NetZay

Thiago Verne was working as a programmer at a SaaS company in educational marketing when he noticed a critical problem. While working at digital marketing agencies on the side, he saw clients repeatedly fail because their websites couldn't handle traffic spikes. "We saw that it's very difficult today to create a Scalable Web Solution for a cheap price," Thiago explained. The pattern was clear: clients would launch campaigns, drive traffic, and their websites would crash. He realized there was a fundamental gap in the market—no affordable solution existed that could scale a website to handle millions of concurrent users while maintaining security and performance.

Thiago started building NetZay as a side project while still employed, working on the MVP during evenings and afternoons. He bootstrapped the entire operation with zero external funding, leveraging his deep technical background in software development. NetZay became a SaaS CMS that publishes websites directly on a CDN (Content Delivery Network), distributing content across hundreds of nodes globally. This architecture provides superior security, faster load times, and automatic scalability—solving the exact problem he'd observed at the agencies.

Thiago's path to his first 30 customers was organic and relationship-driven. He sold directly to his existing network from previous jobs and the agencies where he'd been working part-time. "When I started this, I was in the company... selling for their customers in another time. It was a part-time job that I was starting the company," he explained. These early customers became more than just revenue—they were co-creators. Thiago built the MVP with direct input from these clients, iterating based on their real-world needs. This tight feedback loop helped shape a product that genuinely solved their scaling problems.

As of the interview, NetZay was serving 30-50 customers generating $5,000 MRR (approximately $60,000 ARR), with each customer paying roughly $100-150 per month. The team had grown to 5 people, all based in Brazil. Thiago reported zero churn so far, with customers renewing annual contracts and increasingly adding more services. While revenue was modest, the unit economics and retention suggested a sustainable business. At 28 years old and single, Thiago expressed some regret about sacrificing personal time but remained committed to scaling the company, particularly by establishing more partnerships and expanding beyond their home city to grow the customer base.