I Burned $15,000 on Google AI (The Harsh Reality of Tech Startups) ft. Anas Shaikh | TBT Podcast

<p>Want to be a guest on Thought Behind Things? Apply here: https://muzamilhasan.com/podcast/applyJoin the Inner Circle, my weekly letter on AI, building, and being early to what&#39;s coming: https://muzamilhasan.com/inner-circleRead the thesis, the one idea behind everything I&#39;m building: https://muzamilhasan.com/thesisMy website: https://muzamilhasan.comAre soaring Meta WhatsApp costs and bloated cloud bills killing the Pakistani SaaS dream, or are founders just building their AI agents wrong? In this episode of the Thought Behind Things podcast, I sit down with Anas Sheikh, founder of conviyo, to discuss how he scaled a solo conversational AI startup to $10,000 MRR by fundamentally changing how businesses talk to their customers.While the tech world debates if &quot;SaaS is dead,&quot; Anas proves that SaaS margins are dead unless you solve real problems. We dive into the harsh reality of bootstrapping, how Convio accidentally burned $15,000 in Google Cloud credits (costing $5.80 per chat!), and how they engineered the cost down to just 7 cents. Anas also breaks down Meta&#39;s new predatory WhatsApp pricing and how his team built WhatsApp Flows to bypass the friction of web chats. If you want to see what it actually takes to build, pivot, and scale a lean AI startup in Pakistan, watch this until the end!<br></p><p><br></p>