5 months ago, I left a PM role at a Fortune 50 to work full-time on my own startup.
The primary reason to leave was to have more ownership and control over the outcome. Hence, I decided to bootstrap the business with a lean team (2-3 people).
At the beginning of this year, I started searching for ideas. I decided to pursue a startup idea where I can become profitable within next 30 months. I have a runway for that period. So I decided to build something that is a wrapper to begin with and then go really deep vertically and add substantial value.
While doing idea research by just going through all different Ycombinator companies, I came to know about resend.com. I really liked their whole focus on developer-experience and positioning. So, I thought of other channels where similar model can be applied. Email is already captured by Resend. SMS was out of scope due to compliances. for RCS, we didnt get approval at that time from Google. So, I zeroed in on WhatsApp API. I figured out that onboarding to Meta API is very challenging with business verification, app setup etc and I can improve the DX significantly and later on add more features like consent management, embeddable components, AI Agents, Chatbots etc.
Thus, I decided to build SendZen.io, a developer-first WhatsApp API platform. Think of it as trying to do for WhatsApp what Resend did for email or Stripe did for payments—obsessing over the developer experience.
The Current State after 5 months of development and 50 days of marketing:
Reliability: We’re currently processing ~500k monthly messages with 100% uptime.
Traction: $500 MRR with 5+ paying customers (including a top utility company from Africa) and ~50 free users.
Traffic: 1000 visitors in last 30 days mostly via ChatGPT.
Tech: API is stable, embedded signup is live, and an n8n integration is days away.
The Problem: The technical side (handling Meta’s onboarding, business verification, rate limits) was the easy part. The challenge now is distribution strategy.
What I’ve learned so far:
Horizontal outreach failed: Cold emailing "Generic SaaS" (accounting, salons, etc.) resulted in zero signal.
SEO Mismatch: Our docs are attracting non-technical users via ChatGPT/Search. It’s creating awareness, but not for our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
My Hypothesis: I suspect our first real growth spurt won't come from "marketing harder," but from a non-linear channel:
Ecosystem-Led Growth: Being the default "WhatsApp node" in tools like n8n, Supabase, or Vercel.
Vertical SaaS Defaults: Moving from a "tool" to "infrastructure" that removes the WhatsApp roadmap for logistics or billing platforms.
Platform Partnerships: SMS providers who want to offer WhatsApp but don't want to build/maintain the Meta integration themselves.
I had massive amount of discussion with ChatGTP, Gemini, Claude on all of the distribution and growth strategies but I would love the HN community's perspective on:
If you were building "unsexy" infrastructure like this, where would you look for distribution first?
For those running products that send high-volume SMS or email, what is the "tipping point" that makes you move to a specialized API vs. a legacy provider?
What are the "blind spots" you see in a developer-first tool competing in a space dominated by enterprise-heavy players?
I’m not trying to build a "hype" company. I want to build something boring, reliable, and developer-loved. I’d love to hear from anyone who has fought with Meta’s APIs or scaled similar infra tools.
The one major customer I got from a utility company is sending almost 250k messages via us and are paying us 1/8th of what they would typically pay to Twilio and still we are very much profitable with that.
[I know someone would ask me how are you different than Twilio / Sinch and my answer is that we provide Embeddable components with far better pricing along with far better DX).
If you were a PM, you should be able to see what is wrong with this statement. You are trying to do for a specific product what your examples did for more generic needs. You are 100% dependent on the success of WhatsApp, which ultimately puts you in less control of the success of your product, not more. And that sounds like it is in direct conflict with the reason you left your cushy PM role.