Theo Browne on how he's bringing in over $1M/yr as a creator and founder

As a creator, Theo Browne is bringing in roughly $276,000/yr. As a founder, T3 Chat alone is bringing in a seven-digit ARR — and he's got several other products to boot.

Here's Theo on how he's doing it. 👇

Wearing many hats

I'm a nerd, a software developer for nearly two decades, a popular tech YouTuber, CEO of T3 Tools, and an investor. I work on many projects.

I currently focus on my YouTube channel and T3 Tools' products (T3 Chat & T3 Code). We still maintain our other products (Ping.gg, UploadThing, PicThing), but they are less of a focus since they already serve our needs.

T3 Chat achieved seven-digit ARR last year. While none of our other products approach T3 Chat's revenue, a few have similar reach.

T3 Code has over 60,000 users in just a few months, but it is open source and not monetized.

Building better products

Most of my businesses share the same core motivation: I wasn't happy with existing options, so I built my own.

I didn't like the dev content on YouTube. It focused too much on beginner devs, offering very little for experienced software engineers. I created my channel to focus on more senior topics, and it blew up immediately.

I didn't like the tools creators used for collaborative content. They focused too much on people who barely knew what content was, and they didn't integrate well with professional tools like OBS. Twitch wouldn't let me build the tools creators needed, so I quit to do it myself. I built my own solution (Ping) and got into Y Combinator, but then I realized the creator market sucked and stopped focusing on it.

I didn't like the AI chat apps blowing up in 2024, so I made my own. Many others agreed, as T3 Chat grew faster than any product I'd made before. In two weeks, it generated more revenue than all our other products combined. I believe we motivated both OpenAI and Anthropic to significantly improve their products.

I didn't like the AI dev tools we used daily to build software. Cool apps like Codex would launch, then fill with slop and slow to a crawl. I wanted a more reliable, customizable, minimal solution I could trust over time. We built T3 Code as that minimal, reliable OSS option.

Two business models

I have two main "businesses," and they generate revenue very differently.

My Y Combinator-backed startup (T3 Tools Inc) generates most of its revenue from monthly subscriptions to T3 Chat. Our GTM strategy focuses on understanding user demand for AI chat apps, and it leverages my reach for distribution.

My content arm is funded almost entirely by sponsors. I make ~$8k/month from Twitter ads, ~$9k/month from YouTube ads and memberships, and $4k/month from Twitch ads and subscribers. This sounds like a lot, but my payroll costs are over $80k/month, so we rely on sponsors to survive.

Building two businesses sucks

Running two very different businesses sucks.

People think being "famous" makes success easy. Those people are neither famous nor successful. They don't know what's going on. Making a successful startup is a moonshot. It requires 110% of your focus and effort. Anything less, and you're a bad boss.

Making a successful YouTube channel is a moonshot. It requires 110% of your focus and effort. Anything less, and you're a bad creator.

I'm capable of 120% focus and effort. Splitting it across the businesses feels like a suicide mission. I'm constantly behind. I'm constantly disappointing my team. If I dropped either the startup or the content, I would perform 10x better in the other.

There's an issue, though: I genuinely love doing both. My content is better when I'm building every day. My software is better when I have places to vent and rant about it. The distribution is nice too.

To be clear: It is possible to be successful without 60+ hour weeks for each business. It is NOT possible to scale them without more focus.

Live validation

I probably paced ten miles in my office before the T3 Code architecture settled.

I was uncertain about certain technologies, architectures, or product directions. So, I quickly spun up prototypes using existing AI dev tools. I ruled out a ton of options before we even initialized the official repository.

When it comes to validation, I also have an incredible audience of developers who are super receptive to my ideas and thought processes. Whenever I'm curious if demand exists for something I'm doing, I bring it up on stream and see how my chat feels about it.

It's hard to beat 2,000+ people watching you live, excited to share their thoughts on what you're doing!

The right audiences can help with both growth and hiring

I am popular on the internet and build good products. Those are my greatest advantages.

My following is how I grow. It's great for sales.

And it's good for hiring too — many of the best devs in the world follow my work. I will never be limited by applicants. I can hit up most of the best devs in the industry and convince them to quit and join me within a month.

Get a job (the connections are everything)

Here's my advice: Get a job.

You'll learn 10x more and make the connections you need to succeed long term. I'd never have been successful with either my content or my startup without the five years I put in as an engineer at Twitch. My teammates helped me grow, excited me, and helped me stay afloat (with investments) when I eventually quit to do my own thing.

Your connections are the most important thing you can have. If most of your friends are online indie hackers, you're ngmi. Get a real job, and surround yourself with awesome people who want to build shit. It will help more than you can ever imagine.

What's next?

From here, I plan to keep everything moving without dying. I've never been so busy in my life. It's hard to think beyond 1-2 months ahead; Everything changes too fast to plan beyond that.

If I can complete the work I have on my plate, we will win. If I can't, we will probably lose. I am the bottleneck. My team is executing beyond my wildest dreams. All I have to do is prevent myself from blocking them.

If you want to follow along, my YouTube channel offers the most value by far. My new podcast, Nerd Snipe, also provides great info for builders in the dev and AI space. Or you can follow me on Twitter.