Pat Walls came up with the idea for Starter Story during a period of transition and reflection. After moving to a new city and experiencing the failure of a previous startup, he found himself longing to start his own business, but without co-founders or a clear direction. Inspired by reading stories from Indie Hackers and creators like Pieter Levels, Pat began to see the potential in starting an "indie" business by himself.

My image

He was motivated by the idea of working for himself and the freedom it would bring. While exploring different ideas, he noticed a lack of resources that consolidated real stories from entrepreneurs. This observation led him to create Starter Story, a platform where founders could share their journeys, complete with financial details. Pat validated his idea by testing how people responded to early interviews and refined his approach to align with his growing understanding of what potential entrepreneurs found valuable.

A key challenge was maintaining focus and motivation, especially post-launch, as Pat faced personal hurdles and health issues in his family. However, he learned the importance of discipline and eventually established productive habits that fueled his progress. One pivotal lesson Pat took away was that initial setbacks or lack of resources shouldn't deter seriousness in pursuing a genuinely impactful idea.

Pat Walls built Starter Story by initially focusing on grassroots content creation and experimentation. He spent his early days developing lean processes, using tools like Ruby on Rails to automate and manage the blog’s backend. This allowed him to balance between the technical and content production sides effectively. During the initial phase, he worked tirelessly post-day-job hours to create engaging, text-based interviews, ensuring each story was detailed with revenue numbers and unique business insights. The first version of Starter Story came together rapidly, with the website launching just a few months after its conception.

Walls faced significant challenges, especially in marketing and achieving visibility amidst the digital noise. He conquered these hurdles by leveraging platforms like Reddit and Product Hunt for exposure and adopting a build-in-public transparency that attracted an engaged audience. Through persistent testing and SEO optimization, he scaled Starter Story's traffic to over 1.6 million visitors per month and reached a revenue of over $1 million annually by 2023. Despite early skepticism and operational difficulties, Walls utilized a lean SEO framework and continuous content iteration to refine and perfect Starter Story’s value proposition.

Reddit

Reddit played a crucial role in Starter Story's growth, especially in the early stages. Pat Walls effectively leveraged the platform by sharing content in relevant subreddits like r/Entrepreneur. For instance, he shared interviews formatted in a Reddit-friendly way, which meant cutting down on too much self-promotion and ensuring the content was valuable for the community. This strategy led to several features on the subreddit, drastically increasing traffic to the website.

Why it worked: Reddit is a community-driven platform where authentic content can flourish. By providing genuine, valuable content without heavily promoting his brand, Pat was able to earn the trust and engagement of Reddit users. This resulted in bursts of traffic and a growing email list, supplying Starter Story with a foundational audience base.

SEO

Initially, SEO was not the primary focus for Starter Story. However, Pat soon realized its potential and developed a 'Lean SEO' approach. This involved creating Minimum Viable Content (MVC) to test which topics would rank before investing heavily in content development. Once an article gained traction, it would be further optimized and expanded, leveraging keyword insights obtained post-publication.

Why it worked: This agile approach to SEO enabled Starter Story to quickly identify and capitalize on content opportunities without excessive upfront investment. It allowed Pat to effectively scale content creation efforts, contributing to a significant increase in organic traffic, reaching over 1.6 million monthly visitors.

Sponsorships & Ads

Sponsorships, particularly from Klaviyo, have been a successful revenue stream for Starter Story. Early success came when Klaviyo sponsored the website and newsletter for a sizable fee annually. This not only provided financial backing but validated the website's market position to other potential sponsors.

Why it worked: High-value sponsorships provide a stable revenue source and increase the brand's credibility. The consistent sponsorship from a notable company like Klaviyo signals confidence in the product to other potential advertisers and partners, creating a virtuous cycle of interest and revenue.

Building in Public

Pat Walls has been a pioneer in building Starter Story in public, sharing his successes, failures, and insights openly with his audience. This transparency has fostered a sense of community and accountability and drawn interest from other entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

Why it worked: Building in public cultivates a loyal following that feels personally invested in the journey. It also creates networking opportunities and attracts more founders who are eager to share their stories, further enriching the platform's content offering and broadening its appeal.

David Bressler, the founder of Excelformulabot.com, came up with the idea while on paternity leave. After discovering the power of AI and its potential in Excel formulas, he realized there was a need for an AI-based Excel formula generator. With 1 billion Excel users worldwide, Bressler saw a big enough market and quickly built a barebone application that went viral and gained traction through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Since the launch in September 2022, the website has generated over $14K in monthly recurring revenue.

Excelformulabot was developed quickly to capitalize on the growing AI industry, with a minimalistic MVP built using the no-code platform Bubble.io. The initial version had basic functionality: an input field for user instructions, a button for generating formulas, an output field displaying the results, and a copy button. This barebone MVP took just a few weeks to build, reflecting David's urgency to harness the first mover's advantage in the AI space. He faced challenges related to unexpected high API costs due to viral exposure and immediately had to create a business model to manage costs efficiently. Feedback from the Excel subreddit was crucial for iterating on the initial version, which transitioned into a subscription-based platform with paywalls and logins over several months, demonstrating the effectiveness of user feedback in refining product offerings.

Viral Marketing on Social Media

Excelformulabot experienced significant growth through viral marketing, particularly on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. The platform gained traction when users began sharing it as a "website that feels illegal to know." The ripple effect from influencers and micro-influencers posting about Excelformulabot amplified the brand's reach substantially. The virality continued across different social platforms, leading to widespread recognition and traffic.

Why it worked: Viral marketing tapped into the power of social proof. When influencers shared their experiences, their followers were intrigued and inclined to check out the service themselves. The portrayal of the site as a secretive hack added a compelling element that spurred curiosity and shareability.

Influencer Collaborations

Direct engagement with influencers has been a crucial part of Excelformulabot’s marketing strategy. David Bressler reached out to influencers whose audiences aligned with the product's use case in areas like finance, data, and accounting. Collaborations were either based on free promotions or paid partnerships, typically ranging from $200 to $3K per engagement.

Why it worked: Engaging influencers allowed Excelformulabot to tap into established communities that trusted their recommendations. This strategy effectively positioned the product in front of targeted users who found immediate value in the tool, especially amidst audiences who frequently use Excel.

Organic SEO and Branding

Excelformulabot benefitted from organic search traffic, largely driven by people searching for terms like "Excel formula bot." The brand's presence as both the category creator and the main solution provider resulted in high exposure on search engines. The site also garnered backlinks from reputable sites, enhancing its organic search appeal.

Why it worked: The brand's dominance in its niche and the creation of targeted content helped capture users actively searching for AI solutions for Excel. Having a name that directly matched user intent searches significantly enhanced discoverability and credibility.

Email Marketing and User Engagement

For customer retention and reengagement, Excelformulabot deployed email marketing strategies. Personalized messaging was developed based on user interactions, such as the type of formulas searched and user engagement levels. These tailored emails helped retain paying customers as well as encourage trial users to convert.

Why it worked: Personalized email campaigns aligned closely with user behavior, increasing the relevance and impact of each communication. This approach fostered a sense of connection and ensured users saw continued value in maintaining their subscriptions.

Stripo's founder, Dmytro Kudrenko, a seasoned programmer-turned-entrepreneur, identified a major gap in the email marketing industry when he realized HTML email design required coding skills that marketers usually lack. Launching in 2017, Stripo rapidly grew to one million users worldwide, generating approximately $400,000 in monthly recurring revenue by offering an intuitive, coding-free email template builder with seamless one-click exports to over 80 platforms.

Cody Candee, the CEO and co-founder of Bounce, came up with the idea for his business after experiencing the problem of carrying luggage while traveling and the inconvenience it caused. He wanted to create a solution that would allow people to store their belongings easily and eliminate the burden of carrying them around. After sitting on the idea for three years, Cody launched Bounce with his co-founder Aleks in 2017, and the business quickly gained traction, reaching over $100k of annualized revenue within the first 7 months.

Aleks and Cody Candee, the founders of Bounce, began the development process by creating a basic landing page for bag storage and delivery in New York City within just three hours. They used a simple landing page builder and integrated Adwords to attract their first customer almost immediately, illustrating a lean startup approach. Initially, they physically fulfilled requests by biking around New York, but soon realized that the logistics of coordinating exact times and places were impractical. To solve this, they shifted to a model where customers could drop off and pick up their items at designated "Bounce locations," which were local businesses with extra space. This iteration allowed them to simplify logistics greatly. They set up this new version quickly, building the core functionality in about three weeks. For their mobile applications, they utilized React Native, which enabled them to simultaneously launch on both iOS and Android platforms, streamlining their development process. This intense and rapid development approach, however, came with challenges as they struggled to balance speed with product optimization, especially since the mobile app development temporarily detracted from enhancing the existing web platform.

Google Search

Bounce attracted a significant number of customers through Google search right from the start. People frequently searched for "luggage storage," a popular keyword, which naturally aligned with Bounce's service offering. While they didn't focus heavily on SEO in the beginning, the organic demand for luggage storage solutions helped them grow.

Why it worked: The inherent demand for luggage storage meant that potential customers were already actively searching for Bounce's services. By having a web presence that matched these searches, they naturally captured attention and bookings without needing extensive SEO strategies.

Referrals

A substantial portion of Bounce's customer base came from referrals by satisfied users. This type of word-of-mouth promotion proved invaluable, bringing in new users who heard about the service from others who had positive experiences. Although they initially hadn't formalized a referral program, the natural referrals demonstrated the product's desirability.

Why it worked: Happy customers become ambassadors, sharing their experiences with friends and family. This organic referral process spoke to the trust and satisfaction users had in Bounce, making it one of the most effective ways to gain new customers without any additional marketing spend.

Advertising

Bounce utilized paid advertising, including Google Adwords, which allowed them to quickly gather traffic and customers even when they were just starting. This targeted approach helped them reach potential customers who were searching for similar services, providing a quick boost in visibility and engagement.

Why it worked: Paid advertising, particularly on platforms like Google, reaches users who are already searching for related services. By investing in Adwords, Bounce ensured they appeared in front of a relevant audience, leading to direct bookings and increased brand awareness.

Pat Walls came up with the idea for Starter Story during a period of transition and reflection. After moving to a new city and experiencing the failure of a previous startup, he found himself longing to start his own business, but without co-founders or a clear direction. Inspired by reading stories from Indie Hackers and creators like Pieter Levels, Pat began to see the potential in starting an "indie" business by himself.

My image

He was motivated by the idea of working for himself and the freedom it would bring. While exploring different ideas, he noticed a lack of resources that consolidated real stories from entrepreneurs. This observation led him to create Starter Story, a platform where founders could share their journeys, complete with financial details. Pat validated his idea by testing how people responded to early interviews and refined his approach to align with his growing understanding of what potential entrepreneurs found valuable.

A key challenge was maintaining focus and motivation, especially post-launch, as Pat faced personal hurdles and health issues in his family. However, he learned the importance of discipline and eventually established productive habits that fueled his progress. One pivotal lesson Pat took away was that initial setbacks or lack of resources shouldn't deter seriousness in pursuing a genuinely impactful idea.

Pat Walls built Starter Story by initially focusing on grassroots content creation and experimentation. He spent his early days developing lean processes, using tools like Ruby on Rails to automate and manage the blog’s backend. This allowed him to balance between the technical and content production sides effectively. During the initial phase, he worked tirelessly post-day-job hours to create engaging, text-based interviews, ensuring each story was detailed with revenue numbers and unique business insights. The first version of Starter Story came together rapidly, with the website launching just a few months after its conception.

Walls faced significant challenges, especially in marketing and achieving visibility amidst the digital noise. He conquered these hurdles by leveraging platforms like Reddit and Product Hunt for exposure and adopting a build-in-public transparency that attracted an engaged audience. Through persistent testing and SEO optimization, he scaled Starter Story's traffic to over 1.6 million visitors per month and reached a revenue of over $1 million annually by 2023. Despite early skepticism and operational difficulties, Walls utilized a lean SEO framework and continuous content iteration to refine and perfect Starter Story’s value proposition.

Reddit

Reddit played a crucial role in Starter Story's growth, especially in the early stages. Pat Walls effectively leveraged the platform by sharing content in relevant subreddits like r/Entrepreneur. For instance, he shared interviews formatted in a Reddit-friendly way, which meant cutting down on too much self-promotion and ensuring the content was valuable for the community. This strategy led to several features on the subreddit, drastically increasing traffic to the website.

Why it worked: Reddit is a community-driven platform where authentic content can flourish. By providing genuine, valuable content without heavily promoting his brand, Pat was able to earn the trust and engagement of Reddit users. This resulted in bursts of traffic and a growing email list, supplying Starter Story with a foundational audience base.

SEO

Initially, SEO was not the primary focus for Starter Story. However, Pat soon realized its potential and developed a 'Lean SEO' approach. This involved creating Minimum Viable Content (MVC) to test which topics would rank before investing heavily in content development. Once an article gained traction, it would be further optimized and expanded, leveraging keyword insights obtained post-publication.

Why it worked: This agile approach to SEO enabled Starter Story to quickly identify and capitalize on content opportunities without excessive upfront investment. It allowed Pat to effectively scale content creation efforts, contributing to a significant increase in organic traffic, reaching over 1.6 million monthly visitors.

Sponsorships & Ads

Sponsorships, particularly from Klaviyo, have been a successful revenue stream for Starter Story. Early success came when Klaviyo sponsored the website and newsletter for a sizable fee annually. This not only provided financial backing but validated the website's market position to other potential sponsors.

Why it worked: High-value sponsorships provide a stable revenue source and increase the brand's credibility. The consistent sponsorship from a notable company like Klaviyo signals confidence in the product to other potential advertisers and partners, creating a virtuous cycle of interest and revenue.

Building in Public

Pat Walls has been a pioneer in building Starter Story in public, sharing his successes, failures, and insights openly with his audience. This transparency has fostered a sense of community and accountability and drawn interest from other entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

Why it worked: Building in public cultivates a loyal following that feels personally invested in the journey. It also creates networking opportunities and attracts more founders who are eager to share their stories, further enriching the platform's content offering and broadening its appeal.

When Joe graduated from high school, he began working on a use case for GPT3, focusing on how AI integration into business models could be improved.

In 2022, he decided to use his pre-existing skills to build his own business.

In July of that year, he met with a publishing company that inspired him. He came up with an innovative idea of creating books using AI.

Joe realized that using AI for product creation gave him a competitive edge. It allowed him to respond to market trends more quickly than anyone else.

When he started, Joe knew nothing about books, so he researched how to build one. He knew he would leverage his AI skills to ensure the output was good enough.

Joe argues that his first book was probably the worst because he didn’t know how to structure it or what should be included.

He started purchasing competitors’ books and reading through them to know what he needed to write a good book.

Armed with this knowledge, he could write and publish books that people enjoyed reading.

Joe markets his books using Pinterest ADs and targets middle-aged moms. Besides, he posts updates on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram

Danny Postma's journey to creating HeadshotPro began with the launch of stable diffusion AI in September 2022, sparking his interest in image generation. Initially considering a stock photo venture, he faced quality issues and legal risks, leading him to pivot. Delving into AI that transforms faces, he quickly developed a similar product, capturing the potential of AI-generated images.

Encountering an initial burst of success with a related product, which saw impressive sales and shares on social media, Danny realized an opportunity for refinement. Collaborating with a developer friend, he explored AI solutions for creating professional headshots. Feedback and market reaction showed a substantial demand for this niche, prompting him to establish HeadshotPro as the focal point of his efforts. This experience underscored the value of flexibility and responsiveness to market signals in the ideation phase.

HeadshotPro's initial product was built by Danny Postma using a combination of machine learning and generative AI algorithms. Postma leveraged both open-source models like Stable Diffusion and custom-developed models to enhance the output quality beyond what many competitors offered. The development process was rapid, with the first iteration being launched within 30 hours, emphasizing agility over initial perfection. This quick launch, however, presented challenges, such as the servers going offline frequently initially and the need to consistently improve the AI's ability to generate realistic headshots. Over the next year, Postma worked extensively on deploying multiple models, including LLaVa for image quality checks and Codeformer to remove AI artifacts, which required continuous testing and iteration to refine and maintain the high standard of headshots that are comparable to real photographs.

SEO

HeadshotPro's growth heavily relied on strategic search engine optimization (SEO). The company achieved significant visibility by ranking in the top 10 for high-volume keywords such as "professional headshots," which have substantial monthly search volumes. They implemented a two-pronged SEO strategy: First, they utilized programmatic SEO by creating over 200 pages targeting long-tail keywords for various cities and counties, such as "professional headshots San Francisco." This method helped them capture location-based searches. Second, they wrote blog posts targeting popular keywords, boosting their site's visibility. The domain's strong ranking power, bolstered by numerous backlinks gained from launches on Product Hunt and social media engagement, further enhanced their search engine visibility.

Why it worked: By focusing on keywords directly linked to their service, HeadshotPro found an effective and relatively fast way to reach potential customers who were already searching for headshot services. This approach provided a steady stream of organic traffic, increasing reach without constant marketing expenses.

Product and Social Media Launches

The initial launch of similar products, such as ProfilePicture.AI, greatly impacted HeadshotPro’s growth through platforms like Twitter. The launch was heavily focused on making the product highly shareable, capitalizing on social media's viral nature. Danny Postma, the founder, leveraged his existing followers and connections on social platforms, especially during launches. This method made HeadshotPro visible to a wider audience, quickly leading to substantial initial sales.

embed:tweet

Why it worked: The product's inherent shareability and the initial buzz effectively exploited social media channels. This immediate and broad exposure created by tapping into established audiences resulted in notable sales surges when the product was first introduced.

Programmatic Pages

In addition to SEO, HeadshotPro created multiple web pages to target niche, long-tail keywords. This involved generating pages specifically optimized for different geographic locations and specific headshot needs. The strategy leveraged the concept of catering content to unique searches that potential customers might be making, allowing HeadshotPro to dominate niche searches.

Why it worked: The creation of these tailored pages meant capturing traffic that might be overlooked by competitors focusing on broader keywords. This tactic not only held potential for attracting more targeted traffic but also ensured diverse entry points for organic search visitors, effectively broadening their visible footprint across many specific search terms.

Sahil loves building stuff. He really enjoyed the process of taking a problem coming up with a solution, and then shipping a prototype of that solution to see how good his concept was. Before finishing college he had already shipped a dozen products. Most of the time, they weren't that great.

But sometimes something works out really well, and then he has to decide if he actually wants to work on the idea some more. Very rarely, the answer is yes. That was the case with Gumroad. The question at its core was really compelling to him: How easy could one make it to sell something?

The first version was built in just one weekend back in April 2011. Sahil had learned Python while working at Pinterest and was able to hack together a basic CRUD application. The whole of Gumroad was a single main.py—one Python file. It was deployed on Google App Engine so he didn't need to know how to do anything related to ops.

Their main strategy in the early days: sending out a lot of emails. That's really it. They scoured the web for people who could benefit from a product like Gumroad, and then told them about it. Literally thousands of times. "That's the only way, really, when you're young and no one cares or knows who you are, to get folks to use your product."

"Over time, they needed to do that less and less. But until you have a lot of customers or some other force that can supply some momentum, there's nothing better than knocking on doors. My sense is that people really just don't want to cold email people, and are looking for an out. If that's you: stop! It doesn't exist! Just hunker down and dedicate some time to finding people, reaching out to them personally via email, phone, whatever, and being okay with it sucking for a while."

Inspired by a tweet from Pieter Levels, who builds startups with just a laptop and no employees, Marc decided to start building his own products.

Over the course of two years, he successfully shipped 16 different products, ranging from AI tools to SaaS.

Throughout the building process, Marc noticed that he was doing the same things repeatedly, which was taking up a lot of his time.

He realized that creating a code boilerplate could help him build products much faster, and he was sure that others would find it useful as well.

In just one week, he built ShipFast and launched it on Product Hunt.

Marc spent a week gathering all the code he had used to build other products over the last 2 years and created a boilerplate called ShipFast.

He launched ShipFast on Product Hunt, Twitter, and Hacker News, and continued to add new features.

Within 48 hours, he had made $6,000.

Marc successfully launched ShipFast on various platforms, including Product Hunt, Twitter, and Hacker News.

The Product Hunt launch was the most fruitful of the three platforms, drawing in 3,000 visitors within 48 hours.

His Twitter audience also gave him an initial boost. Whenever he launched a product on Twitter, he:

• Makes a skit video, which helps his tweets go viral.
• Makes a catchy headline that challenges the status quo

embed:tweet

He also lists his products on Reddit, which helps drive initial customers.

AJ got the idea for Carrd out of a desire to branch out from his routine work of designing and coding website templates. This routine work had become too easy and almost monotonous, prompting him to seek a new challenge that would leverage his extensive skills in a fresh way.

He realized that while he was looking for something different to do, he still wanted to stay close to his core expertise in web design and development. He wanted to build for a simple idea that could serve a broad audience.

This drive to innovate within his domain, coupled with his recognition of users' desires for simplicity and efficiency in web building tools, spurred him to develop Carrd.

Here's how AJ likely approached building Carrd:

Static Site Generation: Carrd operates fundamentally as a static site generator, meaning that it creates websites by assembling static content files without server-side processing at the time of page loading.

Front-End Development: For the front-end, AJ used a mix of vanilla JavaScript and jQuery, which is indicative of his preference for a more hands-on approach to coding and a desire to avoid heavy frameworks that may introduce unnecessary complexity. Vanilla JavaScript and jQuery provide a solid foundation for creating interactive web elements and handling AJAX requests without the overhead of larger frameworks.

Responsive Design: Given AJ's history with HTML5 UP and responsive templates, he used responsive design principles to ensure Carrd sites would work across various devices and screen sizes. This would involve CSS media queries and potentially a framework like Bootstrap, or his own custom responsive design code.

Back-End and Infrastructure: he used a combination of server-side scripting (like Node.js, which complements his JavaScript expertise) and a lightweight database system (like MongoDB or even a relational database such as PostgreSQL or MySQL) for handling user accounts and site data.

AJ's approach to building Carrd underscores his ability to balance technical expertise with a practical, product-focused mindset, building iteratively, and responding to user feedback.

Twitter Launch

AJ began by announcing Carrd to his existing followers on Twitter, where he had built a substantial audience through his previous projects, HTML5 UP and Pixelarity. His followers were already familiar with his work and trusted his expertise in web design, making them a primed audience for Carrd.

This initial announcement helped generate immediate interest and sign-ups from his existing network, showcasing the importance of building and engaging with a dedicated follower base over time.

Product Hunt Launch

The real breakthrough in customer acquisition came from Carrd's launch on Product Hunt. Despite an early, unintended posting by a follower when Carrd was still in a "coming soon" state, AJ managed to officially launch it on the platform shortly after its public release.

This launch was meticulously planned to capitalize on Product Hunt's vast community of tech enthusiasts, early adopters, and influencers. The visibility from being featured on Product Hunt led to a significant surge in user sign-ups, site creations, and even Pro plan upgrades, far exceeding the traction generated from the Twitter announcement alone.

Even now, AJ’s recipe for awareness and distribution is very organic and very product-led. He hasn’t really done any marketing, relying instead on word of mouth and low-key viral elements within the experience like the branded URL and a “Made with Carrd” link that appears in each free website footer.

Mas, founder of Queue, built a ~1.6M ARR platform after solving his own pain point of syncing feedback on Overwatch videos, which quickly gained traction among esports coaches and video editors, evolving into a comprehensive productized service tool.