How to go from $0 to $10k/mo:

(I applied this to my 20+ startups) 1. Idea.
- easy to build (ideally nocode)
- can be explained in one sentence
- targets a small niche b2b
- it has organic growth potential

Don't ever think: "I'll buy ads to promote it".
This literally never works.

e.g. - get listed on 100+ directories with one click & get backlinks. Tools: unicornplatform + stripe + zappier + uipath + zoho. Niche: busy solo founders. Growth: word of mouth.listingbott.com

How to promote your startup with no followers: 1) Reddit subreddits.
- entrepreneur
- saas
- sideproject
- bootstrappedsaas

Be genuine, tell the story, from the start. No marketing. Make it sound like a story or diary entry.

16 ways to monetize Directories: 1) Affiliate links.

I sign up for all of them and place the links.

For example I have one on for @marc_louvion shipfast and it generates me passive income every month. nextjsstarter.com

I came up with 20 Ideas in 12 months using these methods:

(Number 15 is 👌) 1. Pain at my own work

Listing tools on directories took ages, so I made a listing bot for it.
Needed full control over my analytics dashboard, none existed, so I created one.
Wanted to automate my SEO, built an AI agent for it.

Part 2:

I wake up in the morning, take my phone and it shows 100+ missed calls.

I unlock the screen and the first message says:
"we're hacked, everything is down."

I lose my breath for a second, my pulse jumpt to 200.

I jump and get to my laptop to see the details. Hacker.

Our database was self hosted and had no serious protection. Someone hacked in and encoded entire hard drive.

We were young and stupid, we had no backups.

All our customers are mad, everything is fking down.

I get an email: "I encoded your hard drive, if you wanna decode it, pay me .... bitc0ins."

We try to fix it ourself for hours, using the guides we found in the internet. We hire pros who try with us too. Nothing works.

It’s 2012.

I sold my bootstrapped startup, made my 1st mil.

I wanna make a unicorn, meet big VCs, move to SF.

One day I meet a guy looking like a movie star.
This day is gonna change my life.

He makes a pitch: “Imagine you sit on a couch with your girlfriend, she wants to watch a romantic comedy and you wanna see an action movie. You open this app, that has sliders for each genre from 0 to 100. You set Drama=40, Comedy=70, Action=60 and it shows you those movies magically filtered this way”.

I’m a big fan of movies, I watched every single movie from the top 500 on IMDB, and the guy looks like the next Steve Jobs, so I say: cool, I wanna join, I’ll be your Woznyak.

I invest around $100k and join as a CTO/CoFounder.

In one year, @unicornplatform went from 40k to 200k+ users.

Things I've done: 1. Reddit.
Perhaps the biggest source of growth.
I managed to post about 10 bangers there which drove the traffic 50x on some days.
The churn was high too for reddit users. However overall growth has compensated for this.
I posted in r/enterpreneurs, r/saas.

This never works
> Startup Idea → Design → Coding → Audience → 😣

This works (sometimes): The following playbook helped me launch most of my 24 startups.

See A full breakdown of each step 🧵:

Lazy SEO guide for startup founders: 1. Technical SEO.
Your site must be served via server-side rendering.
Every website builder does it out of the box (e.g. @unicornplatform ).
If you code your pages from scratch using nextjs, enable SSR.

369 Open Source alternatives to tools you pay for: 1. - firebase
2. - docu sign
3. - calendly
4. - google analytics
5. - product hunt
6. - chatgpt
7. - docsendsupabase.com
documenso.com
cal.com
plausible.io
devhunt.org
ai.meta.com/llama
papermark.io

How I promote my products on X-replies (real example): I search for bangers around open source and hosted software on social media.

Then I make a comment about my product.

Rules
1. Dont spam unrelated links.
2. Add value to the original post.

Predictions for the future of startups: 1. The AI Model race will hit the wall, and all providers will be roughly on the same level, including the open-source players.

How I Go From Idea to Revenue in 13 steps: [1] Idea.

I only build products that I would use myself. It took me many years of failed projects to stop building stuff for the users I don’t deeply understand.
So the idea = my own pain.

This doesn't work
→ Idea → Design → Coding → Audience → ❌

This works (eventually):
1) Audience. 2) Problem. 3) Idea. 4) Validation
5) Waitlist. 6) SEO. 7) One Feature MVP
8) Iterate. 9) Marketing → 10) Startup Success💰

Full breakdown of each step 🧵: 1) Audience:
X, Linkedin, Reddit, DevTo, HackerNoun, 3 hours daily.
Never skip it, just like a gym.
You send me $1k deposit.
If you skip one day, I never return it to you.
If you don't I'll send it back in 30 days, cuz by that period you'll get used to it to never skip.

I'm Working on 24 Projects Right Now 🥴

Details 👇 1/
I bought it from @alexanderisorax for $800k 2 years ago. Pivoted it from a landing page builder to a website builder.
I'm announcing the next stage in a week! It'll go far beyond the "website builder" space, towards "biz build/grow/monetize/run" unicornplatform.com