Here is a best example of how to build a successful business by leveraging keywords:

The name of the tool is stagetimer.io.

It is a simple tool that is used to show countdown timer to any one who is giving a presentation. Nothing fancy, no API, no AI,. just a boring timer application with a slightly different angle.

The keyword it is optimized for is '5 minute timer', '10 minute timer', '15 minute timer'... and so on.

These keywords have massive search volume of more than 100,000 searches per month, and KD of <20.

This is a proof that you don't have to run after a fancy AI tool to be successful, boring applications are still viable.

There are still many niches which escape our attention.

If this is interesting to you, I have curated many such keywords which have similar search volume and huge business potential. You can find them here

Hi there, I started my indie dev journey in the first week of September, building my first SaaS product. After launching a few days ago, I made my FIRST SALE yesterday!

If you are launching your first SaaS, here are some things I suggest you do before:

1. Find your audience - This helps you get your product to the right people

2. Validate Idea - This can be done by various methods, e.g., waitlists, surveys, finding your audience?

3. You dont need multiple features - One solid feature that solves a problem is enough

My favorite lesson: Believe in what you're doing and stay positive about it.

TLDR: Research, Believe, Work Hard

My 2nd SaaS acquisition just hit $50k in lifetime revenue.

Some cool facts about this deal.

1. I bought the SaaS in June 2023 for 97k (half in cash, rest as seller financing).
2. I'll get my money back on the deal in under 3 years = great return.
3. The monthly cost to run the app is <$80, and I spend less than an hour a week on it (mainly answering emails).
4. Year-to-date revenue = $29k. Estimated revenue in 2024 = $42k.
5. Acquired via Acquire.com. My 1st acquisition also happened on this platform.
6. The SaaS is B2B, has +-2% churn, 95% of revenue is paid annually. ARPU of $10.33, LTV of $339.80.
7. 40% year-over-year revenue growth.

Acquiring SaaS is a game changer. I plan to build a portfolio of SaaS over the next few years which will not only be a lot of fun, but a great way to build wealth.

Let me know if you've got any questions on this deal. I'll be happy to answer them in the comments.

Also, if you want to learn more about my due diligence process, and how I'm growing my holding company, check out the posts on my Substack - https://justinbutlion.substack.com/

I wanted to share my building journey (31 days) in the hopes it might motivate somebody to start small like me.

For 6 years was I stuck in tutorial hell, always followed the tutorials but never actually finished something and reached the point where I managed to build something on my own.

At some point I got so fed with this loop that I ditched all tutorials and told my self that I will have something online by the end of last August - no matter how simple, small or buggy it is.

So I started build a really simple website inspired by the "Your life in weeks"-Poster and actually managed to ship it in 42 hours on the last day of august.

I think the simplicity of lifeistooshort.today and the shock factor it can create actually were the driver behind the traffic which allowed me to place ads on the site. After posting about the traffic on X people started to reach out and wanted to place their website on it and after the first sale everything snowballed.

So if you are just starting out as a builder like me don't be afraid to start with simple and small projects. You have no idea what can happen.

I want to know what tech stacks you're using to build your Saas products. Im learning how to code to develop future Saas business but first would like to know which languajes to learn. Thanks

This isn't clickbait, I just wanted to tell you that anything is possible. You just need the right idea at the right time. I'm not smarter than all the SaaS owners who failed, but I put my energy where it mattered. You don’t need to come up with a brilliant idea - my first B2C SaaS is a great example.

After COVID-19, I decided to build my own gaming PC. It was probably the worst timing, as you may know, due to the massive GPU shortage following the pandemic. The only way to get a GPU? Join a Discord server and be the first to buy when the alert came in. But what if I just wanted to get all available stock?

There is a well-known website in the US called PC Part Picker. It was THE go-to solution for building a gaming PC. They listed all the websites selling hardware components. However, with the situation, their scraping rates were too slow. According to their tracker, no GPUs were available.

At that time, I knew nothing about web scraping, but I decided to give it a try. I developed my own strategy to access the stock of multiple websites and compiled all their GPUs in one place. I set the scraping rate as high as possible to ensure every link was valid 24/7.

It took me a month to get something solid: one page with all the available stock and one Discord server to set up alerts - simple as that. No SEO, no SSR. I wasn’t even thinking about making money from it at that point.

Then, I sent a few emails to some YouTubers with personal videos explaining the product. One of them responded, and we had a call. He had around 50k subscribers at the time, which was decent for the niche. I had a very good feeling during that call and he told me, "I'll promote your video only if you set up an affiliate system so you can earn something from what you've done." I followed his advice and set everything up. A few website accepted, even though my website was still largely unknown. My only hope was to cover my monthly costs.

Then his video went viral. At the time, I was on MongoDB's freemium plan, and my website crashed as soon as the video was released. I scrambled to fix things, hearing Discord notifications non-stop: "Someone joined your Discord..." I scaled up my server, database, and everything else.

The only money I made was through affiliate sales - around 3% for hardware components. In the first month, I earned about €20k, with €15k coming from Amazon. It was unbelievable; I stared at the revenue chart in shock. I couldn't believe it. I was thinking that Amazon will come to be and only give me a % of it but no, 3 months later I received these €15k on my account. Damn, that was real. I was 23 yo, and I made more money than both of my parents.

This SaaS has grown significantly and remains one of my biggest revenue sources. I've put a lot of effort into expanding its features and the market was very tough as many competitors started to join. But even without SEO, because I was the first one and was still trying to push my scraping rates, no one was a real competitor to me and they ended up closing their discords / websites a few month later when the market was back to the normal.

I'm still having this service up and decided to build other SaaS products to address the challenges I faced with this first little "big" baby - social media management for instance.

Anyway, don’t overthink it - just do what feels relevant to you.

Heyy!

I got my first paid customer to my new project!

My co-founder and I had to pause product development and entrepreneurship due to some health issues. During this time, I moved to a new country, regained my health, worked for 4-5 months

And here’s the result :) I’m back, and I’ve gained my first paying customer! I’m so happy to share this with you. Hopefully, there will be more to come!

Lesson 1: Don't run ads to get B2C clients in the beginning.

Why?

I have made the mistake of blowing a large portion of our budget on 800 leads that were freeloaders or curious mostly, and none of them converted to paying customers. I expected that leads would go to our landing page and sign up, and we can email them to ask them about upgrading. This didn't work.

If you ever plan on going the B2C route and want to run ads, in my experience I would skip Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads as the ROI is bad (cost-per-click and conversion is poor) and will suck your wallet dry. Rather run Google Search Ads, as the conversion rate is good for the cost. I got a conversion rate of 15-30% (85-326 conversions) on a budget of 1.5 dollars per day, with a cost per click of 0.3-1 dollars.

What to do instead:

Go for B2B as the pros outweigh the cons for a startup on a tight budget.

• Businesses are much less likely to churn.
• Keep your customers happy, and they will spread the word.
• You can offer business clients a cut of the subscription for a referral to clients and business partners in their network.
• Gives you more time to spend on creating a great product that sells itself.
• No massive marketing budget required (B2C marketing's bane)

Utilise LinkedIn to make contact with decision-makers or potential customers. Talk to business owners and ask them if tool "xyz" would be useful to them in solving their pain points. Remember your job in marketing is to generate leads and brand awareness. Make sure when your sales division get the lead, it's warmed up. So it's good to brief them beforehand on the lead you are sending through for a demo.

Have a script or template ready you can copy from Notepad++ to retain the format. For example:

Hi Xyz,

Are you tired of taking notes manually?

Utilise the power of Jotgenie and summarise your audio into notes!

✅ Built by South Africans for South Africans!
✅ Up to 15 languages including isiXhosa, isiZulu and Afrikaans!
✅ Record in-person meetings on your mobile OR remote on your desktop!
✅ No bots joining calls!
✅ Manual start and stop! (Auto Start and Auto Stop available)
✅ Sync to calendar events! (Outlook and Google Meet)
✅ Any platform! Anywhere!

Check us out here for FREE (no credit card required):
👉 https://www.jotgenie.com/en/landing?aff=reddit

Do you want to know more? Book a demo with us!
👉 https://calendly.com/thulani-puzzlcat

Send this as a message to your target audience under the correct job title. 1st Connections. I measure this by doing pages instead of messages for my KPI's in the company. The aim is isn't to get them to convert immediately, you are actually putting out an ad or reminder for when they want to jump ship on a competitor or looking for a solution that is close to them. And guess who is first in line? I've had clients convert to paying customers 6 months after I sent a message to them. The B2B client wanted a different solution to our competitors, thus contacting us with the details via email. They said they like that our software as it gives you more manual control over when to start the recording and to whom it goes. The bot is also intrusive, they believe. I am thinking of adding a bot as an option for better speaker labels, etc. I would not recommend this as an approach to start a conversation with a lead whom may be a decision-maker, because that requires nurturing. You have to start off the conversation with:

Q: "Hi, Xyz, I am doing research on how business execs take notes, do you take notes manually or use software? I appreciate your time"

A: "I take key notes using pen and paper."

Q: "Do you transcribe your own notes? And if so, do you use software?"

A: "Yes, but I don't use software" OR "Yes, I use Competitor Abc to transcribe my notes."

Q: "Would you be interested in South African made software that can transcribe your audio for free by uploading it on the website? You can use any audio file with speakers talking to test it out."

A: "Yes"

Paste a screen shot of how it works and a link etc.

You will also gain valuable insights this way, because you are actually doing research. If they check out the software it's the cherry on the cake.

Lesson 2: Reddit is a game changer to get leads. (You learn a ton too!)

Why?

This is a controversial one. Many Redditors believe that underhanded sales tactics are killing the authenticity of the forum; however, I would argue that it's actually helping to get more companies to spill the beans on their success, given they offer value to the reader, of course. The engagement is simply off the charts! Very rarely can you get an engagement of 2.5K views and 30 comments on a post you just started 24 hours ago on any other platform if you aren't well known. Remember to make sure that your link has an affiliate tag to track where your leads come from (we have our own admin dashboard), and make sure you respect the forum rules as much as possible. Sometimes posts do get removed by their bot moderators without warning, so be aware of that before putting in a lot of time into a post you cannot reuse on another thread. Test the waters first.

Lesson 3: Invite connections every month to your LinkedIn Business page.

Why?

You get 250 invites that you can utilize every month. This is a good way to build a community that will see your posts and product updates to keep them in the loop, and also, it shows what is cooking to potential customers who might see an interest in your product. You get to have a library or history of how the product grew which is great for motivation and feedback sessions.

Lesson 4: Comment, Like, Hashtag and Follow other business pages who are relevant to your niche.

Why?

Free advertising. I wouldn't throw a sales pitch on my competitors page out of respect to them (up to you, lol), but if you like a post of a business in your niche, such as AI, for example, your company name shows up in their notification, which might spur them to take notice of you. If you comment, you might as well like the post. Commenting is the best way to get your name out there among the herd and get engagement from potential clients who are searching for the same solutions, maybe.

It's also a good idea to have the niche in the title of your social media if it fits. For example, our product is called Jotgenie, and our keywords/niche are AI Meeting and Notetaking Assistant. So the title on our social page is Jotgenie | AI Meeting / Notetaking Assistant. This helps the audience to know from the get-go what you are selling and what you do without asking.

As an extra reminder, when posting content, always hashtag the relevant tags for your niche so others can find it ranking among others. This is often overlooked, but a hashtag is like a library for relevant search topics. Yours might just rank as a go-to for what prospective leads are looking for. Gemini AI is great to generate hashtags for the content you wrote.

Lesson 5: Join Discord channels you can search on Disboard to find out what people are thinking.

Why?

This is a valuable resource to talk to people and get an idea of what they are thinking on certain pain points in your niche. So for example, I asked people in their general chat how they take notes during meetings. Their response was:

"Usually I sort by topic and bullet points from there."

"Are you familiar with AI notetaking software? Or do you prefer to take notes manually?"

"I take notes manually; this is mostly for club meetings. I haven't used any AI software yet, but I would be interested if the need arises."

The fact that they said "if the need arises" might give valuable insight into how to cater for other leads and what they are looking for in order to convert to a paying for such software. *Happy product team noises.*

Lesson 6: Be patient and experiment.

This stuff is difficult! Be consistent, and you will eventually get your first client. There is a huge initial input into getting started, but as soon as you land that first client, the rest will follow. If you applied the same marketing tactics of 10 years ago, you would be like a fish out of water because trends change rapidly. I am still a newbie, but hopefully this helps to speed things up by taking out some of the guesswork. Good luck and ask away!

This "subtle" promo is killing the quality of the posts.

People aren't here to contribute or ask for help, they're just posting their startup and wrapping it in a few words to pass the "no self promotion" guideline

Would it make sense to ban linking your startup in your posts?

In June of 2024, I finally beta-launched my very first product that I had built over thousands of hours. It's a platform for business-minded people to team up around startup ideas and kickstart new projects. I knew we needed initial users to get things going.

I sent a nice tutorial video to an entrepreneur WhatsApp group, which got me the first 15 users. I also got a lot of messages from people wanting to help with marketing. We had some calls during the day (a few still help me).

There was one Indian guy who said he could hook me up with some free marketing stuff and mentioned that he had coached over 700 students throughout the year. We took a call, and he said he could bring us the first 5,000 users in 3 months. He sounded super genuine and smart—he knew all the marketing phrases. He even said that he and I would hop on a call every single day for a minimum of 1 hour, which I liked because I needed support with marketing.

He asked what our marketing budget was for the year. I said around $4k maximum, and he responded that we would need only $1.5k with his methods. This gave me even more trust—why would a scammer downplay the money?!

He said he had a big team, a studio, voice actors, investors, etc. He was ready to start bringing in users and always mentioned making a fair contract with a PayPal invoice. He said he wanted a long-term partnership and offered to prove his skills over the next 3 months: we would send him $1.5k, which would all go toward marketing for 3 months, and if he couldn’t bring us the users, we’d get a full refund. We made a contract for $500 per month for the following 3 months.

We started working. Everything seemed okay at first, except he was late on the deadlines he had promised me. He talked about how they make cold calls and DMs to kick things off. He said we needed some content on the platform first, then we’d start social media marketing. He managed to get a few people, and we were busy fixing the bugs he reported to me. But overall, the progress was super slow—sometimes, 0 people signed up. He even brought his 'teammates' onto a call, muted, to listen in. I didn't realize at the time that they weren’t real—it was just his second account :D

Then came the day when he created around 25 fake profiles and started posting content on the website. He claimed they were real users (some of his students...), but I didn’t believe him at all. Every email was temporary. I confronted him about this, but he denied everything and gave me some cooked-up documents to explain why it happened.

Fast forward a week, and we began social media marketing (Instagram reels). He said we needed to start with unbranded content to attract followers. It was a flop. He copied content from other Instagram accounts’ reels and just changed the font. We confronted him about this, and it turned into a nightmare because we still had a contract, and we owed him $1,000 for the remaining 2 months, even though he had brought us fewer than 5 real users (when it was supposed to be over 1,000 by the end of the first month).

The day came when we were supposed to pay the second $500 for the second month. However, since he had caused so many issues that negatively impacted our brand (copyrighted content, fake accounts, AI-copied content, missed deadlines, etc.), we decided not to pay, even though we had a contract. I was willing to meet the guy in court if necessary. We argued in chat, but I stood firm and said no—we would not continue.

Now, everything is settled—no lawsuits or anything. It was a good lesson for $500. Now I'm doing marketing with few people I trust and we hit our first 240 sign-ups this week :)

edit: - the guy got kicked out of the whatsapp group - it was clearly mentioned that all the money will go to marketing so it wouldn’t have benefit the guy at all. The whole point of that 3 months was to get him long term partner with % shares, but I called it off first month since it was clear we wouldn’t continue.

Last time, exactly 34 days ago, I asked about increasing my prices of my ATS Resume Checker and AI Resume builder tool, from $7.99 / mo to 14.95.

Well after considering everything, I ended up increasing it to 9.99, only to new users. So existing subscriptions remained at the same price. Also, I got rid of the free trial, and added a limited preview version of the Premium version to try out.

After all, yesterday I reached $500 MRR roughly after 4 months since the launch of paid version, and my total gross revenue for September was $613. My only traffic source is SEO, I know it is bit risky to rely on one channel, but I am not that much of a marketer myself. So couldn't try out anyother channel yet.

I know it is not a big milestone, but just wanted to share the progress.

Hey y’all!

So I’ve been grinding away at my app on the side while working a 9-to-5, and the goal is to hit $5K MRR so I can finally say goodbye to the boss.
Right now, I’m at $515 MRR, slowly climbing but still a ways to go.

The app itself automates generating images and PDFs for businesses. It’s got a solid base of small biz owners and entrepreneurs using it, but I’m trying to figure out how to take things to the next level and attract more customers.
Still trying to figure out the exact ICP though.

Now I’m wondering… how the hell do I 10x this?
I’m pushing to acquire more users, improve retention, and all the usual stuff.

Anyone else been through this? How did you scale from a few hundred to a few thousand MRR?
Any tips, tricks, or lessons you learned along the way?

Appreciate any advice 🙏

We Artisan just raised a $11.5m seed round with HubSpot Ventures, YC, Sequoia, and many others – on an uncapped note with a 20% discount.

For reference, we’re making AI Employees starting with an AI BDR.

We raised the round on an uncapped 20% discount note, so the valuation will be a 20% discount to whatever we raise our A at.

Since launching Ava a few months ago, we've hit $1 million ARR and onboarded 100s of customers

AMA about raising a seed round or how to manage your startup through hyper-growth!

I have come to learn that this holds true. Every successful person I know took on a substantial amount of risk at some point in their life. The reason why this remains true is because there is at least some level of unknown when pursuing new opportunities. You are risking something in your life right now whether you know it or not. If you are working the 9-5 that you dislike and not pursuing your passion, you are risking the opportunity to live the life that you dream of. However, if you decide to take on that new venture that you are passionate about, you risk the security and visibility of the stable income you might be making at your 9-5. So the question is: what is a bigger risk to you? Complacency or regret?

After sharing the welcome flow and seeing the incredible results people achieved, here’s the second most important flow you need to set up in your SaaS right now:

The cancellation flow. 🔥

🚀 Grab the template here ➡️ https://www.canva.com/design/DAGSHhUtnRs/FX_QhjXax5GRdX758izKMg/edit?utm_content=DAGSHhUtnRs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

If you don’t have this flow set up in your SaaS, are you even a serious founder? 👀 I guarantee it will decrease churn and help you uncover your product’s bottleneck.

This is the exact template SaaS companies with $10M+ ARR use to retain customers and gain valuable insights.

How the hell do you find the right tech peeps to help with your build?

I know there’s options out there, but for those of you who aren’t dev capable, how did you go about building your MVP?

For reference, I’m trying to build out an enterprise grade project management platform that’s very vertical specific. Have been trying to figure out who to employee/bring on board to help build it. Upwork seems like a crap shoot, have a limited network due to the noncompete and can’t afford a mega brain dev to act as a CTO.

Because we made ALL the possible mistakes when building ListenUp! AI

→ Started with SIX co-founders, all with similar skillsets (now we are 2, with different skills, but same mindset and goals!)

→ No design skills, yet tried to create a super unique SaaS design as if we were Apple

→ Re-made the whole design system FIVE TIMES (spoiler: it didn't bring us to $1M ARR)

→ Re-wrote our entire backend in a language we didn't know, just because we thought we needed "a backend that can scale" (took us 5 months, btw)

→ Changed databases TWICE

→ Spent months building our own AI engine, right before ChatGPT was released

→ Tried to support too many use cases at once, ending up with half-baked features and an unclear MVP

→ Spent weeks building our own component library from scratch, instead of using existing ones

→ Wasted weeks learning and setting up AWS for our infrastructure, with an overkill CI/CD workflow (we could have just used Firebase or similar)

→ Devoted weeks to commodity features (like personal settings to change your profile picture)

→ Spent weeks building a complex PAYG system, only to switch to subscription-based pricing because our customers were SCARED (yes, really)

→ Built features for ProductHunt users (not our ICP)

→ Integrated and paid for a bunch of unnecessary tools, just because "that was what we used to run the company at X"

→ Thought ProductHunt could carry us to $1M ARR

Do I regret any of that?No!

Good decisions come from experience, experience comes from making bad decisions

Because now we are finally GETTING THE BALL ROLLING!! → quality leads that fit our ICP → more customers → happier customers → more word of mouth

Here are the things that worked the most for us:

→ Use demos as a compass for what to do next Demos are the best way to iterate, this is why I highly encourage founders in my network to do demos AND build the product (same person) You'll learn: → what to say (marketing & demos) because it resonates or not with your ICP → which features wow people the most = make them more evident in our app, improve them → which features people don't care about = stop working on them, or just remove them → what is unclear and needs to be improved → what are their common objections (counter them on your landing page, and in your product) → and most importantly, WHY THEY DON'T CONVERT → dig for honest answers

Rinse and repeat. If convincing leads that your product is the best for their specific situation is getting easier and easier, you are on the right track!

→ Spent time making the "happy path" as smooth as possible (from lead gen to wow moment)

A good frame to have is that every friction, confusion, effort, or bug counts as a reason not to use or pay for your product

1. Read your marketing copy, and ask yourself if that would work on YOU (if you are your own ICP), if not → it will probably not resonate with your leads
2. Always be concise, honest, and authentic
3. Sign up with a fresh account to your product, and try to embody your ICP discovering your product for the first time, and getting to the "wow moment" Note ALL frictions / bugs / unclear elements, and add them to your weekly todo
4. Do onboarding calls, make people sign up and ask them to say out loud everything they have in mind + use Hotjar

→ Simplify simplify simplify: pricing, product, value prop, marketing

This makes your business funnel easier to diagnose and improve AND save you time + prevent headaches

→ Test out different marketing channels with small experiments to check what works / what doesn't in your market

Each market is different, some will excel with scrappy cold outreach, some won't

Figure out where your ICP is hanging out, which tone to use, how to improve it

For us, LinkedIn content + warm DMs asking for feedback on our tool worked the best to book demos every week

I decided to stop spending time on other channels, and just increase the volume of LinkedIn warm DMs because it simply works (again .. for us, in our specific situation)

→ figure out if your product is best fit for a sales-led GTM motion, or product-led GTM motion

ListenUp! activation is pretty hard, you need to connect Intercom and Slack, which is already a big perceived effort

We figured out that self-serve onboarding somewhat works, but what works the best is to onboard people manually

→ Propose to leads to become Design Partners

Be honest that the product is still not that mature, BUT that means if they become customers they become Design Partners and benefit from:

• shaping the tool to their specific needs (not to overdo of course)
• having a direct influence on the weekly roadmap

This worked really well for us, because:

• we convert more customers
• we make it clear that we expect them to give us a lot of feedback → we improve the tool

Win-win for everyone!

→ Keep in mind that most people are lazy and busy

This needs to reflect everywhere:

• no long messages / marketing copy, format with a lot of spacing to make reading EASY
• your product should remove existing homework, not add it to the stack, automate as much as possible, constantly improve your UX for maximum clarity
• answer DMs / support tickets fast, and be concise

To recap, only focus on:

• one product that supports one use case
• one ICP
• one marketing channel
• one pricing model

Then, ask yourself what is the biggest CONSTRAINT(s) of your business → not enough leads? not the right leads? → not converting enough people from your landing page to your product? → not activating enough people? → not converting enough people from free to paid? → not retaining enough customers?

Then PRIORITIZE your week according to those constraints! In my case, I spend 5% of my time on lead gen, 25% on demos, and 70% on improving the product Next month, it might be a different schedule (our constraints might change)

I hope this serves as a valuable warning for anyone launching a new B2B SaaS product right now. Learn from our mistakes!

What SaaS Are You Building Currently?

Hey SaaS founders!

I’d love to hear what SaaS projects you’re working on at the moment. Let’s exchange ideas and maybe even find ways to help each other grow.

Drop a comment with:

1. A short description of your SaaS.
2. A link to your platform.
3. Your current MRR (if you’re comfortable sharing).

I’m building BuildCarousel, an AI-powered tool for creating LinkedIn carousels automatically.

Excited to see what everyone else is up to!

I'm following this SaaS "boom" for a few years now and I've noticed the plethora of young people who are desperate to start their own business.

They watch all these "I made $1m in a week" youTube videos, posting on Reddit for everything about finding an idea to marketing

My suggestion: Get a job first and learn how a business is operating.

Learn what working with clients means.

Learn how marketing works from the professionals not kids on YouTube cashing on your passion.

Aquire experience starting for the bottom up. Do not try to jump to that CEO chair right after college. That era where people could do that is way past (with very few exceptions).

Most successful startups founders today they worked on another successful startup before.

Quit that "nake money quick" mentality and aquire knowledge.

Work with other people face to face, not from your mom's basement. You are missing your best years in treasure hunting.

As my dad used to say, "There's nothing wrong with putting your work out there. Just remember to stay true to yourself while you do it."

I'll go first:

I'm working on We Are Founders, a platform dedicated to sharing inspirational founder stories.

I hope to hit 100 founder stories this year, as well as 2,000 newsletter subscribers.

Some of y'all might have even submitted a story or two to the platform.

So with that in mind, what project are you currently working on?

What goals are you hoping to hit before the end of the year?

I am the co-founder of a UK-based sales tech AI startup and we just raised a $400k pre-seed round with participation from leading UK/European VCs and Angels.

For reference, we use AI to clone sales reps, enabling them to create 100s of personalised outreach videos in the time it used to take to do one.

We raised the round in less than 3 months, in probably the hardest fundraising climate of the last decade.

AMA about raising a pre-seed round or how to manage your startup through this process!

Although it can be hard to accept in the beginning, offering an immense amount of free value upfront is actually the quickest way to wealth. You have to provide an offer with so much free value that it makes your customers decision to work with you a "no brainer". After you have built up your network and shown your customers how much value you provide, they will have no problem paying you. This will naturally lead to high customer retention because you have built a business relationship based on trust and transparency rather than it being purely transactional. Oh, and also, providing a service for free also means you get to have a high volume of practice early on which allows you to rapidly master your craft.

Hello everyone!!

I want to share that I earned more than $3377,6 with my design tool in September.

About 10 months ago, my partner and I decided to create a design tool for you to create 2D-3D logos, tattoos, illustrations, AI art. It has been about 9 months since our launch.

Growth so far, 1.55 M total impressions, 64.5 clicks! We continue to increase our income every month! Since the launch, I have been generating income through the subscription model thanks to my design tool.

During the 6 months after the launch, we grew using only SEO and organic marketing strategies. Over the past 2 months, we have tried both paid marketing and organic marketing. However, this caused both our sales and our Google indexes to decline. For this reason, we decided to stop paid marketing this month and focus on organic marketing again.

Our site traffic this month is 350K impressions, 12.1K clicks and 3.3K revenue. We have generated our traffic with viral organic content and SEO. We are trying to improve our product every day and get the best experience for you.

Appreciate any recommendations!