On this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast, François Mommens and I discuss what it looks like building and growing three SaaS businesses in the SEO space over the course of over a decade. This conversation follows a true founder journey, from an initially unsuccessful business to the launch of Linkodi 13 years ago, and then later building IndexChecker and Linkstorm.
What makes François’s story so compelling is its honesty and measured tone. He explains how Linkodi started as a simple backlink-tracking solution and how 100% of their customers come through organic traffic. He also discusses how he once raised prices 2x without hurting conversions, and how competition prompted him to branch out into new products for the SEO market.
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How Linkodi grew from a raw MVP to a business
After the first wave of attention, François rebuilt the product, added payments, and launched an improved version while keeping his job. Once he saw the paid users coming in, he decided to get involved. The early products were far from polished, and they said so themselves.
The fact that strangers were willing to pay for something he created in the evenings and on weekends gave him the confidence to take the leap. However, development did not happen overnight. He said revenues were low in the beginning, and progress was steady rather than dramatic, but his personal situation gave him enough comfort to stick with it.
- He kept his time from 9 to 5 while creating the paid version.
- The first plan cost about $4 per month.
- He left the job only after getting early payment.
- At the time he had no mortgage, no kids, and enough buffer to take a shot.
How organic search became the engine behind everything
One of the most evident themes of the interview was François’ commitment to SEO as a customer-acquisition channel. He said that 100% of his customers come from organic traffic.
This did not happen by chance. François started working on SEO early on, while he was still building the product. They continued to invest in the basics like content, site structure, blog posts, internal links, and backlinks.
He also tested other channels, including Facebook ads and Google ads, but said the math didn’t work out for him. As organic search continued to bring customers, their focus remained on the channel that was driving results.
- François said he doesn’t rely on gray- or black-hat tactics.
- He focuses on homepage optimization, money keywords, internal links, full niche coverage and backlinks.
- He repeated the same SEO approach across all three SaaS businesses.
- He sees that when one site is well linked it gets the power to help other sites.
How pricing changed with product improvements
Pricing was another part of the story that felt refreshingly honest. Francois said they started cheap, then gradually raised prices as the product became stronger.
At one point he tried to take a huge jump. To see what would happen, they doubled the prices across all plans, and conversions barely increased.
That experiment changed his perspective on pricing. Today, Linkodi’s first plan starts at $15 per month, and he said some customers pay several hundred dollars as they manage hundreds of websites and thousands of links.
- Their price testing revealed that demand was less fragile than they expected.
- Linkodi serves both small users and massive agency-style accounts.
- The product now covers backlink data, competitor backlink research, and 24/7 monitoring.
- Customers can use it for link exchange, link gap analysis, and competitor research.
How competition pushed them to move on from Linkodi
Linkodi reached a plateau around 2020, and since then, François said there has been a slight decline. They discovered it in a very tough market, with about 40 to 50 competitors, including big names like Ahrefs and SEMrush.
That change matters because Linkodi once benefited from a free tool that attracted strong traffic and conversions. Later, bigger brands copied the same features, making it harder to stand out and maintain that momentum.
Rather than try to force one product to do everything, François opted to diversify. That decision fueled their second and third SaaS businesses.
- Linkodi has a few hundred paid subscribers, he said.
- The market became so crowded that they called it the “Red Blood Ocean.”
- Increasing competition changed growth, but it did not end the business.
- Their response was to expand the product, not to panic.
How IndexChecker came out of traffic mismatch
IndexChecker was born from a feature inside Linkody. François added a way to check whether a page with a backlink was indexed by Google, since a backlink on a non-indexed page has little value.
They later turned that feature into a free tool to attract more users to Linkodi. The free checker attracted a lot of traffic, but it did not convert because the audience was looking for a narrow solution rather than a backlink-monitoring platform.
Instead of dismissing that demand, they built a standalone payment tool around it. That became IndexChecker, and he said it is slowly but steadily growing his business.
- The free version lets users check up to five pages.
- Traffic was strong, but the audience did not closely match Linkodi.
- François used Linkodi’s domain authority to help get the new project off the ground.
- He still had to create content, links, and search visibility for the new tool.
How Linkstorm opened a new chapter
The third business, Linkstorm, came from another repeated SEO pain point: internal linking. François noticed how time-consuming it was to link new blog posts to old blog posts and link the old posts back to new ones.
That problem seemed bigger than his own blog. He realized that each publisher handles internal linking, and broken internal links accumulate over time as teams merge articles, delete pages, or change site structure.
Linkstorm is their newest and most ambitious product, and unlike the first two, it has a co-founder. François said he brought in a developer and entrepreneur named Shyam (Varma), whom he hired first, then later invited to become a partner after seeing how much ownership he took.
- Linkstorm focuses on internal linking opportunities and broken internal link issues.
- François said it is their most innovative product yet.
- He still owns Linkodi and IndexChecker alone, but Linkstorm is a shared creation.
How daily tasks become difficult after launch
A useful part of the interview was Francois’ emphasis on the idea that SaaS becomes easier once the product ships. In his view, the hard part often starts after launch.
He listed the moving parts that founders have to manage:
- API changes
- provider failures
- higher data costs
- ui stability
- Feature Trade-Off
- customer support
- server maintenance
- backup
- abuse prevention
For tools built on external data sources, the operational load only increases over time. This matters even more when one founder is doing the majority of the work. François said solo founders face both decision fatigue and implementation fatigue, because they have to choose what to do and then do it themselves.
- He mentioned brute force attacks and data misuse as recurring problems.
- Margins may be impacted by provider switching if the cost of replacement service is high.
- A small product change can force a huge UI rethink.
- Running three products multiplies those options every day.
How he runs three SaaS products without owning a job
Francois was open about the fact that managing three SaaS businesses is not easy. He relies on tools like structure, prioritization, and workflow to keep track of what matters across all three products.
His team is in India, about four hours ahead of him, so he starts the day by checking Slack and then handling customer support that came in overnight. After that, he chooses the top task, which could be product work, testing, SEO, content, analytics, or planning.
Most importantly, he made an early choice not to build his life around endless work hours. He said he chose normal working hours because there is less chance of a mass walkout. He did not want to trade his family and interests for a small change in monthly revenue.
- He has a two-year-old child and wants to be with him when his child grows up.
- He sets aside an entire day on weekends for his family.
- He sets aside a day for rock climbing and lifts weights three times a week.
- He also plays the piano and joins weekly jams.
How he pushes back against the “fake truth” about business
One of the most memorable parts of the interview was François’ phrase “fake truth”. He used it to refer to ideas that are repeated so often in founding circles that people come to accept them as fact.
The biggest belief was that hard work and clean execution always leads to success. François said luck still plays a major role, and timing matters more than many founders want to admit.
He also questioned the rush to ship the MVP as quickly as possible. In his view, rapid launches don’t tell you much if you lack distribution. This is because weak exposure produces a weak signal, making it difficult to tell the difference between a bad idea and a good idea shown to the wrong crowd.
- He pointed to false negatives as a major problem in initial verification.
- A strong positive signal can be meaningful, but silence is hard to read.
- Delivery changes the value of feedback.
- Shipping over the weekend does not in itself make a product special.
How he sees SEO and AI changing in the next phase
Even with the big changes in search, Francois said his core SEO approach hasn’t changed much. He still sticks to the fundamentals and believes those fundamentals will continue to work.
He sees changes in how people discover brands. They expect AI-powered search to reduce blue-link traffic over time. Despite this, he also believes that clicks coming through citations may be more qualified because they are more deeply interested in the user decision process.
He also makes heavy use of AI inside the business. Francois said he uses AI for almost every task, including coding, customer support on his two tools, and documentation work associated with feature releases and GitHub changes.
- He believes that backlink acquisition has become much more difficult than it used to be.
- He believes that mentions on platforms like Reddit and forums will matter more in an AI-shaped search world.
- He said he no longer writes code by hand like he used to.
- He’s using AI to help update Help Center content in response to product changes.
How this founding story left a lasting impression
François Momens’ story is a strong reminder that the growth of SaaS is often quieter and slower than that of the Internet. One product came from personal problems, another from traffic mismatches, and the third from recurring friction within content operations.
There aren’t any lessons here, and that’s why the episode works so well. It’s a story about patience, mixed search traffic, pricing testing, product spin-offs, family priorities and the long gap between an idea and a sustainable business.
final thoughts
The episode was not successful because it is not built around hype. This is a founder’s story in the clearest sense, filled with wins, stalls, experiments, failed side projects and a steady habit of building a market that François knows well.
For anyone in the SEO field, there is added relevance here as these products are closer to daily work. And for anyone thinking about SaaS, the big solution is simple: Start with a real problem, stay close to the channel that brings customers, and don’t confuse generic founder statements with facts.
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