Failing 6 times before hitting a 7-figure ARR in 10 months with no code
Jacob Seeger is a songwriter and producer who loves tech but never thought he'd be successful in it. Then, he tried Bubble. Seven products later, he built a product that went viral. Now, Faceless.video is bringing in a 6-figure MRR.
Here's Jacob on how he did it. 👇
The first end-to-end faceless video platform
I started as a music artist, songwriter, and producer! With no technical background, I built a 7-figure, bootstrapped, and profitable SaaS called Faceless.video. It was the first platform ever to run faceless channels autonomously, from writing and editing videos to posting them on social platforms entirely on autopilot.
It started with posting basic Minecraft gameplay videos, reading Reddit stories aloud as the MVP. And it grew into full-scale AI short videos. We went from $0 to $1M ARR within 10 months, completely bootstrapped. Over 2.5M users have signed up.
We’re currently at 6-figures in MRR.
A long path to SaaS
I graduated from college with a music business major in 2019 and pursued a career as a successful music artist. I moved back in with my mom to pursue this goal without income.
The marketing options available to artists like me repeatedly disappointed me. I learned everything I could online about digital marketing for businesses and applied those methodologies to my artist career, growing my project from virtually nothing to close to 1M streams and thousands of highly engaged fans. After this, I began helping friends in music, charging next-to-nothing for the service. This eventually built my connections in music, leading to my first business, Domno, a music marketing agency.
On the side, I had always loved tech, but never felt I could pursue tech ideas due to my lack of experience. But eventually, I built a mobile game as my introduction to no-code building. I used the no-code game-building platform, Buildbox. The game allowed me to engage with fans because it included easter eggs of my unreleased music.
Over the next two years, I grew Domno, working with artists such as Journey, Weezer, Future, Sean Paul, Lizzy McAlpine, and many more. However, I soon realized it didn't satisfy me as I had expected. I thought working with bigger artists would lead to explosive business growth. Instead, I noticed a natural ceiling to its scalability, given the music industry's payment constraints and my inability to take on many clients at once.
I then started looking into dev agencies to build an MVP for my first SaaS idea. At this time, Domno generated high five-figures in ARR, and I had supplemental income from songwriting royalties. This was enough for me to move out of my mom’s basement and in with my now-fiancée in Los Angeles.
The dev agencies I spoke with quoted $30k to build my SaaS idea's MVP — money I didn't have, especially for something I didn't know would succeed. Remembering the process of building games on Buildbox, I began exploring Bubble. However, when I first signed up, I didn't log back in for half a year, completely overwhelmed by the idea of building a full app. But after building the courage to watch tutorials and try it myself, I began building my first SaaS ideas.
Building the product with no code
I then spent 2.5 years building and launching six apps on Bubble; all failed. At this point, I felt completely disheartened and doubted I could build a successful SaaS. But one of my highest-leverage decisions at the time was letting everyone in my network know I was building apps. This “outsourced” the app ideation process to others, allowing me to receive ideas and choose the best ones to build.
That process eventually led to my 7th app, Faceless.video.
I spent roughly $250 on infrastructure and building the app, and the other $250 on our first Twitter thread promotion, which drove our first users and validated the product.
I had spent 2.5 years before Faceless.video building app ideas on Bubble. Despite the failures, each project taught me something new and important about building scalable apps and problem-solving. By my seventh idea, Faceless.video, my sharpened skills allowed me to overcome initial product hurdles and challenges, enabling a successful app launch.
I initially built the MVP entirely on Bubble, balancing my time with servicing clients for my other business, Domno. I spent practically all my free time building on Bubble, motivated by the idea of creating a successful app that would grant me financial freedom while innovating and creating something valuable for others. I thank my fiancée, Shannon, for giving me the time and enthusiasm to relentlessly focus on getting something off the ground.
As our app scaled, I migrated some features off Bubble and toward custom code for more control and cost-efficiency, but the product still remains largely on Bubble to this day. When we launched as an MVP, our product was almost entirely API-based. But as we've scaled, we've invested more in custom code, bringing those API-based services in-house. We use notable services such as:
Bubble (primary tech stack)
RunPod (serverless GPU/CPU instances)
AWS Lambda (same as RunPod)
Replicate (unified AI gateway for AI models)
EmailOctopus (for marketing emails/drip campaigns)
PostHog (product analytics)
Stripe (payment processing)
Bunny.net (CDN)
As we've scaled, our development needs have also grown. With the rapidly changing world of AI for coding, such as Codex and Claude Code, we recognize the need for a certain caliber of quality and, more importantly, the speed of iteration required to keep up. Therefore, while Bubble allowed us to start and scale, we are now considering migrating to custom code, which would let us improve the product faster than ever before. Migrating off Bubble introduces many challenges, so we will cross that bridge when we get there!
Business model and pricing
We are a subscription-based SaaS. The price ranges from $20 to hundreds per month, depending on user usage. Our most popular plan is our Daily plan for $35/mo. We expand revenue in a few ways:
Users pay more to use the product more. Usage-based pricing keeps margins healthy and enables revenue expansion.
We offer add-ons for premium features.
We offer innovative and unique features, such as our boost feature that allows anyone to easily boost their video's performance on TikTok. This feature complements our core functionality.
Trend curation. As leaders in faceless video automation, we stay on the cutting edge of trends. We quickly add new trends to our platform, allowing users to easily tap into viral niches.
When we launched, we were the first to create this product model, so we arbitrarily set prices that have now become industry standards. I still remember debating whether to make it $29.99 or $30 (we went with $30). We priced it based on our COGS, maintaining a healthy profit margin.
We've changed our prices a few times incrementally to keep up with rising AI model costs and maintain competitive prices. We have not seen any drawbacks each time we raised our prices.
Overall, here's my advice: Always launch as a paid service. While we offer a free trial, we have never offered the service for free as a freemium model, even from day one. The most compelling validation is simply whether someone will buy your product or service. Also, if you are starting to gain traction, focus relentlessly on the core drivers pushing the business forward and nothing else — tap out that channel before moving on.
Influencer marketing
We focus heavily on organic content to acquire users. To succeed as a B2C product, you need some natural virality. Otherwise, using traditional advertising to acquire low-ticket B2C customers makes your business unlikely to be profitable and sustainable.
It's better to pay once for content with viral potential; this content continues to pay dividends for months, acquiring far more users per dollar spent in the long run than traditional advertising. Building an audience to sell to takes a lot of time and trial and error. It's much faster and easier to simply tap into an existing influencer's audience that aligns with your product. Ideally, if content has viral appeal, it naturally spreads online, extending beyond the reach of the individual video you paid for, allowing you to grow while you sleep.
As I mentioned earlier, to get our initial users, we spent $250 on a Twitter thread promotion. That organically generated 300k impressions and drove thousands in revenue upon posting, instantly validating the product. Its natural viral appeal also led it to spread organically to other Twitter influencers, helping us grow quickly.
We then aggressively reinvested the profits from those initial promotions into similar Twitter promotions, reaching five-digit MRR. If you aren't sure your marketing angles are viral enough or aligned well enough with your product-market fit, a text-based medium like X offers the easiest way to validate.
However, we only scaled to six-figure MRR once we pivoted into short-form video content and repeatedly went viral. Going viral requires constant reinvention. It's a constant balance of leaning into effective messaging while also building up our product to warrant viral spread.
Invest in an in-house team
Once I had PMF and a scaling product, efficiently investing money for real results became a challenge.
Many ways exist to spend money, and everyone selling a service will claim theirs is the silver bullet, which is rarely true. Most services, such as marketing agencies or consultants, tend to be wasted resources.
The fix for this was also surprisingly simple but difficult to pinpoint: hire in-house. Building your own team of trusted, reliable people is key to scaling efficiently. While external services convince you to spend the most for the least results, hiring in-house does the opposite. That has repeatedly been the best use of money and, surprisingly, the cheaper option compared to most agencies.
A case for building something you love
Grind culture tells you to focus on building productive habits to be productive. But if you spend all your time building productive habits, you're not actually focusing on productivity itself. I've never taken cold showers to build better apps — and hopefully, my spelling this out demonstrates how ridiculous it is to assume the two connect!
Genuine curiosity in what you do is most helpful. I found a real love for building things; it's something I've always done as a kid, but never fully expressed as an adult through building software. When I found Bubble, I felt like a kid again. Each new thing I learned was fun; the more I learned, the more excited I became. I had dreams about building, and it was the first thing I did in the morning and the last at night. Money was a long-term goal that simmered in the background while my day-to-day goal was simply building my product better.
I would encourage anyone looking to build something to do that. Find the part you can't stop thinking about and go all-in. And the parts you don't like? Find a co-founder or partner!
I think focusing on money without focusing on the process leads to a spiral. A million paths can make you money, and if that's your only chase, you'll never truly become great at something. You'll just chase the next money-making opportunity. You may as well find what you are obsessed with doing. You'll actually wind up making more money doing that.
Three important learnings along the way
Three things I learned along the way:
From day zero, build optimizing for the “best-case scenario.” If 100,000 people signed up today, could your app handle it? Or will you need to rethink your pricing model and tech debt when it happens?
Don’t get too attached. If I had not gone through six ideas before Faceless, I would still be trying to make my first idea work. Each failed idea teaches you something new, and your initial idea may not have the viability you originally thought. Failing fast is a win-win.
Stay bootstrapped. This forces you to build lean and focus on value. If your idea is valuable to others, you can scale healthily. If not, you can move on or adapt quickly. You have options.
Let yourself explore reely
If I were starting over today, I would only vibe code. I was early to no-code, building with tools that still required technical knowledge, manual setup, and architectural thinking/planning. Now, AI can do all of that for you. I highly recommend leaning heavily into that. Use Lovable!
However, in a world where anyone can build products, you should also think about your unique offering that sets you apart. To start, think about what you excel at, know well, or have strong connections in. Or if you're like me, partner with anyone who has a great idea and build aggressively for ALL spaces! Let your partner be the one with domain expertise while you focus on building the best possible product for it.
I also recommend that you don't get too attached to one idea. Had I not gone through six ideas, I would have never landed on a million-dollar business. I know too many founders who are still going all-in on one idea that isn't getting off the ground. Honestly, sometimes, moving on and pivoting is the best thing you can do. It saves you time and resources from beating a dead horse. No one remembers your failures; just pick yourself up and move on to bigger and better. And you'll know when it's right because everything will feel easier (users are more interested, willing to pay sooner, naturally searching for you... etc.).
Also, please let yourself explore freely. Fully exploring my curiosities has led me to where I am today. From building mobile app games to growing a TikTok account to 30M views to having over 400 songwriting placements on TV to building a million-dollar business — none of that would have been possible if I hadn't just explored.
Nobody has everything figured out, and anyone who says they do is either delusional or lying. Each new curiosity leads to new skills and ways of approaching problems.
Even if it feels like a waste of time, allow it. It may wind up being the best time you could have spent.
What's next?
I want to grow my business as much as possible and achieve my first exit. Then, I'd likely repeat the process, focusing on building new ideas that help people, potentially in new spaces like B2B tools. I am also very interested in exploring hardware in the near future and understanding that world from a consumer standpoint.
In the meantime, for Faceless, my goal is to make it the absolute best faceless channel tool in the market. We were the first to do it; now, with copycat competitors, we have to consistently be the best.
Separately, I also really love the idea of making a full video game and would love to spend some time doing that later.
You can hear more about the lessons, challenges, and personal anecdotes while building my company on my Substack. Or you can keep up with me on Instagram.
You can also learn more about Faceless and try it for free at Faceless.video.
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