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Most people talk about quitting their jobs to chase freedom. Orel Zilberman actually did it. He walked out of a cushy six-figure paycheck to spend 600 days getting punched in the face by reality… launching, failing, burning out, repeating. Then he finally cracked it.
The result is WriteStack: a tool that helps Substack writers stop ghosting their own growth. No more blank Notes. No more half-cooked Google Sheets to track engagement. Just AI-powered drafts, scheduling, and analytics, all packed into something simple enough for writers but sharp enough for builders.
This is exactly why I started the Spotlight series. To study what happens when someone throws themselves into the arena, gets wrecked, and still walks out holding a product that actually works.
Q: Who are you, and what are you building?
A: My name is Orel, and I’m a full-time solopreneur with a background in software development. In August ‘23 I walked away from the comfort of a steady paycheck to be my own boss and gain the freedom of choice. No team, no investors. Just me handling everything. After more than 600 days of dozens of failures, burnouts and thoughts of quitting, I finally realized what I was doing wrong. And so I built WriteStack, made it profitable and now it’s running on 1.6k MRR, and growing.
Substack Notes grow your audience, but staying consistent is tough.
WriteStack makes it effortless. It analyzes your writing, generates personalized Notes in seconds, and lets you schedule them weeks ahead and track their performance easily. No more blank pages or missed Notes. Just fast, authentic growth. Batch a week’s Notes in a few minutes.
Q: What sparked the idea?
A: It was after I had a chance to collaborate with a big creator, called Tibo. Tibo Lucas is the founder of TweetHunter and Taplio, and he was looking for a co-founder to collaborate on a new version of TweetHunter. I sent him a message as soon as I saw the message and long story short, he gave me a week's trial to see how we work together and what I manage to do. During this week, I learned a lot of new technologies that will be used in WriteStack.
After the week was over, Tibo had told me that he had decided to proceed with somebody else, and that we’ll stay in touch for future collabs. This was a blow to my self-confidence. But it sparked an idea. Why can’t I do this alone, but for Substack? There isn’t anything like that and it’s a much-needed product. That’s how WriteStack started.
Q: How do you explain this to different people?
A: For non-technical folks: WriteStack is your personal sidekick for Substack Notes. No more stressing about ideas or logging in every time you want to post. It helps you create great, personalized Notes in seconds and schedule them for the perfect time, based on your personalized engagement data, so you stay consistent, grow faster, and save hours. It also helps you analyze your Notes with an analytics dashboard. You don’t need to click each note separately and create a Google Sheet to follow the stats. It’s already available for you, in an easy view, on WriteStack.
For builders/engineers: WriteStack ingests your Notes and Posts to model your tone and topics, then uses AI prompts to generate personalized Notes that match your style. Through the Chrome extension, you can queue posts or set exact publish times, giving full control over scheduling. The same extension also fetches engagement data directly from Substack for a built-in analytics dashboard. Instead of clicking multiple times each Note to find its statistics, you get real-time insights in one clean view.
Q: What’s been your toughest moment so far?
A: I have hit so many walls in my journey. Basically, after every failed launch, I was questioning myself and what I am doing as a solopreneur. There wasn’t any one point at which I was having it really bad during my journey.
Some days, I couldn’t even look at my laptop. Others, I’d wonder if my decision to quit my 6-figure job was the right one. Most are burnouts, and the way I deal with those is by accepting the fact that I am not at the peak of my abilities and that I cannot do as much work as I usually do.
Then, usually, I cut myself some slack, work less and do other things. When that doesn’t work, I take morning walks to calm my mind and arrange my thoughts, which helps a lot. For the not-knowing-what-to-do walls, I educate myself. I read books, watch YouTube videos or just talk to a friend.
Q: What did you underestimate going in?
A: I discovered that the set of skills that I have is not nearly enough. I always thought that if I built something that’s worthwhile, people would come in droves and it would go viral. Just finding the right idea will fix everything and be profitable. And I tried it for over 600 days. Built dozens of products, published most of them and didn’t make a single dollar.
Now I realize that I made a big mistake that made me waste almost 2 years.
I didn’t spend more than 3 hours trying to market and show other people whatever I built. I just coded it, posted about it onLinkedIn/X/Substack/PH(sometimes) and hoped for the best. The thing is that nothing works in the beginning. You have to get feedback, iterate and pivot many times before you hit something that people are willing to pay for. And on the way, you also build a community and trust.
Q: What’s the proudest milestone so far?
A: The first payment I received. For 600 days, I struggled. Struggled to get anybody who finds enough value in my products to pay for them. Most of the people who tried to use my products left after the first try. I didn’t manage to move beyond the first stage of validating the idea and confirming that it’s useful.
And when Kacper Wojaczek became my first ever paying subscriber, I knew that I did something correctly. I finally built something useful enough to get paid for it.
Q: Any surprising use cases?
A: Honestly, the surprise is that people use it exactly how I designed it. No hacks or confusions, which to me means the product is simple and clear.
Q: What sets you apart in such a crowded space?
A: What sets me apart is building WriteStack from the ground up as a solopreneur and turning it into a profitable product in a space where most projects die before traction. My edge is lived experience: building, scaling, and growing a community around something that actually solves a problem for writers.
And the fact that I stick to it for a very long time is a huge trust boost. I saw and see many products for Substack, mainly schedulers, that pop out like mushrooms after the rain. Most creators just publish those and hope people will come. Then, a few days or weeks later, they drop it, give themselves a few excuses, and move on to their next idea. I don’t. I go all in on WriteStack.
Q: Where do you see this in 3–5 years?
A: In the future, I see WriteStack as the go-to growth engine for Substack writers. Thousands of creators will rely on it to create, schedule, and track their Notes. It’ll be so embedded into the Substack ecosystem that a Substack buyout won’t surprise me. 🙂
Q: What’s the bigger mission here?
A: Level the playing field for writers. Most creators burn out because they’re forced to juggle writing with growth, analytics, and consistency.
WriteStack does the heavy lifting for them so they can focus on what’s important to them. If I can give a solo creator the same growth edge as a big creator with a team, then I’ve done my job.
Q: What does success mean to you personally?
A: Waking up knowing I’ve built something that genuinely changes the trajectory of a writer’s career. If thousands of creators can say “WriteStack is the reason I make a living writing,” that’s real success. Personally, it also means I proved you don’t need a big team or VC money. You can win as a solopreneur, on your own terms.
Q: What tools or resources have been indispensable?
A: Reading books is the #1 thing that I do. It has changed my life (literally). From a computer games addict to a solopreneur who built a $1.6K MRR (and growing) SaaS. There are periods in my life when I don’t read as much, and I feel it. Reading books keeps me motivated and helps me regain the power I need to push on.
Q: Who inspires you?
A: Alex Hormozi. The man has worked his way from the gym floor up to where he is now. And the way he shares his journey is so raw and authentic that it drives me into doing more and pushing myself further. And even now, he still shares almost every bit of his life. That’s admirable.
Q: What advice would you give someone starting out?
A: Marketing is not a nice-to-have. No matter what you do, if you want to grow, you’ll need to market your product or yourself. Nobody else will do it for you, and just showing up is not enough. I wasted 600 days coding in silence. Don’t do that. Talk to people from day one, or you’ll be building for no one.
Q: Where can people try your product, follow your work, or get in touch?
A: These days, I am available only on Substack. Or through support tickets on writestack.io 🙂
P.S. For the next 48 hours, you can try WriteStack for free and get 10% off any plan you chose.
👉 Try WriteStack for Free (use the code at the AI10 checkout)
This series isn’t here to hand out motivational posters. It’s here to study what happens when builders put themselves through the wringer and crawl out with something real.
Orel Zilberman is one of those builders. He didn’t just build WriteStack… he survived long enough to build it right. In a world where most projects die in the idea graveyard, WriteStack is proof that persistence, combined with determination, can eventually tip the scale.
That’s the real lesson here. You don’t need a team of ten, a pitch deck, or a VC sugar daddy. You need grit, patience, and a product that serves a real purpose. WriteStack is Orel’s version of that.
And if he’s right, it might be the one thing standing between writers and burnout.
We’re the team behind whatisthat.ai, the AI discovery platform (beta) built to cut through the noise. If you found this useful, pass it on. Share it, forward it, spread it. Every share helps us grow and puts real insights into more hands. 🙏
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