I make $40K/month with this one website

Angus Chang

• Background and Origin Story
  • Built Bank Statement Converter after quitting his job and deciding to create a product.
  • Wanted several years of personal bank data in Excel so he could understand how long his savings would last.
  • Discovered that his bank only provided PDF statements and that extracting transaction data was difficult.
  • Treated that frustration as evidence that the problem might be real.
  • Had worked as a developer across an EPS machine company, indie games, a virtual girlfriend app, an investment bank, and a crypto exchange.
• Pivotal Moments and Turning Points
  • Built and launched the first version with a friend in about a week.
  • Bought Google ads and immediately saw people uploading bank statements, which validated demand.
  • Stopped running ads after about six months because they were not profitable.
  • Noticed organic signups still arriving after cutting ads and shifted focus to improving the product.
  • Continued through two difficult years before the business grew enough to pay rent.

Products and Offerings

• Bank Statement Converter
  • Built a website that converts PDF bank statements into structured transaction data.
  • Focused the product on doing one thing.
  • Generalized the original local tool so it could work with more than his own bank’s statements.
  • Used customer complaints and analytics to decide which improvements mattered.

Metrics and Financials

• Growth Timeline
  • Launched Bank Statement Converter in 2021.
  • Reached $6,000 in monthly recurring revenue in 2022.
  • Reached $14,000 in monthly recurring revenue in 2023.
  • Reached $27,000 in monthly recurring revenue in 2024.
  • Reached $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue at the time of the interview.
• Users and Traffic
  • Served about 75,000 total users.
  • Had about 1,000 paying customers.
  • Received about 40,000 monthly visitors.
• Profitability
  • Ran the business entirely by himself after his cofounding friend left after a few weeks.
  • Handled development, customer support, sales, and marketing himself.
  • Kept about $39,000 of the $40,000 in monthly revenue as profit.

Strategy and Growth

• MVP and Validation
  • Built MVPs quickly and put them in front of real users.
  • Preferred building a one- or two-week MVP over spending too much time trying to validate beforehand.
  • Recommended solving problems the founder has personally experienced or problems friends and colleagues complain about.
  • Warned against showing early products only to friends and family because they are unlikely to give useful buying signals.
• Marketing Attempts
  • Used Google search ads to get initial users.
  • Found ads useful for traffic but not profitable because about $1,000 in spend produced about $300 in sales.
  • Tried blogging and building in public, but did not see many users from those channels.
  • Tried cold email for three months and got one sale while annoying many recipients.
• Customer-Led Improvement
  • Focused on product improvements after organic users kept arriving.
  • Fixed issues customers complained about.
  • Prioritized business features over refactoring, experimenting with databases, or polishing code that did not affect revenue.

Tech Stack and Infrastructure

• Development
  • Wrote the original local engine in Kotlin as a console application.
  • Built the frontend in Next.js with help from a friend.
  • Hosted the frontend on Netlify.
  • Hosted the backend on AWS EC2.
• Tools and Services
  • Used Brevo for transactional emails.
  • Used Stripe for payment processing.

Lessons and Advice

• Solopreneurship
  • Found the transition lonely because he went from office social life to working at home by himself.
  • Experienced people dismissing the business when revenue was low and praising it later when revenue grew.
  • Valued having his own schedule and being able to go after markets too small for venture-backed companies.
• Founder Advice
  • Recommended saving enough money to survive multiple years without meaningful income.
  • Said SaaS is an excellent business model, but early years may pay very little.
  • Encouraged builders to ignore social media and focus on the business, product, real users, and solving customer problems.
  • Discouraged creating social pages for the business if they do not help acquire customers.