Guidejar: Revenue, team and how it was built
Guidejar (Step-by-step guides and interactive walkthroughs from screen captures, with AI writing, voiceover and translation, India): US$85.1K verified revenue in 12 months, October 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 founder, run as a side project in June 2025, with freelance help; Latka counted 2 people on LinkedIn in October 2024. Launched October 2023; still running, revenue flat.Added 25 October 2026
- Outcome
- US$85.1K verified revenue in 12 months, October 2026Revenue flat
- Evidence
- A disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor
- Launch
- October 2023
- Status
- Still running
- Team
- 1 founder, run as a side project in June 2025, with freelance help; Latka counted 2 people on LinkedIn in October 2024
- Outside funding
- None reported
- Main channel
- Launch sites and deal sites
Guidejar makes SOPs, standard operating procedures, which are written instructions for how a task is done in a company, and interactive walkthroughs, guides that show one screen at a time with a marker on the exact place to click. A browser extension, a small program added to Chrome, or a desktop app records every click and screenshot while you do the task once. The result is a guide that can be shared, embedded or placed in a help center. On paid plans, Guidejar AI writes the step text, adds a narrated voice track, translates and answers readers' questions, paid for with AI credits, a monthly allowance of usage units that each AI action consumes.
Shri Vatz, a software developer in Chennai, built it alone. His first sold product, Cold DM, sent cold direct messages on Twitter in bulk; he sold it in 2022 for US$6,000. He started Guidejar in June 2023 and launched it in October 2023 without any AI features. A lifetime deal, one payment for permanent access, on the AppSumo marketplace brought 950 or more paying customers by March 2024. From April 2024 he sold subscriptions, and by June 2024 the main paid plan included AI paraphrase, translation and voiceover. TrustMRR, which reads revenue directly from the company's Stripe account, shows US$85,136 in the twelve months to 25 October 2026 and US$7,221 in the last 30 days.
The revenue figures are grade A: two services read them from Stripe on 25 October 2026 and agree within 2%. The earlier monthly figures are the founder's own statements in interviews, grade C. One question was checked separately: whether customers pay for the AI or only for screen capture and hosting. The pricing page puts AI credits in every paid plan, sells extra credits, and makes AI the main difference of the top plan, so AI is a large paid part of the product today. But the first thousand customers bought a version with no AI, so this page counts Guidejar as AI-leveraged, not AI-native.
How much revenue does Guidejar make?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue in the twelve months to 25 October 2026 | US$85,136 | A | TrustMRR, read from Stripe through an API key, last synced 25 October 2026. IndiePage, also connected to Stripe, shows US$84,872 for the last 365 days on the same date. | [1, 2] |
| Revenue in the last 30 days, 25 October 2026 | US$7,221 | A | TrustMRR. IndiePage shows US$7,290 on the same day. The two figures differ by about 1%. | [1, 2] |
| Run rate from the last 30 days | about US$86,652 a year | calc | Calculated: US$7,221 times 12. Close to the twelve-month total, which is the headline figure on this page. | [1] |
| Monthly recurring revenue and subscriptions, October 2026 | US$4,877 a month; 210 active subscriptions | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) counts subscription payments spread per month. It is lower than the 30-day revenue, so part of the money comes from yearly plans, top-ups or other payments counted when they are paid. | [1] |
| Total revenue since the start | US$150,965 | A | TrustMRR, Stripe. IndiePage shows US$153,266. Money from the AppSumo campaign was probably paid out by AppSumo, not through Stripe; this is not verified. | [1, 2] |
| Revenue per month, November 2025 to October 2026 | from US$5,299 (February 2026) to US$12,355 (January 2026) | A | TrustMRR monthly timeline. Eight of the twelve months are between US$5,400 and US$6,800. October 2026 was still running when read. | [1] |
| Last six months compared with the six months before | US$37,666 against US$47,470, about 21% lower | calc | Calculated from the TrustMRR six-month and twelve-month totals. The difference comes mostly from January and March 2026; May to October 2026 stayed between US$5,457 and US$7,762 a month. | [1] |
| MRR stated by the founder | about US$2,000 (October 2024), US$3,000 (January 2025), about US$4,000 with 170+ customers (June 2025) | C | Founder statements in a Microns interview, a Gaps report on his posts, and a Fake Mayo interview. They agree with the verified US$4,877 in October 2026. | [4, 5, 3] |
| Growth of MRR from June 2025 to October 2026 | about 22% | calc | Calculated: US$4,877 against the founder's US$4,000. The starting figure is grade C. | [3, 1] |
| AppSumo lifetime deal, December 2023 to March 2024 | 950+ paid customers in 4 months, with a 50-50 revenue split | C | Founder in the Fake Mayo interview. In October 2024 he told Microns 1,000+ lifetime-deal customers. | [3, 4] |
| AI in the first versions | none in October 2023 or February 2024; AI paraphrase, translation and voiceover by June 2024 | C | Wayback copies of the home page. The February 2024 copy already says 500+ paid customers with no AI feature listed. | [10, 11, 12] |
| AI in the paid plans, October 2026 | 5,000 to 100,000 AI credits a month by plan; 20,000 extra credits for US$4.99 | C | Pricing page. Nila rewriting, voiceover, translation, FAQs and imports from PDF or Word files are on Pro and above; Ask AI, voice cloning and automatic hiding of personal data are on Business. The free plan has no AI. | [6, 8] |
| Paid advertising | about US$500 a month on Google Ads, return on ad spend about 1.38 | C | Founder, June 2025. He spent US$100 a month on Apollo for cold email when revenue was US$80 a month, without results. | [3] |
| Acquisition offer turned down | US$75,000, when revenue was US$300 a month | C | Gaps report of January 2025 on the founder's posts. Date of the offer not stated. | [5] |
| Team | 1 founder; one freelance influencer-marketing manager in October 2024 | C | The founder called Guidejar a solo, very serious side project in June 2025. Latka counted 2 people who list Guidejar on LinkedIn in October 2024. No current headcount was found. | [3, 4, 16] |
| Outside funding | none reported | C | No source mentions an investment. TrustMRR does not list funding. | [1, 3] |
| Earlier product Cold DM, sold in 2022 | US$6,000, at about US$70 MRR | C | Founder in the Microns interview. A tool that found Twitter users and sent them direct messages in bulk; see the timeline. | [4] |
| Time from launch to the October 2026 figure | 36 months | calc | Calculated: October 2023 to October 2026. | [3, 1] |
How to read this table: a grade A value was read from the company's Stripe account by TrustMRR or by IndiePage. A grade B value is a platform's own published rule. A grade C value is a statement by the founder, by the company's own pages, or by a site that interviewed him or compiled his posts. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 0 | 0 | 5 guides, browser capture, share and embed; no AI |
| Pro | 16 | 19 | 1 user, unlimited guides, 5,000 AI credits a month |
| Plus | 25 | 1 user, desktop capture, MP4 export, help center on own domain, 10,000 AI credits a month | |
| Business | 75 | 5 users included, US$15 for each extra user; Ask AI, voice cloning, auto-redact; 100,000 AI credits a month | |
| Enterprise | custom | custom | from 10 users, single sign-on, custom AI credit allowance |
| AI credit top-up | 4.99 one-time | 20,000 extra AI credits |
Prices are per user (seat) per month in US dollars. The page states the yearly price only for Pro (US$16 instead of US$19); for the other plans it says that yearly billing costs about ten months of monthly billing. Readers of a guide never need a seat. Every paid plan has a 7-day free trial and a refund within the first 3 days. AI credits roll over and never expire; Business teams can also bring their own OpenAI, Anthropic or ElevenLabs API keys.
When did Guidejar launch, and how did it grow?
From a bulk-DM tool sold for US$6,000 to a guide maker with 210 active subscriptions, in about four years. Each entry carries its grade.
- July 2022CWhile resting from a knee injury, Shri Vatz, a software developer, finds the build-in-public community on Twitter and decides to build his own products. [4]
- 8 August 2022CHe launches Cold DM. The September 2022 version is an opt-in community whose page says it is not an auto-DM tool. [4, 14]
- Autumn 2022CCold DM is rebuilt as a Twitter outreach tool: it collects the followers of any account, or people who used a keyword, and sends them personalized DMs in bulk, up to 400 a day. Twitter's automation rules said: 'You may not send unsolicited Direct Messages in a bulk or automated manner.' [13, 15, 4]
- About October 2022CAt about US$70 MRR, two months after launch, he sells Cold DM for US$6,000 within four days of listing it on Microns. A second product, Support Guy, a website chatbot, also goes to the same buyer (date not stated). [4, 3]
- June 2023CHe starts building Guidejar, because making product demos for his earlier products was slow. [3, 4]
- October 2023CLaunch on X. The site sells a Chrome extension that records clicks, with a free plan and a Premium plan at US$12 a month (discounted from US$20). No AI features. [3, 10]
- November 2023CA Black Friday lifetime deal, promoted on Reddit and deal directories, brings 7 to 8 users in a week. [3]
- December 2023CAppSumo campaign starts with a 50-50 split. More than 100 paid users in the first days. [3]
- 7 February 2024CThe home page says 500+ paid customers and lists a Mac app; still no AI features. [11]
- March to April 2024CThe AppSumo campaign ends after 4 months and 950+ paid customers. Guidejar moves to subscriptions. [3, 4]
- 1 June 2024CThe Premium plan, US$10 per user a month billed yearly, now includes AI Paraphrase, AI Translate and AI Voiceover. [12]
- October 2024CAbout US$2,000 MRR, says the founder. He has hired a freelancer as influencer-marketing manager. [4]
- January 2025CUS$3,000 MRR and a goal of US$10,000, reports Gaps from his posts. [5]
- 15 June 2025CAbout US$4,000 MRR with 170+ customers. He still runs it alone as a side project and spends about US$500 a month on Google Ads. [3]
- January 2026ABest month in the verified record: US$12,355. [1]
- 25 October 2026AUS$85,136 in twelve months, US$7,221 in 30 days, MRR US$4,877, 210 active subscriptions, read from Stripe. The product now has an AI writer, AI credits and a connector for Claude and ChatGPT. [1, 2, 8]
Why did Guidejar work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
A lifetime deal for the first thousand users
Guidejar had almost no users a month after launch. A lifetime deal on AppSumo, with half of each sale going to AppSumo, gave it more than 950 paying customers in four months. The founder says much of the later word of mouth came from these AppSumo customers, and that getting customers mattered more than revenue at that stage.
The free plan advertises the product
Guides made on the free plan carry a Powered by Guidejar link wherever they are shared or embedded. The founder names this, word of mouth from AppSumo buyers and his own Reddit comments as his main sources of users; paid ads came later and returned about 1.38 times their cost, he said in June 2025.
AI as a metered layer on top of capture
The recorder that turns clicks into steps is not AI. On the paid plans, AI writes the step text, a title and FAQs, narrates the guide, translates it and answers readers' questions. Each AI action uses credits, each seat brings a monthly allowance, and extra credits are sold. So the AI cost is paid by the customers who use it, and the free plan carries no AI cost.
One person runs it on rented services
The security page lists the parts: Google Cloud with Firebase for the database, login and media processing, Vercel for the web app, Cloudflare for file storage, AWS for video export, OpenAI for text and ElevenLabs for voice. None of these needs an employee to operate.
How it was built
These details come from the company's security and privacy pages and from the founder's interviews. They are grade C. [9, 3, 7, 8, 19]
- Capture: a Chrome extension and desktop apps for Mac and Windows record each click and take a screenshot; no screen video is needed.
- Back end: Google Cloud Platform, with Firestore as the database, Firebase Authentication for login and Cloud Run for backend functions and media processing.
- Front end on Vercel; uploaded screenshots, recordings and audio on Cloudflare R2 and the Cloudflare network; video export rendered on Amazon Web Services.
- AI: OpenAI for guide rewriting and video-to-guide, requests routed through the Vercel AI Gateway; ElevenLabs for voice. The privacy notice also names Google Cloud AI as a provider.
- Search by Algolia, analytics by Tinybird, PostHog and Google Analytics, errors by Sentry, support chat by Crisp, email by Autosend, referral tracking by Dub.
- Payments through Stripe-hosted checkout. A connector based on the Model Context Protocol lets Claude, ChatGPT or Grok create and search guides.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before Guidejar, and why did they fail?
Four companies in the Loot Drop database promised to turn knowledge into easy guides, narrated stories or shared screens, and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Qwiki
The promiseAutomatically generated, narrated multimedia presentations instead of plain search results.
Why it diedHigh costs and little user demand; it was bought by Yahoo and disappeared next to Google and mobile video.
Niles
The promiseA chatbot in Slack that answers staff questions from the company's collected knowledge.
Why it diedSlack's own features and cheaper competitors did the same job.
Omniref
The promiseA shared place to document and explain source code.
Why it diedNo community and no money; GitHub and Stack Overflow already held the users.
Screenhero
The promiseScreen sharing where several people control the same screen.
Why it diedSold to Slack, then overtaken by Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which built screen sharing in.
The failed startups come from Loot Drop, a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words. Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
Qwiki generated narrated presentations from 2010 and, according to the database, died of high costs and little demand. Niles answered staff questions from company knowledge in Slack from 2017 and lost to Slack's own features. Omniref and Screenhero needed users to move their work onto a new product, and larger platforms already had those users.
Guidejar's case is different in three ways. Writing, narration and translation are now rented as APIs from OpenAI and ElevenLabs, so one person can offer them and pass the cost to the customer as credits. The capture itself, clicks turned into screenshots and steps, is a narrow tool that fits into the help centers, wikis and chat assistants people already use, instead of asking them to move. And the first customers came from a marketplace, AppSumo, that brought buyers without a large audience or a sales team.
Can one person copy Guidejar now?
Yes, with a crowded market.
Nothing here needed capital or an audience: a capture tool, a lifetime deal on a marketplace for the first customers, then subscriptions with AI features charged by usage. The difficulty is competition. Guidejar's own site compares it with Scribe, Guidde, Tango and Supademo, and the founder says the hardest part was explaining in one sentence what the product does.
Where it is still open: Capture tools for a single profession or system (medical records software, accounting packages, factory machines), where generic guide makers do not know the vocabulary.
- 1Build a narrow tool that solves a task you had yourself, as the founder did with product demos.
- 2Use a lifetime deal on a marketplace such as AppSumo to get the first few hundred users, then switch to subscriptions.
- 3Put a link to your product on everything the free plan produces.
- 4Sell AI features in credits, so heavy users pay for their own model costs.
- 5Listen to what customers really use it for; here it was internal training, not product demos.
What could go wrong for Guidejar?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
The AI came after the customers
Guidejar launched in October 2023 without AI, and its February 2024 home page claimed 500+ paid customers with no AI feature listed. AI paraphrase, translation and voiceover appear by June 2024; AI writing, credits and top-ups came later. No source splits the revenue between people who pay for the AI and people who pay for unlimited guides, branding and the help center. A reader can judge from the pricing table which part they would pay for.
Uneven months and a lower last half year
The verified months range from US$5,299 to US$12,355. The last six months brought about 21% less than the six before, mostly because January and March 2026 were high. MRR rose from the founder's US$4,000 in June 2025 to US$4,877 in October 2026.
The founder's earlier product broke Twitter's rules
Cold DM, sold in 2022, collected Twitter users from follower lists, replies and keyword searches and sent them personalized DMs in bulk, up to 400 a day on the top plan. (A June 2023 copy, after the sale, tells users in its FAQ that Twitter allows bulk DMs.) Twitter's automation rules of September 2022 said the opposite: no unsolicited Direct Messages in a bulk or automated manner. The founder described it himself as a tool to 'DM them automatically'. Guidejar itself sells nothing of this kind; its pages show no such feature.
A crowded category
The company's own site compares Guidejar with Scribe, Guidde, Tango and Supademo. No source on this page shows that Guidejar's AI features are unique among them, so a reader should not assume they are a lasting difference.
One person, part time
In June 2025 the founder described Guidejar as a side project next to his job as a developer. The current headcount is not stated anywhere; a buyer or a larger customer would depend on one person.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A TrustMRR profile of Guidejar, read 25 October 2026Read the markdown profile in full, live; revenue synced 25 October 2026 from Stripe through an API key. Source for the 30-day, six-month, twelve-month and all-time revenue, the monthly timeline, MRR and subscriptions. The description and insights are founder-written, grade C.
- A IndiePage profile of Shri Vatz, read 25 October 2026Read in full, including the page's Stripe revenue data. Second payment-processor reading of the revenue; also lists Cold DM and Support Guy as acquired.
- C Fake Mayo, 15 June 2025: How Shri Vatz grew his side hustle Guidejar into a $4K MRR successRead in full. The story is told by the founder. Source for the launch dates, the AppSumo campaign, the marketing channels, the Google Ads figures, the MRR and the solo side-project status.
- C Microns, 23 October 2024: How Shri Sold His Micro-SaaS for $6K and Made an Extra $12K in Freelancing AfterRead in full. Founder interview on the marketplace where he sold Cold DM. Source for the Cold DM launch, what it did, the sale price, and Guidejar's MRR in October 2024.
- C Gaps Income Report, January 2025Read the section on Guidejar (item 34). A compilation of the founder's posts: US$3,000 MRR and the turned-down US$75,000 offer.
- C Guidejar pricing page, read 25 October 2026Read in full, including the feature comparison and the FAQ. Source for the prices, AI credits and top-ups.
- C Guidejar home page, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Source for how the product works and the Guidejar AI features; checked for the purpose gate.
- C Guidejar AI page, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Source for Nila, voiceover and voice cloning of the user's own voice, translation, credits and bring-your-own-key.
- C Guidejar security page with subprocessor list, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Source for the infrastructure, the AI providers and the support, analytics and payment services.
- C Guidejar home page, Wayback Machine copy of 12 October 2023Read in full. The launch-month product and prices, with no AI features.
- C Guidejar home page, Wayback Machine copy of 7 February 2024Read in full. 500+ paid customers claimed; no AI features listed.
- C Guidejar home page, Wayback Machine copy of 1 June 2024Read in full. First copy found with AI Paraphrase, AI Translate and AI Voiceover in the Premium plan.
- C Cold DM home page, Wayback Machine copy of 29 October 2022Read in full. The bulk Twitter DM campaigns, daily limits and contact lists from followers and keywords. Whether the founder or the buyer owned it on that day is not certain; the founder's own description in the Microns interview matches it.
- C Cold DM home page, Wayback Machine copy of 7 September 2022Read in full. The first, opt-in community version.
- B Twitter automation rules, Wayback Machine copy of 1 September 2022Read the sections on automated Direct Messages and automated following. The current version on help.x.com, read 25 October 2026, has the same rule.
- C Latka page on Guidejar's team, updated 10 August 2026Read in full. Used only for the LinkedIn headcount of October 2024; its revenue figure (US$1,000, source not recorded) is not used.
- C Guidejar media kit, read 25 October 2026Read in full. The company describes Guidejar as an AI-powered documentation tool.
- C Cold DM home page, Wayback Machine copy of 2 June 2023, after the saleRead in full. The buyer's version: the same daily DM limits, plus spintax and automatic follow and unfollow, and an FAQ that says Twitter allows bulk DMs. Used only for that FAQ, not as a description of the founder's product.
- C Guidejar privacy notice, read 25 October 2026Read the sections on payments, analytics and AI service providers. Source for Google Cloud AI as an AI provider.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.