1 year as a bootstrapped founder: Daniel Nguyen discusses growing 3 tools to $32k in revenue
Hey Indie Hackers!
Every week, I send a marketing Case Study from a profitable Indie Founder. Today I want to share with you how Daniel reached $32K revenue with 3 bootstrapped tools.
About Daniel and Products
I'm Daniel Nguyen - an entrepreneur based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Last year, I quit consulting to bootstrap KTool ($1k MRR — $12k revenue), BoltAI ($14k revenue), and PDF Pals ($5.9k revenue).
1. KTool: Send web articles, newsletters & RSS feeds to Kindle
The idea of KTool first came to my mind when I was reading Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare? I was genuinely scared. My right eye is basically blind. Doctors said there is no chance to cure it. I built KTool to send any web content to Kindle (Kindle e-readers don't harm eyes like LED screens).
It took more than a year to reach $1k MRR.
2. BoltAI: Access ChatGPT on any Mac app
When I started, I didn’t expect BoltAI to be commercially viable. It comes from my pet peeve of switching back and forth between ChatGPT web UI and native Mac apps like Xcode or Apple Notes.
Unlike VSCode, there is no Copilot for XCode. And I have a habit of writing blog posts in Apple Notes, so I needed a tool to invoke ChatGPT right within these apps.
I decided to build the MVP in a weekend. The app was quite ugly, but I managed to ship it anyway.
BoltAI reached ~$14k revenue recently.
3. PDF Pals: Instantly chat with any PDF on your Mac
This one is fun. I was dogfooding BoltAI with content from a PDF. Then a customer asked if they could use it to chat with the PDF. After a few iterations, I figured that people wanted a native Chat w/ PDF app.
I set up a presale to validate this idea. I was lucky that it went viral. I got about $1k in presale revenue. Time to build!
After 4 months, PDF Pals generated $5,900 in revenue.
Ideal customers & acquiring them
For KTool, my ideal customers are busy professionals who want to keep up with the news without spending too much time on computer screens.
The primary acquisition channel for KTool is the Apple AppStore (ASO).
For BoltAI and PDF Pals, my ideal customers are small business owners who want to integrate AI into their workflow.
We acquire our customers primarily through word of mouth, paid ads, and building in public on Twitter.
Getting first 10 customers
The first 10 customers came from building in public on Twitter.
All my products come from “scratch my own itches,” and Twitter is a wonderful place for idea validation. You can easily understand if there are more people with your problem.
For PDF Pals, I decided to build a prototype and launch a presale instead. It worked quite well and resulted in $1K on presale.
Best marketing decision
the best one is stepping out of my comfort zone and investing in paid ads.
Twitter is wonderful for launching a new product, but it’s not necessarily the best channel for long-term growth. Plus, talking non-stop about my products on Twitter is kinda boring.
After submitting BoltAI to AI directories, I found that There’s an AI for that (TAAFT) performs the best. So I figured it’s best to continue promoting there (you can list your product there, and later highlight it with Pay-Per-Click ads).
Below is the difference in conversion rate (last 30 days)
1 thing to do differently
My biggest mistake is spending too much time selling Lifetime deals (LTDs) for KTool. I would start selling subscriptions sooner.
I’ve spent 4 months selling LTDs. While it brought some initial cash, it’s not sustainable and only makes the transition to selling subscriptions harder.
Top-1 marketing challenge and plans to solve it
My top-1 marketing challenge is customer acquisition. My plan to improve it:
- Launch more free tools, especially for PDF Pals. It works pretty well for KTool, and I saw a few success stories from other founders.
- Submit to the AppStore and spend time on ASO. I have some experience with KTool in the past—AppStore can be a great source of traffic.
- Reach out to AI influencers. I recently started a TikTok channel for PDF Pals. The result was promising.
More about Daniel:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/daniel_nguyenx
- Blog: https://danielnguyen.me
oww thanks for sharing. My takeaway is ship fast, built in public. Twitter is a good tool to get the first customers.
Thanks for the insights!
When approached with a clear aim and targeted outcome, LTD offers fantastic prospects.
Thanks for sharing this, Daniel, very cool! How do you split your time among the projects?
I have a successful "mature" business and launched a new one and I find it hard to figure out where to spend more of my time and energy. ;)
We built some applications (eg: Chrome Browser Extension ChatWork, ChatPDF),
Some apps have 3k~5k users.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how to make money.
We are recruiting a partner to help increase product sales.
If you think it is an acceptable idea to get your income from a share of sales revenue, please contact us.
Inspire me a lot!
Thanks for the sharing.
Building in the market that you understand is much more better than starting from scratch. Your product Bolt AI and help you to understand the market and building pdf pals become much more easier.
Understanding the market helped understand what pdf pals should have and look like and how you should build it. After building it you already know where to sell it thus making it much more easier than starting from scratch .
Understanding market is probably the most important thing to determine success. Here an article about steps to understand market before building : Why Building on a Market You Understand is Crucial, and How to Do It
Hey, I see your are frequent builder,
I would love to get some feedback on this product I am building.
Do you think this is useful? If so what would you like to add in the features?
Thank you. 😄🤝
AuthOS .app
I Interested in knowing if you use a landing page builder or reuse the same template that you build on your own ?
Looks very professional and it might add to the perception of quality to your product, in addition to the fact that you probably build them fast.
LTD is wonderful if one goes into it with a clear aim & and an end date.
Get's you out in the world and you get some cash!
Well done! I understand the struggle with LTDs.
This post is brief, but it is enough to inspire me a lot!
Interesting case study, one of the most difficult parts is user acquisition, interesting marketing tips I will try and see what works for my particular case.
I love how you keep building on top of you previous understanding of technology and market. It for sure have helped get customer faster and easier, along the way trust is built.
Reselling to your existing customer is the easiest way to make money because the customer already trust your last product and why not give a new one a try. That why its is important to keep contact and relationship with customer even thought they already purchase the product.
Here more about reselling : What to do when you have customers? Resell and make more money
While I'm not an expert on selling on Twitter/X what I have experienced is that building and acquiring free tools is the best way to attract more visitors to the startup's website and get more people to sign up for their products or services. Building free tools means creating them from scratch, while acquiring free tools means buying or partnering with existing ones. The idea is that free tools can solve a specific problem for the target audience, generate word-of-mouth referrals, and showcase the expertise and credibility of the business.
Thanks @sveta_bay for taking the time to share some great tips and resources related to startups.
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This comment was deleted 2 years ago.