10x startup thinking: how AI can supercharge your B2B SaaS with Daniel Sternlicht @Common Ninja

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by saas.group, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #33 of season 5, Anna Nadeina talks with Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO at Common Ninja, a no-code platform that enables users to easily add customizable widgets and apps to any website.

Daniel started building websites at 14 and worked in tech roles at companies like Microsoft and Outbrain. Frustrated by early front‑end constraints (no CSS3, painful HTML tables), he built a simple no‑code table editor that generated paste‑in code. It caught on quickly — users loved the ease of styling and embedding tables — and that early traction drove everything that followed.

How monetization began

• Daniel added a PayPal “donate” button — and earned $170 in 48 hours. That proved there was clear perceived value.
• He added a basic backend so users could save and revisit tables, then experimented with pricing: a one‑time $10 lifetime fee, then monthly subscriptions ($1 → $3), and multi‑year plans. Despite PayPal fees eating a chunk of small transactions, people kept paying.
• Early lifetime purchasers are still grandfathered in — a nod to customer loyalty.

Scaling the product and team

What began as a solo side project turned into Common Ninja after Daniel brought on a co‑founder and secured initial funding. The founders focused first on building a robust platform backbone: a shared infrastructure that made it fast to produce many widgets with consistent behaviour and integrations.

• Result: the team shipped from five widgets to over 200 within about 18 months, starting with a very small engineering team.
• Today, Common Ninja is a team of around 14 people and has expanded beyond UI components into marketing and engagement tools (brackets for tournaments, pricing tables, forms, social feeds, etc.).

Where AI fits — threat, tool, and product opportunity

AI is already changing how builders create front‑end components, but Daniel draws a useful distinction:

“AI can get you this far — for simple, static UI components it’s often enough. But for complex, integrated components that must wire to CRMs, APIs and dynamic data, non‑technical users still hit a wall.”

Key takeaways on AI’s impact:

• Some technical users cancel subscriptions because they can generate components themselves with models like ChatGPT or Claude — especially for simple widgets.
• The majority of Common Ninja customers, especially non‑technical marketers and agencies, still need ready‑to‑use, integrated widgets that handle dynamic data, display rules, CRM mapping and more.
• No single platform will uproot the 1 billion+ websites already built on WordPress, Elementor, Wix, Shopify, Webflow, etc. Businesses want to keep their site/platform and selectively add new capabilities.

Embeddible: Common Ninja’s AI play

In response, Common Ninja is building an AI‑first product called Embeddible — aimed primarily at marketers and agencies. The goal is to let non‑developers prompt and create functional embed experiences (chatbots, dynamic forms, interactive components) and drop them into any existing site or platform. Instead of moving an entire business to a new AI website builder, companies can keep their site and add modern AI‑driven experiences.

Using AI internally: hackathons and automation

Common Ninja has embedded AI into both product and ops through focused internal work:

• Early adoption: the company started using AI from the first ChatGPT releases and has a culture of automation and internal tooling.
• AI hackathon: teams of two ran a two‑day internal hackathon with clear goals — learn AI tools, build production‑grade internal/external features, and shift mindset toward 10x productivity.
• Outcomes included a product video producer (in development), an AI blog post creator, and most importantly an AI agent that triages and replies to support tickets, cutting human workload by ~30–40%.
• They also built an AI editor for widgets that lets users chat with a widget to change colours, content or behaviour — a feature that reached production and generated revenue.

Tools in the stack

Tools mentioned by Daniel include:

• ChatGPT (team subscription for the company)
• Claude
• Murf AI (text‑to‑speech)
• Other experiments such as AI influencer tech and additional generative tools

Product insights from customer behavior

Two AI releases gave Common Ninja unexpected business insights:

• The AI editor produced repeated user prompts that turned into feature requests and a prioritized product backlog.
• The Business AI Website Analyzer — a tool that reads a website (colors, fonts, content, intent) and recommends ten widget improvements — was intended as a lead generation tool but became a powerful sales tool for agencies. Agencies now use it to present tangible improvement suggestions to clients, accelerating widget adoption.

Team and culture: the company’s biggest win

Daniel describes the team and culture as Common Ninja’s greatest win. Highlights include:

• A team of makers and indie hackers who love building and shipping products.
• Zero employee churn over four years — remarkable retention for an early startup.
• A permissive policy on side projects: team members are encouraged to have weekend projects and founders actively support and promote those wins.
• A strong emphasis on work‑life balance: the founders model no‑weekend culture and encourage exercise and time off.

Biggest lessons and founder advice

What didn’t go perfectly? Daniel’s main regret is a delayed focus on business/marketing:

“Having two technical founders is a blessing for product, but I’d hire a business or marketing person earlier next time — it would have accelerated growth.”

Practical advice and founder hacks Daniel shared:

• Either adopt a business‑minded approach from day one, or bring a co‑founder with that focus.
• Prioritise time for physical activity to clear your mind — Daniel plays tennis and goes to the gym regularly.
• When prototyping in the AI era, don’t be afraid to build and ship quickly. With today’s speed of iteration, a “build it and they will come” approach can work alongside lean methods.