On this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast, Denis Yurchak and I discuss how he turned his Skype shutdown into Yadaphone, a fast-growing software business with over 20,000 users and $17,500 in monthly revenue in just over a year. We also talk about eSIMPal, his new travel eSIM venture, which already earns about $2,000 a month.
What sets this interview apart is the speed of execution. Denis saw a gap, built quickly, stayed close to user feedback, and found traction through smart marketing, simple pricing, and a lean solo-founder approach.
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How Denis laid the groundwork for Indie Products
Before Yadaphone, Denis had already been trying to create sticky products for years. He worked as a software engineer for 6 years. His degree was in international relations, not computer science, and he got into programming after realizing that his original field offered few job options.
This background is important because it shaped how he viewed software. He was less interested in being a small part of a large company and more interested in building something himself from the ground up.
- He taught himself programming during his summer vacation.
- Before Yadaphone made money, it had created about 10 products that didn’t go very far financially.
- Previous projects still taught him to send, send openly, and manage feedback.
This part of the interview is important because Yadaphone didn’t come out of nowhere. It came after years of failed attempts, small lessons and repeated repetitions.
How Denis turned a Skype shutdown into a product idea
The spark for Yadaphone came when Microsoft announced the retirement of Skype. Denis saw people’s complaints online, including Pieter Levels at X, and realized that there was still a large group of people who depended on Skype for a simple reason. They had to call banks, government offices, accountants and other traditional numbers while living or traveling abroad.
It’s easy to miss this point if you think of Skype as just an old chat tool. For many people, it was still a low-friction way to make international calls from a laptop without dealing with subscriptions or telecom headaches.
- Denis used Skype himself during the trip.
- He already has some experience with Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.
- Built the first version of Yadaphone in a weekend.
- His first posts on X gained almost no traction because he didn’t have an audience there yet.
The first traction came from Reddit, not X. People found the product, bought credits, and gave him the kind of validation every founder remembers: live Stripe notifications from strangers paying for something he just built.
How Early Valuation Changed the Direction of Business
One of the best parts of the interview was when Denis described what those early adopters did next. They didn’t just buy and disappear. Some of them sent suggestions, pointed out what was missing from the landing page, and treated the product as something they wanted to help improve.
This kind of response changed the energy of the business. Instead of polishing it personally, Denis had proof that people would trust a one-man company if the product solved a painful enough problem.
- Denis contacted buyers directly for feedback.
- In the first six months, he tried to contact everyone who received a loan.
- Pieter Levels later reposted Yadaphone, which gained nearly 200,000 impressions overnight.
This repost created a spike that Denise could see in real time. He watched traffic jump from dozens to hundreds at a time, prompting him to fix bugs, polish the pitch, and publish wherever he could.
How Yadaphone’s pricing reduces friction
Yadaphone’s pricing is one of the clearest examples in the episode of a founder focusing on what people already like about an old product they’ve lost. Instead of forcing customers to subscribe, Denis kept the credit-based model preferred by many ex-Skype users.
This decision was particularly smart because it lowered trust barriers. A customer does not need to commit to a monthly plan to try out a new company. They can just take out a small loan and see if it works.
- Individual users can increase credits and use them whenever they want.
- Loans do not expire.
- Yadaphone offers a no-questions-asked return policy.
- Enterprise accounts start at $100 and allow teams to share a central balance.
- The company does not charge per seat for team members.
It charges a subscription fee for one additional feature: phone number addition. This gives users a US or Canadian number for incoming calls, SMS and some OTP use cases. This adds another layer to the product without forcing the entire business into recurring pricing.
How Denis used lists to get high-intent traffic
The smartest growth tactic in the interview was Denise’s approach to old Skype lists. After Skype shut down, there were still countless blog posts on Google about cheap international calls, online calling tools, and Skype alternatives.
Denis saw it as an opening. Those articles needed to be updated, and if he could convince the site owners to replace Skype with Yadaphone, he could inherit highly targeted traffic from already ranked pages.
- He was still looking for articles about Skype.
- Found the author or content owner via email, LinkedIn or X.
- He sent a quick note indicating that Skype was closed.
- He explained why Yadaphone is a good replacement in one clear pitch.
It helped because it wasn’t pushy. The site owner had an old article, Denise had a relevant replacement, and both parties profited from updating the page. The results were quick. Denis said that one strong article placement has led to about 50 signups per day, which is huge for a solo founder.
- He saw direct traffic gains from updated listings.
- He also got an SEO boost from these mentions and backlinks.
- He said the hard part wasn’t the traffic; it was cold propaganda and persecution.
- Rejection rates were high, but a yes can be very valuable.
He also shared a clever second step in this funnel. After people saw Yadaphone listed, many started looking for reviews, so he made sure Trustpilot looked trustworthy. According to Denise, 10-15 strong reviews can go a long way in helping people decide whether or not to trust a smaller software company.
How Enterprise Customers Have Changed Their Revenue Mix
Yadaphone may have started as a product for travelers and solo users, but enterprise customers have become a major part of the business. According to Denis, the company currently has 30 corporate clients, and these accounts generate about 30% to 40% of monthly revenue.
It’s a meaningful split because it shows that a simple self-service tool can be turned into a business product without losing its original appeal. A small company can use the same system individually, just team access and shared credits.
- Some enterprise buyers came from Reddit.
- One early enterprise customer contacted us within the first week of launch.
- Denise said yes to the feature before it even existed.
- He then coded the organization logic overnight and demonstrated it the next morning.
This story tells a lot about how Denis works. He is willing to sell to demand first, then quickly build a feature if the demand makes sense and the customer value is there. Enterprise buyers are asking for more hand-holding. Denis said they want demos, live calls, and direct answers even though the FAQ already covers the basics.
Again, once these companies are on board, they tend to stay. Only one of Yadaphone’s 30 enterprise customers failed in a year, and Denis said that one was caused by unclear copy on the landing page, not a poor product.
How the misunderstanding led to eSIMPAL
The second business, eSIMPAL, came from an unexpected place. People kept landing on Yadaphone asking for a travel eSIM, partly because the site’s copy wasn’t clear enough and visitors thought it was part of the offer.
Instead of brushing it off, Denis accepted it as a request. It initially looked at partnering with existing eSIM providers, but the process was slow and expensive, so it chose to build its own product instead.
- eSIMPAL serves travelers who need mobile data abroad.
- Denis took it to a market he knew how to get.
- He used Yadaphone to seed the same audience overlap.
- He added a button promoting the new service on Yadaphone.
- Guests from Yadaphone get 10% discount.
This cross-selling made a lot of sense. Someone who needs a way to make international calls while traveling is often the type of customer who needs a travel eSIM.
The result is a second company that already makes about $2,000 a month. It’s still smaller than the Yadaphone, but it shows how a product can detect adjacent demand when you focus on user questions.
How Denis manages two companies as a single founder
Denis shared some of his best operating habits. His main idea was simple: protect your time and mental space with real discipline.
He chose to keep things lean because he didn’t want to be a people manager. This means that its products must be self-service, support must be under control, and repetitive tasks must be automated.
- It develops products that help users solve simple problems on their own.
- It uses banners, help content and product icons to reduce the support burden.
- It has a built-in dashboard where it supports responses for review of AI projects.
- Support usually takes less than 30 minutes a day, he said, and about an hour on bad days.
- Its rule is to automate a task that has to be done manually more than three times.
According to Denise, coders often prefer to build more features because that part feels comfortable, while distribution is more difficult. His daily routine reflects this lesson. First comes marketing, then support, then coding when needed.
Final Thoughts
This episode works so well because Denise didn’t just share her success story. He spent the weekend walking through the mechanics of why Yadaphone works, from an MVP to a credit-based pricing model, from replacing Skype in listings to building enterprise features in no time.
The numbers make the story compelling. In just over a year, he grew Yadaphone to over 20,000 users and $17,500 in monthly revenue, while also growing eSIMPAL to about $2,000 a month.
Several themes stayed with me after the interview:
- Look for markets where a big company is leaving frustrated users behind.
- Keep the buying process simple while trust is still being built.
- Contact directly when an old article or ranking page generates an opening.
- Treat user confusion and feature requests as signals, not noise.
- Prefer distribution to polishing.
Denis moves fast and goes deep, but there is substance behind every part of the story. For anyone building software, this episode provides concrete lessons on how to find demand, launch quickly, set prices simply, turn listings into growth, and use automation to keep a one-person business efficient.
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