15th of the month for the previous month, and it hits my account around 4-5 days later.
since this is a remittance and counts in software exports, so you are eligible for the 1% tax payment (if you are a filer). either bank will deduct the 1% a day after the payment or you will have to submit the amount at the time of filing and pay to FBR. apple’s process is almost similar to google play regarding payment.
about 2 weeks ago, i did a masterclass on how to land remote jobs which went on for 5 hours 32 minutes and over 40 people attended. i am getting messages on when it’s happening again. so next cohort and probably last cohort is scheduled for the 22nd and 23rd november 2025.
many people raised concern that it was at the night 10pm and got very long (5+ hour), so i have divided the session in two days this time and that too in the day timing. so it’s happening in the weekend at 3pm-6pm each day and i have limited seats only.
join the remote jobs landing masterclass
good news is that Cursor Pakistan has partnered with the shipkaro community and so if you use coupon code “CURSORPK”, you will get a 30% discount on the masterclass. a special thanks to Cursor Pakistan community and Yahya Qureshi and the team.
see you all amazing folks in the class then next week. :)
what you mean what’s next? 🤣 obviously see you in the next week’s newsletter where i will share more updates about shipkaro and RemoteKaro stuff. meanwhile do follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Threads wherever you are
and if you are thinking about any SaaS or app idea, hit that ship button so hard that it explodes
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