Podbit · The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
At a 1998 investment conference, 99% of 400 professional analysts privately agreed the overpriced market would crash — guaranteeing a major bear market. Yet their employers were on stage telling clients everything was fine. This conflict of interest hasn't changed and never will.
Where this was said
At 22:36 · chapter starts 19:54
Wall Street has never told clients to exit the market — not in 1929, 1972, or 2000 — because it's career suicide [1] — Jeremy Grantham "At a 1998 investment conference, 99% of 400 professional analysts privately agreed the overpriced market would crash — guaranteeing a major…" 22:36 . In 1998, 99% of analysts privately agreed a crash was coming but their employers said the opposite. GMO lost half its business for being honest.
SiteGPT attracted over 1 million visitors and $500K in total revenue without spending a cent on paid marketing. The secret: engineering as marketing — building free tools that rank on Google.
Bhanu quit his first job after just 8 months, moved back to his parents' house to cut costs, and started building. One product sold for $250K; the next hit $10K MRR in its first month.
90% of SiteGPT's Google search traffic comes not from the main product but from ~50 free tools Bhanu built. Each tool targets a low-competition keyword and funnels users back to the paid product.
50,000 monthly visitors become 200 leads, 60 trials, and roughly 15–24 new customers per month at ~$100 average revenue each. Add a $1,700–$1,800 LTV and you have a very healthy SaaS.
Start with a blank Ahrefs search, layer in keyword filters (include term, KD < 10, volume > 1,000), list candidates in Notion, design a CTA linking to your main product, then score by volume, difficulty, build effort, and product relevance. That's the whole playbook.
Marketing feels painful for most builders. Engineering as marketing flips the script: instead of writing cold emails or blog posts, you build things — and those things rank on Google forever.
Don't spend months perfecting before launch. Ship the core feature, get real users, and let their feedback dictate the product roadmap. Premature polish is a trap.
SiteGPT launched and hit $10,000 MRR within its first month. That momentum was so overwhelming that Bhanu sold his existing SaaS, Feather, for $250,000 to free up all his time.
PropGPT launched with 20 downloads a day and strong influencer marketing but hit a ceiling at $1,000–$2,000 MRR. High download numbers masked a critical flaw: almost nobody stuck around after the free trial ended.
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