The comments have made this the most interesting thing on IH all month.
Everyone saying the site is ugly, the video sucks, the numbers must be ah, "aspirational"... and yet IH says the revenue is verified at 27k/month. It looks like this is a case of someone who shouldn't be able to succeed but is succeeding anyway, and that's one of the surest signs of a learning opportunity there is.
I plan to read everything Scotty has written here very carefully and see if maybe there's something I can take away from it and apply to my business.
1
The take away from this is that all of that revenue is from existing customers. So I wouldn't take this as any kind of inspiration unless you already have about 150 paying customers this type of thing won't work for you.
1
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
4
Really expect me to believe that you make $27k/month from a website that is literally just a (terrible quality) youtube video with 150 views and 1 dislike?
The video itself is incoherent and rambling. What actually is this product ? Looks likes a really cut down basic CRM.
Very fishy
3
Hi Dave,
You won't find anyone over here that will debate the points you've made. We know the lander leaves a bit to be desired; we agree -- the product is rather simple when you think about it. Our growth feels surreal at times, we constantly pinch ourselves.
But that's actually the point of sharing with the community. We want folks to see that, even without doing everything "right", it'll work out if you focus on the important stuff.
If you've got specific questions on how we create value for our customers, we'd love to hear them. Thanks for checking us out.
1
So what does your product even do ? I can't see what it even does for your customers. That's why this story doesn't make sense tbh. Hundreds of people buy a product that does something with replying to leads ? The demo doesn't really help either.
2
The product sends out automated drip campaigns comprised of sms, email and voicemail messages.
1
Traction on a video and slick marketing doesn't translate to revenue. A good product does. I don't expect you to believe anything, which is why I made sure our revenue was added as Stripe Verified. But hey man, whatever floats your boat.
1
Yeah but your site doesn't explain what the product does. So how does anyone know that's it's good ?
1
You need to read the article and not just the headline, revenue and link. They actually don’t have that many customers, first of all. He clearly explains that his clients all know each other and are referring one another, and so the fancy landing page isn’t necessary. He also said no marketing was being done because this. There’s more than just the Tai Lopez approach to business.
1
And this isn't it. I'm not even sure this is a viable business.
Why are you mentioning Tai Lopez ? If it's to discredit marketing a business then you truly are a fool.
1
We don't externally market it, it's growing by referrals and by our customers.
4
Really doubting the numbers here. They basically have no website and no traction at all on their youtube video.
Like a lot of the posts on this site, this falls under "fiction".
2
It's Stripe verified. Stripe don't lie
2
Check out our Stripe Verified revenue would be all I have to say. This is a good lesson - we focused on building the value, not content... the app, not the website. This is living proof that the idea of shipping quickly and refining over time is a good way to go.
1
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
1
Click on the anchor next to his name.
1
Go to the product page and filter by monthly revenue. Set the revenue to at least $27, 000
2
This is very inspiring! I think a lot of us get lost in the plethora of tools and frameworks etc. available and forget that at the very beginning it is all about proving a problem and providing a possible (not the necessarily the best) solution for it. I will certainly have a look at bubble as I am not a developer and that could be a great bridge.
Once you have significant MRR like you do, better understood the problem and loyal customers, there will always be a way to refactor it, find a developer, co-founder etc. because you have proven the problem and it went from an idea to a business. That changes the game completely.
Thank you very much for sharing.
2
Ridiculously inspiring, helpful, and transparent, Scottie - thank you!
The profit-first model is amazing. Will you use it forever, or have you considered raising money?
1
We're not 100% opposed to raising money, but aren't planning on it. I was inspired early on by Derek Sivers' article 'How To Get Rich', and keeping as much of the company as possible is one of the core tenants.
1
Gotcha. Just found the article: https://sivers.org/d1r - it is inspiring for sure. Thanks for sharing!
2
Damn, that's incredible! I'm more impressed by the $4k MRR in two months?! And using Bubble, without writing any code! That's super impressive. That makes me think that I really need to build a Bubble plugin for my product.
0
Thanks Nathan! Yep, old paradigm of 6 months to MVP is changing. Bubble's a great tool and I highly recommend.
1
Nice article, Scottie and IH! My question:
For a given end customer an ad agency brings to you, they take a cut of the profit monthly or only once? How do you calculate it?
1
It's every month - best thing is we don't calculate it. The ad agencies mark up the service since they buy in bulk - and in most cases are able to break even or make a profit on it. That also means that we keep 100% of the revenue that comes in
1
I'm curious what api's you use for your app, do you do it all through zapier, or bubble integrations?
1
We're really all through zapier, and we built a custom zapier app as well to interface with our application. In V3 next year I'll likely expose a public api as well.
1
What benefits do you foresee moving away from Bubble, what limitations did you run into? How long do you think you could scale on Bubble if you continued to use it? I currently use Bubble for several projects so I’m curious to hear your perspective.
1
Re: how long could we scale...
Chris Davis and I disagree on this point - he believes we could build equally scalable products either way, I think not.
I believe it depends on the use case - our app has a LOT going on with hundreds of thousands of workflows, date conversions, thousands of texts, emails, voicemails per day etc. For many apps that are a bit simpler, the answer could be Bubble for the whole life cycle of the product.
1
Great question, I was asked this in the Bubble forums as well. Answer follows in full:
"Zapier has worked fine as we scale, but as a dev I’d like to have a fully fleshed out API.
As far as the move away from Bubble in the future, rationals are:
*Testing! I can’t just yell YOLO! and deploy anymore. The lack of testing on Bubble has gone from a nuisance to something I just can’t live with.
*Backend access and speed of troubleshooting. To troubleshoot the logs on bubble I have to search minute by minute - and the logs are slow. Not to mention it’s a black box.
*Reliability of workflows. I’ve seen a lot of times where workflows in Bubble don’t pass information the next step needs. Since I can’t do anything about it in the code I have to rely on hacky solutions that don’t really work for me anymore. With code I can make sure things run synchronously when I need them to, and Error handling to tell me when things go wrong.
Lots of love towards Bubble - it’s gotten us to this point, and I know they’re working on most of the issues I’m mentioning here. At this point, I need control and to be able to fine tune the inner workings of my app. It’s time for us to begin the transition towards something like that… I need to be able to run a test suite before I push a change. Currently, I don’t have this and it’s caused an unbelievable amount of heartache for my self and my other dev.
I’m going to drop this here… for anyone reading this that’s making less than 30k MRR with a Bubble product, this is not meant to discourage you from using Bubble. Don’t be that guy who asks ‘how will this scale’ while having 0 customers. Build!"
1
Great insight! I love the simple video you have on the landing page.
1
Thanks Jake! Yeah we've been moving quickly - the front page isn't even mobile responsive yet 🤦♂️ 🚀
0
Lol that's amazing. Very inspiring.
1
“Every bit of advice has an opposite and equally valid counterpoint. Find what works for you.”
Ironically, this is great advice! Reminds me of another quote I heard once, never underestimate the power of the situation. Every situation is completely different from someone else’s and even from your own past experiences. Only way to find out what works for you is action.
Great interview..hope to hear an update in 6 months where you take this.
1
Thanks!
1
Email Question from Alex Z.: "Is your software only for agencies? How is it different from woodpecker, which is what we currently use for automated emails?"
Answer:
They’re on opposite ends of the spectrum - Woodpecker is for cold outreach, whereas FUE works with inbound leads to activate them.
We’re not just for agencies, anyone that wants to can sign up for an account.
Thanks for the email Alex!
1
Can you clarify what the business actually does? I find it hard to understand just from reading this post. You're selling leads to agencies and then the agencies are also paying you to remind them to contact the leads you sent? Is your pricing inclusive of also generating the leads? Thanks!
1
We're a lead activation platform - so others send leads into our platform. We take care of the automated messaging to those leads. Our customers use us because following up manually on most facebook optins results in 10% response rate - using FUE results in over 40%, so clients get more return on their ad spend.
0
Would you say Active Campaign is your direct competitor?
1
Not really, no. ActiveCampaign is a great tool, and can be used to put together some of the functionality that we have. That said, many things we tried to do before building FUE we couldn't do in AC... cutoff times (not contacting a lead at midnight even if they opt in then), round robin lead distribution (for teams), stopping communication with prospects when they respond etc.
We see people Frankenstein-ing (a customer's phrase, not mine) solutions together including active campaign - but it doesn't work as well as a custom built solution and is harder to implement.
0
Got it, thanks!
1
Great interview! Love how you found a problem, created a solution, marketed it and now enjoy the rewards and fruits of your labor! Awesome man!
The comments have made this the most interesting thing on IH all month.
Everyone saying the site is ugly, the video sucks, the numbers must be ah, "aspirational"... and yet IH says the revenue is verified at 27k/month. It looks like this is a case of someone who shouldn't be able to succeed but is succeeding anyway, and that's one of the surest signs of a learning opportunity there is.
I plan to read everything Scotty has written here very carefully and see if maybe there's something I can take away from it and apply to my business.
The take away from this is that all of that revenue is from existing customers. So I wouldn't take this as any kind of inspiration unless you already have about 150 paying customers this type of thing won't work for you.
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
Really expect me to believe that you make $27k/month from a website that is literally just a (terrible quality) youtube video with 150 views and 1 dislike?
The video itself is incoherent and rambling. What actually is this product ? Looks likes a really cut down basic CRM.
Very fishy
Hi Dave,
You won't find anyone over here that will debate the points you've made. We know the lander leaves a bit to be desired; we agree -- the product is rather simple when you think about it. Our growth feels surreal at times, we constantly pinch ourselves.
But that's actually the point of sharing with the community. We want folks to see that, even without doing everything "right", it'll work out if you focus on the important stuff.
If you've got specific questions on how we create value for our customers, we'd love to hear them. Thanks for checking us out.
So what does your product even do ? I can't see what it even does for your customers. That's why this story doesn't make sense tbh. Hundreds of people buy a product that does something with replying to leads ? The demo doesn't really help either.
The product sends out automated drip campaigns comprised of sms, email and voicemail messages.
Traction on a video and slick marketing doesn't translate to revenue. A good product does. I don't expect you to believe anything, which is why I made sure our revenue was added as Stripe Verified. But hey man, whatever floats your boat.
Yeah but your site doesn't explain what the product does. So how does anyone know that's it's good ?
You need to read the article and not just the headline, revenue and link. They actually don’t have that many customers, first of all. He clearly explains that his clients all know each other and are referring one another, and so the fancy landing page isn’t necessary. He also said no marketing was being done because this. There’s more than just the Tai Lopez approach to business.
And this isn't it. I'm not even sure this is a viable business.
Why are you mentioning Tai Lopez ? If it's to discredit marketing a business then you truly are a fool.
We don't externally market it, it's growing by referrals and by our customers.
Really doubting the numbers here. They basically have no website and no traction at all on their youtube video.
Like a lot of the posts on this site, this falls under "fiction".
It's Stripe verified. Stripe don't lie
Check out our Stripe Verified revenue would be all I have to say. This is a good lesson - we focused on building the value, not content... the app, not the website. This is living proof that the idea of shipping quickly and refining over time is a good way to go.
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.
Click on the anchor next to his name.
Go to the product page and filter by monthly revenue. Set the revenue to at least $27, 000
This is very inspiring! I think a lot of us get lost in the plethora of tools and frameworks etc. available and forget that at the very beginning it is all about proving a problem and providing a possible (not the necessarily the best) solution for it. I will certainly have a look at bubble as I am not a developer and that could be a great bridge.
Once you have significant MRR like you do, better understood the problem and loyal customers, there will always be a way to refactor it, find a developer, co-founder etc. because you have proven the problem and it went from an idea to a business. That changes the game completely.
Thank you very much for sharing.
Ridiculously inspiring, helpful, and transparent, Scottie - thank you!
The profit-first model is amazing. Will you use it forever, or have you considered raising money?
We're not 100% opposed to raising money, but aren't planning on it. I was inspired early on by Derek Sivers' article 'How To Get Rich', and keeping as much of the company as possible is one of the core tenants.
Gotcha. Just found the article: https://sivers.org/d1r - it is inspiring for sure. Thanks for sharing!
Damn, that's incredible! I'm more impressed by the $4k MRR in two months?! And using Bubble, without writing any code! That's super impressive. That makes me think that I really need to build a Bubble plugin for my product.
Thanks Nathan! Yep, old paradigm of 6 months to MVP is changing. Bubble's a great tool and I highly recommend.
Nice article, Scottie and IH! My question:
For a given end customer an ad agency brings to you, they take a cut of the profit monthly or only once? How do you calculate it?
It's every month - best thing is we don't calculate it. The ad agencies mark up the service since they buy in bulk - and in most cases are able to break even or make a profit on it. That also means that we keep 100% of the revenue that comes in
I'm curious what api's you use for your app, do you do it all through zapier, or bubble integrations?
We're really all through zapier, and we built a custom zapier app as well to interface with our application. In V3 next year I'll likely expose a public api as well.
What benefits do you foresee moving away from Bubble, what limitations did you run into? How long do you think you could scale on Bubble if you continued to use it? I currently use Bubble for several projects so I’m curious to hear your perspective.
Re: how long could we scale...
Chris Davis and I disagree on this point - he believes we could build equally scalable products either way, I think not.
I believe it depends on the use case - our app has a LOT going on with hundreds of thousands of workflows, date conversions, thousands of texts, emails, voicemails per day etc. For many apps that are a bit simpler, the answer could be Bubble for the whole life cycle of the product.
Great question, I was asked this in the Bubble forums as well. Answer follows in full:
"Zapier has worked fine as we scale, but as a dev I’d like to have a fully fleshed out API.
As far as the move away from Bubble in the future, rationals are:
*Testing! I can’t just yell YOLO! and deploy anymore. The lack of testing on Bubble has gone from a nuisance to something I just can’t live with.
*Backend access and speed of troubleshooting. To troubleshoot the logs on bubble I have to search minute by minute - and the logs are slow. Not to mention it’s a black box.
*Reliability of workflows. I’ve seen a lot of times where workflows in Bubble don’t pass information the next step needs. Since I can’t do anything about it in the code I have to rely on hacky solutions that don’t really work for me anymore. With code I can make sure things run synchronously when I need them to, and Error handling to tell me when things go wrong.
Lots of love towards Bubble - it’s gotten us to this point, and I know they’re working on most of the issues I’m mentioning here. At this point, I need control and to be able to fine tune the inner workings of my app. It’s time for us to begin the transition towards something like that… I need to be able to run a test suite before I push a change. Currently, I don’t have this and it’s caused an unbelievable amount of heartache for my self and my other dev.
I’m going to drop this here… for anyone reading this that’s making less than 30k MRR with a Bubble product, this is not meant to discourage you from using Bubble. Don’t be that guy who asks ‘how will this scale’ while having 0 customers. Build!"
Great insight! I love the simple video you have on the landing page.
Thanks Jake! Yeah we've been moving quickly - the front page isn't even mobile responsive yet 🤦♂️ 🚀
Lol that's amazing. Very inspiring.
“Every bit of advice has an opposite and equally valid counterpoint. Find what works for you.”
Ironically, this is great advice! Reminds me of another quote I heard once, never underestimate the power of the situation. Every situation is completely different from someone else’s and even from your own past experiences. Only way to find out what works for you is action.
Great interview..hope to hear an update in 6 months where you take this.
Thanks!
Email Question from Alex Z.: "Is your software only for agencies? How is it different from woodpecker, which is what we currently use for automated emails?"
Answer:
They’re on opposite ends of the spectrum - Woodpecker is for cold outreach, whereas FUE works with inbound leads to activate them.
More info on our walkthrough here: https://followupedge.com/join
We’re not just for agencies, anyone that wants to can sign up for an account.
Thanks for the email Alex!
Can you clarify what the business actually does? I find it hard to understand just from reading this post. You're selling leads to agencies and then the agencies are also paying you to remind them to contact the leads you sent? Is your pricing inclusive of also generating the leads? Thanks!
We're a lead activation platform - so others send leads into our platform. We take care of the automated messaging to those leads. Our customers use us because following up manually on most facebook optins results in 10% response rate - using FUE results in over 40%, so clients get more return on their ad spend.
Would you say Active Campaign is your direct competitor?
Not really, no. ActiveCampaign is a great tool, and can be used to put together some of the functionality that we have. That said, many things we tried to do before building FUE we couldn't do in AC... cutoff times (not contacting a lead at midnight even if they opt in then), round robin lead distribution (for teams), stopping communication with prospects when they respond etc.
We see people Frankenstein-ing (a customer's phrase, not mine) solutions together including active campaign - but it doesn't work as well as a custom built solution and is harder to implement.
Got it, thanks!
Great interview! Love how you found a problem, created a solution, marketed it and now enjoy the rewards and fruits of your labor! Awesome man!
Thanks Travis! Appreciate the shoutout :)