Whatsable
Started acting at 12
Commercials for Coca-Cola, Vodafone and the Olympics funded his first startup before he ever wrote a line of code.
Founder story
Hi, I'm Axel. I build things people actually use on WhatsApp.
Self-taught no-code operator, ex-actor, and full-time digital nomad. I started Whatsable in 2023 because my own team kept losing important messages in WhatsApp — and I couldn't find a tool simple enough to fix it. So I built one.
Building in public
AM
Axel Meta
Founder · Whatsable
The build log
Four companies, one habit: fix the annoying thing yourself
Every product Axel has shipped started as a personal itch — a broken workflow, a missed message, a gap nobody else was closing.
2014
A scholarship, and a hunch about community
Axel earned a full scholarship to study social sciences in Amsterdam. Watching international students eat alone gave him the idea for something that would become his first company.
Amsterdam University College2015
Sharood — sharing meals, not just apps
Built Sharood, a neighborhood app where people cooked for each other using a virtual "cookies" currency instead of cash. Funded almost entirely with money from acting gigs he'd been booking since he was 12. Sharood won European honors at the UMC Global Mobile Challenge (4YFN, Mobile World Congress Barcelona) and later helped refugee communities in Amsterdam integrate through shared meals.
Founder & CEO2018
KaiOS Life
Moved to Paris to build digital-skills tools for people getting online for the first time on low-cost KaiOS devices — reaching over a million first-time smartphone users across emerging markets.
Paris2020
Subport
Taught himself no-code and built a subscription platform that plugged straight into Square POS for coffee shops, bakeries and med spas — processing tens of thousands of orders a month with no dev team. Sold it in 2024 after 80+ NDAs and three competing offers, so he could focus full-time on Whatsable.
Bootstrapped SaaS2023
Whatsable is born
Built an internal tool because his own team kept missing action items buried in WhatsApp. It grew into Whatsable — WhatsApp automation and AI agents wired into Zapier, Make and n8n, now used by businesses around the world.
TodayOff script
A few things that don't fit on a resume
His parents' story shaped his first product
Sharood — "share" + "food" — was inspired by his parents' own experience integrating into a new country over shared meals.
Builds from wherever he lands
A nomad by choice, Axel runs Whatsable with a fully distributed team spread across time zones.
Teaches what he builds
Publishes hands-on WhatsApp automation tutorials on YouTube as The WhatsAutomator, and still hosts live help calls for anyone stuck on a workflow.
Say hi
Follow along, or just reach out
Axel posts build updates on X, shares his career on LinkedIn, teaches WhatsApp automation for free on YouTube, and keeps a presence on Facebook.
Curious what I've built?
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