Vaibhav Namburi

Founder @ SmartLead | 1x Exit | Always Hiring The Best

I like buying coffees, leading passionate people and building great products - FAST.

I'm recommended by C - Level Execs of Billion $ companies, I've been given prestigious awards and lost my hair in doing so.

I started Five2One in May 2017 with $500 and grew it to 7 figures and 10 team members in 11 months & 28 days (the day I closed the deal that got us the 7 Fig mark)

I started & sold Cenario.co 1.5 years post the pandemic outbreak.

I started SmartWriter in June 2021, grew it to 14,000 users including Facebook, Stripe & VaynerMedia.

I started Smartlead in June 2022, currently (Aug) at 6,000 accounts.

We've been recognised as one of the best in Australia and have built 62 production-grade applications for start ups and corporates.

I've worked with The UN, PwC, NewsCorp, Carsguide, AutoTrader, IAG, WilliamHill, Maoneng, SocietyOne, Lumachain, UNSW, Archistair and many other multi-(b)million dollar companies.

I have taught at 2 software bootcamps on how to build quality software products in various technologies and authored 3 courses on Udemy that gained nearly ~35,000 students online.

I've spoken internationally and nationally at over 46 events from meetups to paid conferences.

We've helped clients raise Millions in blockchain and worked with companies that are changing the world as we know it.

During this time I learnt how important having a strong team (that aligns with you) is, how important it is to believe in yourself and to enjoy what you're doing.

I still forget to put semi-colons and eat dessert before the main course.

I'm now building what I've wanted to from the beginning - our own products (smartwriter.ai, smartlead.ai)

You'll often find me on stage sharing advice and tips on bootstrapping a B2B business to talks on AI's position in the future, the best software development and product growth tactics.

I've been called a tech lead, CEO, CTO, coder, engineer, founder, leader, coffee buyer, non-sleeper and many other things -no one seems to realise i'm an excellent singer 😂

I've had the amazing opportunity to mentor for world-class accelerators like Startmate, Antler UK, Incubate, UNSW Founders and Australia's largest VC fund Blackbird as a Giant

I can be your "thought leader" too, just beware that I think a lot about potatoes

So, you've read this far ... coffee?

Member

RevGenius is a group of revenue-generating sales and marketing professionals brought together to learn, share, support and grow with each other.

I don't think people understand. Building a growing business was never about code.

It's about grit. Doing a meticulous grind, obsessively, while the world moves ahead of you, year after year.

Promising yourself "one more time". When there's no steam left, but somehow you need to build back up, again and again and again.

A conversation last week sparked a thought, and coincidentally as I was using Claude Cowork to do some analysis, I found this document I wrote to myself in 2019 (PS I carry this in my wallet, those who know, know).

Fun fact.

I missed EVERY. SINGLE. TIMELINE.

Not even by an inch, or a mile, but probably a 100 miles.

Then the second one I missed by 80 miles.

The third by 50 miles.

The fourth by 20 miles.

Failed 11 ecommerce brands.
Flowyse didn't make 0.00001% of that
Failed Forbes 30U30 4 times in a row, year after year.
Was renting in 2021.
Didn't own a Tesla.
Was definitely a multi-thousandaire 😅
Was barely paying myself a salary in 2021 forget the revenue
I was living in my sister's & brother in laws house in 2022.

Things don't always go according to your plan.

But that is no excuse to not stop.

Last week could have been bad. It's your responsibility to make the next week better.

PS yes I had all the way till 2023, but that was too embarrassing to share haha

This eventually led to Smartlead - whose numbers will be a guess till I die, those who know, know tho. 😉

So yes, atleast in my perspective (i may be wrong), business was NEVER about "coding" apps, respectfully that was the most predictable part.

5 Webinars averaging ~1000 registrations every 1.5 weeks.

Super proud of the Smartlead team for absolutely crushing the office hours we've been doing.

Had one of the most fun office hours with Kellen Casebeer and Ilija Stojkovski on everything LinkedIn and how to ACTUALLY sell

Not some BS advice on "do multi-channel"

The team's working on trends, social collaboration and strong relevance!

Drawing in that type of crowd week on week is a testament to the work the entire team is doing collectively on all fronts!

From collaborations, social assets, content and topics and event managament - lets go!

Sanjana Kotak Devesh Srivastava Priya Prasad Alka Gupta and everyone else🚀🚀🚀

You'll NEVER see me tag or talk bad about a business publically but sometimes things need to be called out.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) we spend multiple 7 figures a year on your infra.

You have ridiculously horrible support which we again pay for...

And to top it off your team takes very little accountability on issues caused by your team, which your team's admitted to as well.

Matt Garman you'd have gotten a DM from our head of eng with more detail.

Sincerely,
One of your largest APAC customers (per your accounts team)

I help empower young leaders through online tools & leadership training courses

Jonathan is the Chief Experiment Officer of AI Never Sleeps - an AI Automation Agency that helps Small Businesses automate their boring tasks.

Jonathan has a track record of more than 20 years of consulting and project delivery experience in Financial Services and Technology. He loves solving business problems to create value for organisations, has a history of end-to-end project delivery (idea inception to strategy development to execution and change) and loves working with people to ensure that outcomes are delivered.

He spent 8 years in a range of fintech startups to listed companies in various leadership roles from COO to CTO to CMO to CPO to CSO and Chief Growth Officer.

He 5.5 years with the Boston Consulting Group with their Sydney and KL offices where he worked on a diverse range of topics: from creating 5 year visions and strategies to M&A target selection and deal support to Inventory optimisation.

Prior to BCG, he worked for 5 years in Westpac (one of Australia's largest banks) in Group Strategy and Retail Banking. His last role was the Head of Strategy for Westpac Retail and Regional Banking where he was responsible for developing actionable initiatives to create value for the bank's branch network and led and assisted the delivery of both projects and operational issues.

Prior to joining Westpac, Jonathan worked in South East Asia for 4 years and was based in Singapore.  

Jonathan has a Bachelor of Business and Information Technology from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), as well as a Masters of Management and a Masters of Business Administration from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM).

Jonathan Chan

Transport for NSW just posted a photo of a man with his feet up on the seat across (a cardinal sin on Sydney trains).

Caption: “We don’t know what to say anymore”

1.1K likes and 1.2K comments in 3 hours.
From a government transport page.

NSW Police started this trend years ago. Now every department wants in.

And honestly, it’s a masterclass in one thing most brands get wrong:

People engage with people, not press releases.

Someone in that team was given permission to be funny. To be human. To not run every post through 14 layers of approval.

And it outperforms their “serious” content by 10x.

If a government department can figure this out, what’s your excuse?

I help non-technical people build apps and automations with AI | Ex-BCG & Westpac → Building in public | Building a portfolio of AI businesses

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A startup spent 3 years building a product.

Zero customers.

My ex-boss and mentor Jason Yetton told me about them over coffee this morning. 

3 years. No users. Still building.

I asked: "What have they been doing for 3 years?"

His answer: "Building it."

8 months ago I left a corporate job where "fast" meant 3 months in business case and 4 steering committees.

Now I ship something every week. Most of it ugly. All of it real (and solving problems).

One product Pear hit $1.5M in gross revenue in 3 weeks. Not because it was polished. Because it existed.

The difference between builders and planners isn't intelligence or resources.

It's the willingness to be seen before you're ready.

3 years with no customers isn't thoroughness.

It's fear dressed up as preparation.

What have you been "building" that you should have shipped by now?

I can't believe God used ChatGPT to write The Bible in 1500BC.

Just found em dashes all through Genesis.

That's the dead giveaway right there.

Next you'll tell me Moses had a Claude subscription.

Most entrepreneurs post about grinding until midnight.

My day ends at 9:30pm reading books to my boys.

4-5am - Up early, meditate with DailySelah.co , emails, deep work on my newsletter and businesses

6am - Breakfast and lunch prep with my wife

6:30am - Bible study together

7-8am - More focused building, whether it’s AI Never Sleeps content or Pear 

9-5pm - Consulting at an ASX-listed company right now, so it’s back-to-back meetings, workshops, and interviews

7pm - Dinner prep

8pm - Quality time with the boys

9:30pm - Asleep

No cold plunges. No “rise and grind” mantras. No 16-hour work days.

Just a rhythm that lets me build something meaningful without sacrificing the people who make it worth building.

The unsexy truth about entrepreneurship - it’s less about working more hours and more about protecting the right ones.

What’s one non-negotiable in your daily routine?

6 months ago I didn't know how to code a mobile app.

This morning I woke up to this notification from Apple.

Daily Selah just got approved on the App Store.

Let me say that again. A guy who couldn't write a single line of xcode 6 months ago just got an app approved by Apple.

It's one of the best feelings in the world. Genuinely like watching a baby being born. You've nurtured this thing, stressed over it, lost sleep thinking about it, and now it's out in the world.

This is part of my 12 apps in 12 months challenge.

Here's what I've learned so far:

You don't need a CS (computer science) degree to build apps. You don't need to spend 6 months learning before you start. You don't need anyone's permission.

You need an idea, a willingness to look stupid, and tools like Claude Code and Cursor that make the "impossible" very possible.

The hardest part was never the code. It was pressing "submit" and waiting for Apple to judge your baby.

Now comes the real challenge - marketing it.

Building the app was the easy part. Getting people to care about it? That's where the real work begins.

If you're sitting on an idea thinking "I'm not technical enough" - stop.

The gap between wanting to build and actually building isn't knowledge. It's permission to start before you're ready.

What app would you build if you knew you couldn't fail?

Indie Hackers just featured my story.

Not quite the AFR or Wall Street Journal.

But if you're building something online, Indie Hackers is more relevant than both.

It's the OG community for independent founders and bootstrapped builders.

Started in 2016, backed by Stripe, and home to thousands of entrepreneurs sharing real revenue numbers, real strategies, and real lessons from the trenches.

No fluff. No VC hype. Just founders being transparent about what's working and what's not.

The fact that they wanted to feature my journey from a $420K corporate salary to building AI Never Sleeps and Pear, it still feels surreal.

Eight months ago I was reviewing other people's work and sitting in steerco meetings.

Now I get to build, break things and share the journey in public.

If you want the full breakdown of what I've built, how the revenue stacks up, and the biggest lessons from going solo, the article covers all of it.

Link in comments.

$27,800.

That's what February revenue looked like.

9 months after leaving a $420K salary.

Here's every dollar:

Independent Consulting: $14,400
AI Never Sleeps (my brand): $12,400
SaaS Apps I built: ~$1,000
Pear: ($1.5m of GMV, but none of us are drawing a salary yet)

Breaking down AI Never Sleeps:

#1. Agency work - $5,000
#2. Zero to Builder course - $6,000
#3. Newsletter - $1,400

And the SaaS:

#1. Trvel (eSIM app) - $700
#2. BankStatements app - $246

Now here's the honest part.

52% still comes from consulting.
Time for money. The thing I was trying to leave.

My SaaS apps made $1,000. Total.
Not exactly "passive income" dreams.

But 3 months in last year, I had a $15K month.
That was the gut-punch.
I questioned everything.

Now? $27,800. Jan was about the same.
A brand doing $12.4K/month that didn't exist 9 months ago.
Two apps making real (if small) revenue.

The salary was a ceiling.
This is a foundation.

3 income streams instead of 1.
No boss. No cap on what's possible.

I'm not sharing this to flex.
$27.8K is less than I used to make.

I'm sharing because nobody shows the middle.

You see the "I quit" post.
You see the "I hit $1M" post.

Nobody shows month 9.

This is month 9.

Would you trade the ceiling for the foundation?

---

I share these numbers every month in my newsletter.
If you want the full breakdown: link in comments. Full article coming out later today.

Started a new (consulting) project this morning.

Opened Trello to set up a kanban board.

10 minutes later I was still navigating menus, popups, and upsell prompts.

So I built my own.

The crazy part?

It does more than Trello ever did for me (and is simpler).

Every card is a full project - tasks, meetings, file attachments, team members, activity logs, and links to GitHub, Figma, Notion, all in one place.

A global task dashboard pulls everything across projects into one view. Sort by priority, status, due date.

And there's an AI chat built in that doesn't just answer questions - it creates cards, assigns tasks, moves things around, and builds context over time from everything in your workspace.

Semantic search that finds anything across your meeting notes, transcripts, and project descriptions.

Trello became bloated.

This is what I needed instead.

Comment "Kanban" and I'll send you access to the waitlist.

$1.5M in GMV.

We built this. (Alexandre (Alex) Garcia & Abhinay Anand)

We've spent months obsessing over every detail of this platform.

Today, Pear is officially live for independent consultants.

No more long forms. No more customising your CV for every project. No more guessing your day rate.

Just:

-AI-powered profile setup
-Better rates than traditional channels
-Smarter matching by ex-consultants
-Structured progression pathways linked to real feedback
-Access to community and socials

Having spent years inside a top tier firm, I know what's broken in consulting. 

Consultants get treated like CVs, not craftspeople. Companies pay for brand tax, not quality.

We've already helped hundreds of clients access McKinsey, Bain, BCG quality consulting without the top-tier tax.

$1.5M in GMV and counting.

If you're an independent consultant, or thinking about becoming one, this is your moment.

New users - sign up at https://pear.it.com

Waitlisted users - check your inbox and complete your profile.

Let's go 🍐

$5,000 to $10,000 a month.

That's what it would cost to hire a team to do what I do.

Instead, I pay $120.

Five AI systems run my business while I sleep:

#1. Belle — calls my leads within 30 seconds of a form submission. Qualifies them. Logs everything. Cost: $30/month.

#2. A podcast engine — reads the news, picks the best stories, writes the script, generates audio, drafts show notes. Lands in my inbox at 6:15AM. Cost: $4.50/month.

#3. A daily briefing — curated fintech, AI, and automation news. Three-minute read. Replaced 45 minutes of doom scrolling. Cost: $15/month.

#4. Aria — 24/7 customer support for my eSIM business. Handles troubleshooting, order lookups, plan recommendations. Fixed a customer's issue at 3AM in Singapore. No human needed. Cost: $50/month.

#5. A LinkedIn DM system — built it in an afternoon when 400+ people commented "BUILD" and my inbox exploded. Cost: $20/month.

Total: $120/month.
No VAs. No employees. No team.

Seven months ago I was at Westpac managing a team of 20.

Now I'm a one-man shop that operates like a company.

The tools exist today. n8n. Claude/Claude Code. ElevenLabs. Standard APIs.

The only thing most people are missing is the reflex.

See a problem → build a system to fix it.

Full breakdown video dropping tomorrow.

What's the first thing you'd automate in your business?

---
♻️ Repost if you know someone running everything manually
🔔 Follow for more real AI automation breakdowns

80% of my time still goes to earning money as a consultant.

Only 20% goes to building businesses.

And people ask me all the time, "when are you going full-time on the business stuff?"

Here's the honest answer: not yet.

Because the math doesn't lie.

Right now, the 80% is close to guaranteed. Independent consulting pays the mortgage, covers school fees, and trips to Paris for shopping.

(Ok fine, it doesn't cover trips to Paris. Kidding. Mostly.)

The 20%? That's where the dream lives.

But here's how I think about it - maybe 1 in 5 things I build will actually take off.

One in five.

That means I need to keep swinging, keep testing, keep building, while something else covers the bills.

And the beautiful thing about the 80%? It's not a grind I hate.

Being an independent consultant in Sydney means I get to work with people at the top of their game. Help some of Australia's biggest companies become more efficient. Walk along the harbour between meetings. Choose when and where I work.

It's not a waiting room. It's fuel.

The 20% is where I experiment. Build mini-SaaS products. Grow the newsletter. Test ideas that might become something bigger.

Some will fail. Most will, honestly.

But one of them might change everything.

So if you're in the same spot - earning while building - don't feel guilty about the split.

The balance isn't the problem. Having no balance at all is.

Speaking of the 80%, if you're an ex-MBB or top-tier consultant looking for independent work, the Pear waitlist is now open. Abhinay Anand, Alexandre (Alex) Garcia and I are building a platform that connects companies with the best independent consultants.

Sign up at https://pear.it.com

I used to think you needed thousands of subscribers before a newsletter could make real money.

Then I hit $5,221 in ARR with just 19 paid subscribers.

Here’s what nobody tells you about building a newsletter:

You don’t need a massive audience. You need the right one.

418 subscribers isn’t a huge number. But 58 new ones joined in the last 30 days. And the revenue graph is pointing in one direction.

Straight up.

I left a $420K corporate salary to build this while raising a young family. Some days that feels insane. Most days it feels like the best decision I’ve ever made.

Every week I share practical AI tips, tricks and workflows, plus the real behind-the-scenes of quitting corporate, building a business from scratch, and balancing it all with kids and life.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, the link to subscribe to AI Never Sleeps is in the comments.

PowerPoint is dead.

I spent 5 years in management consulting (and I still consult).

Back then, if you showed up to a Case Team Meeting (CTM) without a polished PowerPoint, you weren't taken seriously.

Yesterday, I sat in a CTM.

The consultant presenting?

They weren't using PowerPoint. 
They weren't using Word. 
They weren't even using Excel.

They were presenting from VSCODE with the Claude Code extension running, multiple agent windows open side by side, each one working on a different part of the analysis.

I asked around the team. At least 2 others use Claude Code daily.

This is at a major consulting firm. 
Not a tech startup.

The "so what" is this:

The consultants who learn to work with AI agents won't just be faster at formatting slides and cleaning spreadsheets. 

They'll be the ones building the tools, the prototypes, the automated workflows that used to take an entire workstream to deliver.

The old consulting flex was a 200-page deck and a perfectly formatted Excel model.

The new one is a working prototype shipped in a week or a business, built by someone running 4 AI agents in parallel.

If you're in consulting and still think AI is just a productivity hack, you're already behind the people sitting next to you.

The tools have changed. The expectations are about to.

What's the biggest shift you've noticed in how your industry actually works day-to-day?

One of my students built an app for his father-in-law.

At the lunch table. In under an hour.

The crazy part?

His father-in-law is about to start a serious round of medical treatments. 

He'd been using printed Excel sheets to track his food diary and safe foods.

My student saw the paper printouts, and said "we can turn this into an app."

So they did. Right there, between courses.

No code. No developer. No weeks of planning.

Just a real problem and the confidence to solve it.

The father-in-law was blown away.

Then he called before he even got home.

"I've got two more app ideas."

By the end of the call, it was four.

This is what happens when you give someone permission to build. You don't just solve one problem. You unleash a mindset.

Six months ago, this student had never built anything (he had developers). Now he's turning lunch conversations into working software.

The barrier was never intelligence or creativity.

It was knowing where to start.

That's exactly what Zero to Builder is for.

Next cohort starts March 19. Join Zero to Builder.

Link here: https://lnkd.in/gbGKaXMG

App #2 is live in the App Store.

That’s 2 down, 10 to go in my 12 apps in 12 months challenge.

This one is called Daily Selah, and it’s personal.

Here’s the backstory.

Mindfulness meditation has been one of the most impactful habits in my life. It’s helped me manage the chaos of leaving a $420K salary, building multiple businesses, and raising a family.

But every meditation app I tried felt the same. Generic affirmations. Too much music. Too much eastern philosophy.

None of them spoke to my faith.

So I thought, what if I combined the two?

Biblical passages and breathing. That’s it.
No fluff. No background music. No 47-step onboarding flow.

Just scripture synced to every breath.

Open the app. Pick a passage. Breathe. Let the Word settle in.

I built this because I wanted it for myself. Turns out that’s the best filter for building anything - would I actually use this every day?

The answer was yes (37 day streak).

The focus for my 12 apps challenge is simple: Christian apps that solve a real pain point. Not another generic productivity tool. Apps built for a community I’m part of, solving problems I actually have.

Daily Selah is available in the App Store right now. (Link in the comments).

If you’re someone who meditates, prays, or just wants 3 minutes of stillness with God’s Word, give it a try.

And if you’re building your own apps, here’s the reminder: scratch your own itch first. The best products come from personal frustration.

2 down. 10 to go.

Just hit "Submit for Review" on a new app this Sunday morning (appropriate timing).

It's called DailySelah.

You breathe in. Scripture appears. You breathe out. The next phrase follows.

Bible verses synced to your breathing. No mysticism. No extra content. Just the Word of God.

Built it because nothing like it existed (at least in my research).

Also, because I'm challenging myself to launch 12 apps in 12 months.

From idea to App Store submission in two weeks. That's what building with AI looks like in 2026.

This is my 2nd mobile app, this time a paid one, I'll be chronicling the journey in my newsletter.

Now we wait for Apple.

Drop a comment if you'd try it - I'll let you know when it's live.

A tweet blew up about an AI Instagram character with 2.5 million followers and $300k profit in 90 days.

I rebuilt the entire pipeline from scratch in n8n. The crazy part? 

Each video costs less than $1.

You submit a topic into a form. 10 minutes later you have a finished talking-head reel, scripted, voiced, lip-synced, captioned, and ready to post.

No camera. No lighting. No filming. No editing.

8 automated steps: Claude writes the script. Gemini generates the image. ElevenLabs creates the voice. FAL AI does the lip-sync. Whisper transcribes for captions.

I built a character called Macca Douglas, a 62-year-old cattle farmer from Queensland who drops bush wisdom in short-form video. But you could make it anyone, a coach, an advisor, a brand mascot.

The applications go way beyond motivational content. Think training videos, product explainers, customer onboarding, internal comms.

Anywhere you'd normally need a camera setup, you now need a photo and an automation pipeline.

Full breakdown with the n8n workflow JSON is in this week's newsletter.

Link: https://lnkd.in/gPMjcWFN

$36.48 one week. $308.89 the next.

746% growth in 7 days. (Off a small base)

Not a funded startup. Not a viral product.

A travel eSIM business I built as a side project.

Trvel just hit its first $100+ day, peaking at $139.64.

Here’s what nobody tells you about building products:

The $0 days are brutal.

You check the dashboard every morning hoping for something, anything.

Then one random Tuesday, it moves.
And it moves fast.

The thing that changed wasn’t the product. It was patience.

Keep shipping. Keep showing up. The revenue catches up.

What side project are you quietly building right now?

Two things close tomorrow at midnight.

And I'm not reopening either one.

AI Never Sleeps paid newsletter - the doors are shutting to new subscribers. If you're not in, you're locked out until further notice.

Zero to Builder early bird - $600 for an 8-week course that teaches non-technical founders how to build real apps with AI. Full price kicks in after midnight.

Here's why I'm closing both:

The newsletter community is getting too big to give everyone proper attention. Smaller groups learn faster. That's not marketing talk, that's what 400+ subscribers have taught me.

And the Zero to Builder cohort starting March 19 is already filling. The early bird was always meant to reward people who move fast.

Eight months ago I left a $420K corporate salary to build in public.

Since then I've shipped a live iOS app, built an AI automation agency, grown a newsletter with 47% open rates, and helped complete beginners create their first apps.

Zero to Builder is everything I've learned, compressed into 8 weeks.

No fluff. No theory. You build real things, week by week, even if you've never written a line of code.

Tomorrow at midnight, both doors close.

If you've been on the fence, this is the nudge.

Link in comments - use code EARLYBIRD26 for $600 off Zero to Builders

I've run 20+ live webinars in the last 8 months on everything from building AI apps to automating your business.

The crazy part?

You could access all of them, plus 3 new ones every month, for $59.

That's about to end.

On February 15, I'm killing the $59/month subscription.

No more all-you-can-eat access to the full library and live sessions.

After that, you'll have two options:

Pay for individual workshops one at a time.

Or join the Zero2Builder course, which includes everything.

The free newsletter isn't going anywhere. I'll still be writing every week.

But the cheapest way to get access to the full community, the workshop library, and the live sessions? That disappears on the 15th.

If you've been thinking about it, now is the time.

Subscribe link in comments.

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The Battle

Vaibhav Namburi

Jonathan Chan

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