Videos & episodes / Indie Hackers
Indie Hackers1h 9mPodcast

#176 – The Journey to Build a Large, Profitable Business with Aleem Mawani of Streak

Listen on Indie Hackers

Synopsis

Aleem Mawani of Streak, a CRM that lives inside Gmail, explains how he chose to grow Streak into a large profitable software business rather than chase VC scale, including pivoting away from a failing product, moving free users to paid, and building on a platform controlled by Google. The discussion covers when to persevere vs quit, choosing the right peer community, and picking a SaaS idea that scaled to millions in revenue.

Ideas in this episode

  • Chrome extension SaaS

    Aleem Mawani describes Streak as a CRM that lives inside Gmail, growing into a multi-million-dollar SaaS by building on top of Google's platform distribution.

  • Bootstrapped micro-SaaS portfolio

    Aleem Mawani of Streak explains how he chose to grow a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS inside Gmail into a large business rather than chase VC scale, including pivoting from a failing product.