How a Single Backlink Issue Sparked François Mommens’ Triple SaaS Empire Explosion

Ever wondered what it really takes to turn a modest idea into not one, but three thriving SaaS businesses in the SEO world? François Mommens’ journey is anything but typical — starting from a failed venture to launching Linkody over a decade ago, and then evolving into IndexChecker and LinkStorm. What struck me most is the raw honesty in his story: a simple backlink tracker that grew solely on organic traffic, a daring price hike that didn’t flinch conversions, and the savvy pivot to diversify amid fierce competition. It’s a reminder that building SaaS success isn’t about overnight magic — it’s patience, grit, and a deep love for the craft. Curious how he juggles it all without losing his sanity? Dive into this enlightening conversation that strips away the hype and delivers real founder grit. LEARN MORE.

In this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast, François Mommens and I discuss what it looks like to build and grow three SaaS businesses in the SEO space over the course of more than a decade. This conversation follows a true founder journey, from an early failed business to the launch of Linkody 13 years ago, and then into the later creation of IndexChecker and LinkStorm.

What makes François’s story so compelling is its honesty and measured tone. He shares how Linkody started as a simple backlink-tracking solution and how 100% of his customers come through organic traffic. He also discusses how he once raised prices by 2x without hurting conversions, and how competition pushed him to branch into new products for the SEO market.

Watch the Full Episode

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How Linkody Grew From a Crude MVP Into a Business

After that first wave of attention, François rebuilt the product, added payments, and launched a better version while still keeping his job. Once he saw paid users coming in, he decided to go all in. The early product was far from polished, and he said so himself.

The fact that strangers were willing to pay for something he had built on evenings and weekends gave him the confidence to leap. However, growth didn’t explode overnight. He said revenue was low in the beginning, and progress was steady rather than dramatic, but his personal situation gave him enough breathing room to stick with it.

He kept his 9-to-5 while building the paid version.
The first plan cost about $4 per month.
He left his job only after receiving an early payment.
He had no mortgage, no kids at the time, and enough buffer to take a shot.

How Organic Search Became the Engine Behind Everything

One of the clearest themes of the interview was François’s commitment to SEO as a customer-acquisition channel. He said 100% of his customers have come from organic traffic.

That didn’t happen by chance. François began working on SEO early, while he was still building the product. He kept investing in the basics such as content, site structure, blog posts, internal links, and backlinks.

He also tested other channels, including Facebook ads and Google ads, but said the math didn’t work for him. Because organic search kept bringing customers, he stayed focused on the channel that was producing results.

François said he does not rely on grey- or black-hat tactics.
He focuses on homepage optimization, money keywords, internal links, full niche coverage, and backlinks.
He repeated that same SEO approach across all three SaaS businesses.
He sees authority from one site helping the others when they are well linked.

How Pricing Changed as the Product Improved

Pricing was another part of the story that felt refreshingly honest. François said he started dirt cheap, then raised prices slowly as the product got stronger.

At one point, he tried a much bigger jump. He doubled prices across all plans to see what would happen, and conversions barely moved.

That experiment changed his view of pricing. Today, Linkody’s first plan starts at $15 per month, and he said some customers pay several hundred dollars because they manage hundreds of websites and thousands of links.

His price test showed that demand was less fragile than he expected.
Linkody serves both smaller users and heavy agency-style accounts.
The product now covers backlink data, competitor backlink research, and 24/7 monitoring.
Customers can use it for link exchanges, link gap analysis, and competitor research.

How Competition Pushed Him to Build Beyond Linkody

Linkody reached a plateau around 2020, and since then, François said it has declined slightly. He traced that to a much tougher market, with roughly 40 to 50 competitors, including large names like Ahrefs and Semrush.

That shift mattered because Linkody had once benefited from a free tool that attracted strong traffic and conversions. Later, bigger brands copied similar features, making it harder to stand out and maintain that momentum.

Instead of trying to force one product to do everything, François chose to diversify. That decision led to his second and third SaaS businesses.

He said Linkody has a few hundred paid customers.
The market became crowded enough that he called it a “red blood ocean”.
Increased competition changed growth, but it did not end the business.
His response was to expand the product, not panic.

How IndexChecker Came Out of a Traffic Mismatch

IndexChecker was born from a feature inside Linkody. François had added a way to check whether the page containing a backlink was indexed by Google, since a backlink on a non-indexed page has far less value.

He later turned that feature into a free tool to attract more users to Linkody. The free checker drew a lot of traffic, but it didn’t convert because the audience was looking for a narrow solution rather than a backlink-monitoring platform.

Rather than throw that demand away, he built a standalone paid tool around it. That became IndexChecker, and he said it has been growing slowly but steadily as its own business.

The free version lets users check up to five pages.
Traffic was strong, but the audience was not closely matched with Linkody.
François used Linkody’s domain authority to help the new project get off the ground.
He still had to build content, links, and search visibility for the new tool.

How LinkStorm Opened a New Chapter

The third business, LinkStorm, came from another repeated SEO pain point: internal linking. François noticed how time-consuming it was to link new blog posts to older ones and to link older posts back to newer ones.

That problem felt much bigger than his own blog. He realized that every publisher handles internal linking, and that broken internal links accumulate over time as teams merge articles, delete pages, or change the site structure.

LinkStorm is his newest and most ambitious product, and unlike the first two, it has a co-founder. François said he brought in Shyam [Verma], a developer and entrepreneur he first hired, then later invited to become a partner after seeing how much ownership he took.

LinkStorm focuses on internal linking opportunities and broken internal link issues.
François said this is his most innovative product so far.
He still owns Linkody and IndexChecker alone, but LinkStorm is a shared build.

How the Daily Work Gets Harder After Launch

A useful part of the interview was François’s pushback on the fantasy that SaaS becomes easy once the product ships. In his view, the harder part often starts after launch.

He listed the moving parts founders have to manage:

API changes
Provider failures
Higher data costs
UI consistency
Feature trade-offs
Customer support
Server maintenance
Backups
Abuse prevention

For tools built on outside data sources, the operational load only grows over time. That matters even more when one founder is doing most of the work. François said solo founders face both decision fatigue and implementation fatigue, since they have to choose what to do and then do it themselves.

He mentioned brute force attacks and data abuse as recurring problems.
Provider changes can hit margins if a replacement service costs more.
A small product change can force a much bigger UI rethink.
Running three products multiplies those choices every day.

How He Runs Three SaaS Products Without Letting Work Take Over

François was open about the fact that managing three SaaS businesses isn’t easy. He relies on structure, prioritization, and tools like Workflowy to keep track of what matters across all three products.

His team is in India, about four hours ahead of him, so he begins the day by checking Slack and then handling customer support that came in overnight. After that, he picks the top task, which could be product work, testing, SEO, content, analysis, or planning.

What stands out most is that he made an early choice not to build his life around endless work hours. He said he chose normal working hours because the odds of a giant exit are low. He didn’t want to trade away his family and interests for a small shift in monthly revenue.

He has a two-year-old and wants to be present as his child grows.
He sets aside one full day on the weekend for family.
He keeps one day for rock climbing and lifts weights three times a week.
He also plays piano and joins a weekly jam.

How He Pushes Back on “Fake Truths” About Business

One of the most memorable parts of the interview was François’s phrase “fake truths”. He used it for ideas that get repeated so often in founder circles that people start treating them as facts.

The biggest one was the belief that hard work and clean execution always lead to success. François said luck still plays a major role, and timing matters far more than many founders want to admit.

He also questioned the rush to ship MVPs as fast as possible. In his view, rapid launches don’t tell you much if you lack distribution. This is because weak exposure creates weak signals, making it hard to tell the difference between a bad idea and a good one shown to the wrong crowd.

He pointed to false negatives as a major problem in early validation.
A strong positive signal can be meaningful, but silence is harder to read.
Distribution changes the value of feedback.
Shipping in a weekend does not make a product special by itself.

How He Sees SEO and AI Changing the Next Phase

Even with big changes in search, François said his core SEO approach has not changed much. He still sticks to the basics and believes those basics keep working.

Where he does see change is in how people discover brands. He expects AI-driven search to reduce blue-link traffic over time. Despite that, he also thinks the clicks that do come through citations may be more qualified because those users are deeper in the decision process.

He also uses AI heavily inside the business. François said he uses AI for nearly every task, including coding, customer support on two of his tools, and documentation work tied to feature releases and GitHub changes.

He believes backlink acquisition has become much harder than it used to be.
He thinks mentions on platforms like Reddit and forums matter more in an AI-shaped search world.
He said he no longer writes code by hand as he once did.
He is using AI to help update the help center content in response to product changes.

How This Founder Story Leaves a Lasting Impression

François Mommens’s story is a strong reminder that SaaS growth is often quieter and slower than the internet makes it seem. One product came from a personal pain point, another from a traffic mismatch, and a third from repeated friction within content operations.

There’s no single lesson here, and that’s part of why the episode works so well. It’s a story about patience, compound search traffic, pricing tests, product spin-offs, family priorities, and the long stretch between idea and a durable business.

Final Thoughts

This episode lands because it’s not built around hype. It’s a founder story in the clearest sense, with wins, stalls, experiments, failed side projects, and a steady habit of building for a market François knows well.

For anyone in the SEO space, there’s extra relevance here because these products sit close to daily work. And for anyone thinking about SaaS, the bigger takeaway is simple: start with a real problem, stay close to the channel that brings customers, and don’t confuse common founder sayings with facts.