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How scratching my own itch (twice) helped me generate $300,000 in revenue.

I am a serial entrepreneur, so far, I've started 5 companies, out of which 4 have been acquired. I recently sold my 5th company for $XXX,XXX. This is the story of how I came up with the ideas for my company #4 and #5.

Problem:
I started investing in crypto back in 2013 when Bitcoin was $300 and Ethereum was $10. I was really invested in the space and came across a crypto-currency trading bot that had great reviews. The bot connected to various exchanges such as Binance, KuCoin, Poloniex, and automated trading on your behalf using technical indicators that you feed or provided by the crypto bot or 3rd party advisors.

Once I signed up, they sent me the installation instructions for the bot. You were required to -

  1. Buy a VPS
  2. Install Node, Java, PM2
  3. Download and install the bot
  4. Register your license key and exchange API using their Discord Bot
  5. Make changes to the application.properties file
  6. Configure PM2 to manage the bot
  7. Manually update the bot when they released a new version
  8. Make sure the bot is running, if it crashed, you were responsible to get it up and running again.

While I have a technical background, I still found the setup process to be complicated. I joined the setup channel on Discord and saw that a lot of users faced the same challenge.

I used a script to scrape all the messages in the channel, analyzed the data, and saw that setting up the bot was indeed a real pain point for the users. Like any good entrepreneur, I started speaking to the potential customers but no one replied to me as I did not have any credibility in the discord group.

I decided to get in touch with one of the co-founders of the bot, explained the problem, showed them the analyzed data. One day went by, no response. Two days, no response. On the third day, he responded with - We are already working on a solution. My heart sank.

A week passed by but I wasn't able to move on. I felt that I needed to create this solution, irrespective of the outcome.

Solution:
I spent the next 2-3 weeks studying the feasibility of the idea, creating the basic architecture of the whole system, talking to developer friends, finding out the most cost-effective way to develop the system so I can turn a profit.

I hired a developer to write the code for the MVP. It took around a month but I was very pleased with the end result.

The manual process of buying a VPS and getting the bot to work took a technical user around 30-45 minutes but with my solution, everything was done in under 30 seconds. Mind=Blown!

I created a demo video of my system and shared it with the crypto company, this time I heard from the other co-founder who loved the system and agreed to list my service on their website as well as promote the service on their discord group.

The results were great, I signed up my first user in under 24 hours. End of the first month the venture was generating around $1500 in MRR. End of 3 months, the revenue jumped to $2500. The crypto company was really happy with my system, this is when I pitched the idea of integrating my system with theirs instead of selling it as a different solution. This would mean their users don't have to buy two different systems, login into two different websites to manage their bot. They loved the idea. After a month, I was ready to launch the new integration. The response was phenomenal. In 6 months the venture was generating $7000 in MRR. After 18 months, I got a buy-out offer from them which I accepted. The solution I developed is now actively used by more than 500 users and is now a core offering.

This turned out to be a long post. Why don't you follow me on Twitter: @sagarpatil so that you can be notified when I post the details about my recent venture that was acquired?
You can find more about me here: https://sagarpatil.com
If you are looking for a Tech Co-Founder or a Product Manager, I'm currently available to take on a new challenge.

  1. 1

    Awesome story! Why did you decide to sell?

    1. 2

      There was a problem, I solved it. The business was almost running itself, no new challenges for me. The offer I received was good.

  2. 1

    Great story, what do you think you'd have done if founders wouldn't want to support your solution, or even going against it?

    1. 1

      In that case, I would have used paid channels such as Google Ads and would have collaborated with influencers in crypto space. Some of them have huge following and if they recommended my solution, it would definitely bring in a lot of customers. A lot of telegram/discord groups also allow paid sponsorship posts, that would have been another way. I hope that answers your question.

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