How Jordan Hughes built a template biz to nearly 100,000 users within 3 years

Hi, Hazel from Juicy Ideas here. 👋

I first discovered Jordan while browsing Gumroad’s bestsellers to see who's actually making money on Gumroad and how (don't judge!). Number #14 on the list was a guy called Jordan Hughes whose digital templates sold 100,000 times and are $119 each. 👀 So of course I went down the rabbit hole to figure out how he did it.

This is what I found:

• How Jordan Hughes went from beginner to leading expert in 3 years
• Why most founders should NOT move fast and break things
• How to become the niche of one with no competitors
• What you MUST do if you are building boilerplates/templates like Marc Louvion

Who is Jordan Hughes?

Jordan Hughes is the founder of Untitled UI and cofounder of Himalayas.

Most professionals take years, if not decades to become known experts in their field. Jordan however was only introduced to the world of product design in 2019 when he stumbling across the book Refactoring UI.

Within 3 years, he built one of the most popular UI kits in the market.

How he built Untitled UI to nearly 100,000 users within 3 years:

1. Invest in transformational relationships – Your best opportunities will come from people who already know, like and trust you. Find people you admire and work well with, and stick to them over the long term.

2. It’s not about productivity – Forget trying to do more. Find ways to cut out shallow work in your life to get extremely good at your craft in a much shorter time horizon.

3. Sweat the details – Sharing half-baked MVPs isn’t always the right approach. Jordan shows us when it is important to focus on quality and allowing your best work to define you.

4. Leverage “free” – There is another reason why you should offer a free product or lead magnet as part of product ecosystem. We will look what this is, how Jordan implements “free” at Untitled UI and how you can use it to your advantage too.

5. Make clean, reusable assets – If your users rely on your tool to build their own projects, or they need to learn to interact with your tool in any way, always try to follow the industry’s best practices when you build. This is important and it is more than just making your tool user-friendly.

Let’s look at each in detail:

1. Invest in transformational relationships

In the book “Who Not How“, Dan Sullivan calls these transformational relationships. In essence, your biggest breakthrough will come from a handful of critical relationships in your life.

For Jordan - the first is Abi, who persuaded him to join a FinTech startup together as employee #1 and #2. They worked together at Spaceship for 3 years, and then again at another startup, Upguard before eventually cofounding Himalayas together.

The second was his ex-boss at Spaceship who gave him a role as Head of Design at his new cyber security startup, Upguard because he trusted Jordan to figure things out even without proven expertise.

This is great news for many indie hackers who are self-professed introverts.

Instead of forming many shallow relationships, find people you admire and work well with, and build great stuff together.

2. It’s not about productivity

Have you ever done the math on the 10,000-hour rule? If not you will be shocked to learn that it will take you TEN years to get good at a second career.

The shortcut (if there is one!), is to leverage your brain's capacity to do deep work.

This is how Jordan managed to become perhaps one of the most well-known product designers whose design kits are used by thousands of product designers worldwide in just 3 years.

What he said in an interview with Relume stuck with me since -

"Most meetings are scheduled because nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions. So they schedule meetings. Everyone wants to have meetings to plan and to procrastinate. "

Be absolutely ruthless about protecting your most valuable asset – your time.

3. Sweat the details

Sweat the details and let you best work define you

By the time Jordan created Untitled UI, there were already plenty of UI kits in the market. So he started Untitled UI with the intention of making a product that was 2 times better than what’s already out there.

Most startups nowadays operate with a “move fast and break things” mentality. Everyone races to share half-baked MVPs and iterate on the fly.

However, if you are NOT building something new and innovative, you SHOULD sweat the details and focus on being the best because you can't afford not to.

4. Leverage free

Of course, this strategy isn’t new.

Most founders offer a free tier/product to get customers through the door.

But Jordan takes it one step further. Instead of just sharing free icons and templates, he uses his free product to educate his customers

This establishes Untitled UI as an authority in the customer's mind.

Here's an example:

When you get access to The Untitled UI free Figma kit, you will see this.

Let’s zoom into one of the panels:

As you can see, each of the panels is a mini-lesson.

Use your free product as an opportunity to educate your target customers. Teach your target customers to see the world from your perspective. That’s how you become a niche of one.

5. Make clean, reusable assets

If you are inspired by people like Marc Louvion and are now building your own boilerplate, remember to always use popular naming conventions and adopt industry best practices.

For Jordan, the best practice is called Client First.

1. It’s a cheat code for becoming an expert quickly

You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Every time you set out to build something, start by googling “best practice for [x]” and just copy what works.

2. It’s easier to hand over projects

Someone has to pick up your work and use it - whether it's your customers, freelancers or future buyer of your startup. Make their lives easier by keeping everything standardised.

What's Next

You can read the original article here, or the one about Marc Louvion. Don't forget to sign up to get notified when a new issue of Juicy Ideas drop!