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How Saba Built a $40M Business After YC Said No for the Third Time
Learn how Saba built Veed from a co-working desk, using SEO, hustle, and relentless execution.
Welcome to Money Making Story,
Today, we’re thrilled to share the story of Sabba, who battled through years of failure, broke days, and brute-force SEO to build a multimillion-dollar company.
In this discussion, we’ll discuss his:
Top Advice
From Nowhere to Now or Never
From Hackathons to a Vision
Living on £1 Sandwiches and Selling Crypto to Survive
Early Experiments, No Results
ChatGPT Cheat Sheet
The Turning Point: Charging Users
From 0 to Millions: SEO, Growth & Relentless Focus
The Endurance Phase of Startups
Every Point Could Have Been the End
Lessons for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Transform Your Life
Top Advice:
"Persistence isn’t about staying motivated—it’s about refusing to quit when you have every reason to."
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In the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a cracked version of Photoshop and dreams of doing something more, Saba Kenned began his journey. He wasn’t backed by Silicon Valley investors. No seed capital. No shiny credentials. Just an obsession with owning his time—and a belief that he could make something meaningful.
This is the story of how Saba turned years of rejection, financial struggle, and brute-force hustle into a $40 million video startup.
From Nowhere to Now or Never
Saba grew up in a quiet part of the UK. With few distractions, he dove deep into the internet, teaching himself Photoshop, exploring design, and eventually enrolling in university. Like many, he followed the script: get a degree, land a job.
But just one week into his first job, he knew it wasn’t for him.
“I didn’t want the treadmill life. I wanted to own my time.”
Then came a turning point—an article about Candy Crush making £1 million a day. It sparked an idea.
“If they could build that, why not me?”
That mindset led him to Tim, a co-founder he met through a global hackathon. They clicked instantly and began experimenting with startup ideas.
From Hackathons to a Vision
He met his co-founder, Tim, through a global hackathon. They grabbed coffee, built a few projects, and failed a bunch. But they kept going—not chasing unicorns, just trying to prove they could build something.
They shared one goal: to make something in the video space. Video editing was clunky and hard. Why not build a simple, browser-based tool to trim and edit clips—something like the early days of GIF editors?
That was the seed. They bought a domain, built a backend, and kept iterating. Not for glory—just to see if they could.
“If other people have done it, why can’t we?”
Living on £1 Sandwiches and Selling Crypto to Survive
They had no money, no funding, and no validation.
Saba would wake up at 6 a.m., bike to their co-working space (which was just one shared entry card between them), work until 8 p.m., hit the gym, grab late-night discounted food, and do it all again.
They even haggled SaaS vendors. “We can’t afford $100/month. Can you do $20?” Sometimes, it worked.
They were kicked out of a VC’s office they’d been squatting in. Their interns quit—both on the same day.
Funding attempts failed. One rejection after another.
Eventually, they sold their crypto savings just to keep the lights on.
It was two years of scraping by. Birthdays skipped. Trains too expensive. Nights spent writing code instead of seeing friends.
It could have ended a hundred times. But it didn’t.
Early Experiments, No Results
Saba and Tim spent years testing ideas. Most flopped. But each failure taught them a skill: how to buy domains, code backends, design landing pages, and launch MVPs.
Their passion gravitated toward video. Saba had always found video editing powerful, but complex. The question they asked:
“Can we build simple video editing tools directly in the browser?”
With that, their startup Veed was born—on a shoestring budget and unrelenting grind.
Eventually, they got jobs again—to pay rent, to eat. But they didn’t stop building.
With stable income, they put half their salaries into the company. They hired two engineers, and within 9 months, they had 30,000 monthly active users.
The users weren’t paying, but they were growing.
And for the first time, Saba thought: Maybe we’re onto something.
ChatGPT Cheat Sheet
The Turning Point: Charging Users
They applied to Y Combinator with high hopes.
30,000 users. Two years of brute force. No outside money.
They got the interview. They thought they nailed it.
But then the email came: “Unfortunately, you haven’t been selected...”
The YC rejection stung—but in that same rejection was a question:
Why haven’t you charged users yet?
They took that personally—in the best way. Over the weekend, they added a paywall. Monday morning, they emailed YC:
“Hey—we took your feedback. We now have 20 paid users.”
Another rejection followed.
But now something had changed.
Before YC, they had no revenue. After? They had momentum.
“There’s pre-Combinator, and there’s post-Combinator, And post-Combinator is the one that made money.”
From 0 to Millions: SEO, Growth & Relentless Focus
After returning to the UK, Saba focused on one thing: traffic and revenue must be higher than last week.
No ads. No PR budget. Just SEO.
Despite being dyslexic, he wrote landing pages—hundreds of them.
Search terms like “trim video” and “crop video”? He built a page for each.
Then he made a YouTube video for each one.
Brute force.
There was no silver bullet. Just work.
“I was learning a new job every four to six months,”
The Flywheel Finally Spins
From that point, growth was relentless.
$0 to $1M ARR in a year. Then $2M. Then $3M.
Six months later: $6M.
Eventually, they crossed $40M in revenue.
No funding. No Y Combinator. Just grit.
“It was a bit of a middle finger, To the investors, the rejections. A way of saying, ‘You missed this.’”
The Endurance Phase of Startups
The beginning of a startup is chaos. A mess of hacks, hoops, and near-death moments.
But scaling is a different beast. It’s discipline. Momentum. Direction.
Saba now spends his days managing people, aligning the mission, and keeping the machine running.
It’s no longer adrenaline. It’s routine. But it’s no less difficult.
“It’s an endurance sport now,”
He lives with paranoia—wondering if they’re doing the right things, making the right calls.
Saba admits that growing a company isn't a fairy tale—it’s a relentless marathon.
“Once it starts scaling, the game becomes keeping the beat. Leading people. Making the right decisions every day.”
Even now, paranoia follows him.
Will the product keep growing? Are we still solving real problems? Are we building the right team?
But he wouldn’t trade it.
“I’ve got the best job in the world. I love it. But it’s hard.”
Every Point Could Have Been the End
Veed could’ve failed at any moment:
When interns quit
When YC rejected them—three times
When money ran out
When doubt crept in
But it didn’t.
Because they kept going.
“Why are others so special? They’re not. We just had to outlast the pain.”
Lessons for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Start small.
Learn to launch things first—skills stack over time.
Brute force matters.
SEO pages, landing pages, demos—volume wins.
Charge early.
Don’t wait for “validation.” Start small, test pricing.
Rejection isn’t final.
Saba got rejected from YC 3x. Still built a $40M business.
Grit > Glamour.
No fancy offices, no funding. Just relentless effort.
Saba’s story isn’t one of breakthrough genius. It’s one of relentless resilience.
He didn’t start with capital. He didn’t get accepted into YC. He wasn’t handed anything.
But he showed up. Every day. For years.
He turned rejection into revenue. He turned “no” into “not yet.”
And eventually, he turned $0 into $40 million.
If you’ve been waiting for a sign, this is it.
Keep building. Your breakthrough could be one landing page away.
Transform Your Life
In 2021, this man quit Google after a fight about his AI chatbot...
And vanished overnight.
But 3 years later, Google hunted him down and paid $2.7 BILLION to get him back.
Here's what he knows that Google can't live without: 🧵
— Vinay (@vinayp10)
4:34 PM • Dec 9, 2024
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