Jacky Chou runs an SEO agency, Indexsy, and a set of software products including LocalRank, Trackings.ai, IndexChex and RankTack. In an Indie Hackers interview he reports about $250K in a month, roughly $246.8K in March, and a trailing twelve month figure near $3M. He credits one channel for the software side, and it is the one most founders start after launch rather than before it.
The strategy
According to the interview he spent more than two years uploading videos daily before he shipped his first SaaS. The channel was the distribution, so the launch did not need one. When LocalRank went live it did, he says, $20K MRR right out of the gate, which he attributes entirely to the audience that already existed.
Two rules shape the content. The first is "document, don't perform". He shows the actual work, agency projects, tools, failures, rather than producing polished set pieces, on the basis that watching someone do the job converts better than watching someone talk about it. The second is expectation management: the first 50 videos are practice, and treating them as anything else is how people quit at video 12.
The targeting is closer to keyword research than to social media. He goes after videos aimed at a specific problem, for example "best local SEO tool", and argues those videos beat higher impression posts elsewhere despite modest view counts, because YouTube viewers arrive with purchase intent. The agency, meanwhile, funded the software development, so nothing needed outside money.
Why it works
YouTube is a search engine attached to a recommendation engine. A video answering a buying question keeps surfacing for years, the way a blog post does, but with the added trust of a face and a screen recording. Building it first also inverts the usual risk: instead of launching to silence and hunting for a channel, the founder launches into a room that is already full and already believes he knows the subject.
How to grow a SaaS on YouTube
Pick the ten questions your future buyers search before they buy anything. Record yourself doing the actual work behind each answer, on your real screen, and publish daily. Accept that the first 50 are practice. Only build the product once the videos are pulling people who want the tool you have not made yet.
Credit: Jacky Chou on Indie Hackers