Impressive persistence. It’s easy to read a timeline like this and overlook the uncertainty and second-guessing that happens in between. I work in technical marketing, SEO, and product advocacy at a product-based startup, so I know the grind of trying to get traction.
You mentioned grinding on marketing early on—what actually moved the needle? Was it pure consistency, or were there specific channels or strategies that made the biggest impact?
I’d say consistency with high volume targets. We got our early users from posting on X, especially in the build in public community, and that came from doing a lot of posts and replies per day.
Inspirational to read it. I've been coding much longer, yet... I've never started and always wanted to somehow/somewhere.
Thanks for sharing. I've been on a similar path and also on my third product. Every product has seemed to be closer to sticking and I think that's the case with the one I'm currently on.
It takes time to grow this way and I'm super excited for your next post at $10k MRR!
That's awesome. Wishing you the best!
Great journey, seems like you're just getting started. Curious, did you develop this type of drive recently or do you have past experience in hardcore work/study (e.g. u use to be in investment banking or studied pre-med at one point in your life, military, etc)?
I was always driven but when I was younger I channeled it into video games and sports.
During the past year it has intensified. I think part of it comes from reading about people with a lot of drive, such as Elon Musk, Kobe Bryant, and Bill Gates. When I read that they are putting in 80+ hour work weeks I ask myself, why can't I do that?
> such as Elon Musk, Kobe Bryant, and Bill Gates. When I read that they are putting in 80+ hour work weeks I ask myself, why can't I do that?
Because you don't have personal assistants, personal chefs, nannies, and myriads of PR people whose job it is to make you look superhuman.
We should be seeing more of this on HN.
The hard work and dedication are commendable for sure. Are you full time on this, or is it passive income at this point?
I'm sure many people will have positive things to say. So, to keep the conversation interesting let me make some counterpoints and questions, please don't take it the wrong way, I think it's great whenever somebody upstarts and independent project and gets paid for it.
- What's the growth curve look like, and the cost to acquire new customers?
- I'd worry about getting stuck working on things that hit local maximums. Will it hit $10k? That's still less than a reasonable dev job where you probably don't have to work as hard. The current amount is akin to minimum wage I think.
- Can you make it passive/part-time? In case it doesn't scale the way you envision.
- Are you actually building and providing a novel tech solution, or is it something that chatgpt or perplexity will do good enough for free in a few months? Not to be a downer, but as someone in your potential target audience, I see what's going on with your site and would personally just set up my own prompt chain to get 95% of the value on my own with other AI tools.
Yes, doing it full-time. Cost to acquire new customers has been $0, we're growing organically and through content marketing.
I believe we could hit $10k just repeating what we're doing now. But we're currently looking at where to best spend our earnings in order to scale faster.
I get the AI wrapper objection, but Chatgpt or other LLMs can't do what Buildpad does. For example, when verifying demand for your solution (this is one of the phases users go through) Buildpad will generate and host a "research page" for you that will help with taking in feedback from your target audience and make the whole validation process a lot easier.
I appreciate your perspective and I'd be lying if I said that what we're doing isn't a risk. But I personally get so much enjoyment out of building my own product and having users that appreciate it, that all the hard work makes it worth it. And the idea that we can make it into something huge is very motivating too. For me, it's a risk well worth taking.
That's great, I forgot to mention but I'd also look very closely at user retention. Because maybe there's a risk people try it and realize they can do enough with conventional AI tools, which would indicate you should add new value-add features, etc.
In general, I think these niches can work if the startup is consistent about adding new valuable features ahead of what broad AI can do, so the users feel like they're getting value going to their "all in one" place for this. For example, maybe your research page helps people who don't want to use a separate site to make surveys.
It's still not my cup of tea but perhaps I'll see it sometime down the line and change my mind :)