After my last update of breaking $1k MRR, I got a lot of good feedback acknowledging that it was a hard path with a lot of failures to get there, and that people shouldn't get frustrated with taking a little bit longer to get there.
Since then, I have seen a lot more threads on IH about people giving up because they only reached $150 MRR in their first three months, or nobody signed up for their product after their big ProductHunt launch. So, let's sit down for another lesson in learning how to build businesses.
It takes a lot of time, and a lot of patience. This month, 2.5 years into building mentorcruise.com, I have achieved 50% growth for the second consecutive month. How did I do it? I don't really know why it's happening now, and not a year ago. I iterated, I experimented, I talked to a lot of people, and at some point, after 2,500 commits to the codebase, over 100 blogposts and recruiting almost 300 mentors by typing out thousands of emails, I might be a little bit closer to the mysterious Product-Market Fit than a year ago. Close enough that people post about it and tell their friends.
But honestly, MentorCruise is a product that has grown very, very slowly for a long time. It went from $200 MRR to $300 MRR, then to $250 MRR to $350 MRR, back to $200 MRR. Over the years, I learned more about my own business, what works and what doesn't and came to the point where this is actually useful to people.
I understand that it's discouraging to launch your baby on PH, get 10 upvotes, no traffic and no customers. Believe me, been there. But giving up after a few months is no attitude that leads to something. If you believe in the thing, try to nudge it into the right direction.
So, 50% growth this month. How did I do it? I don't know dude. 2.5 years of preparation, patience, disappointments and grit. I'm sure you can get there too.