Book 1: Screaming into the void ($100/month, years 1-2)
Author: Alex West
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Not Business Advice

How I made a million from my personal projects

Book 1: Screaming into the void

($100/month, years 1-2)

Preface

Before we begin. A disclaimer.

1.
Zero advice

Most advice is bullshit. Or someone trying to sell you something.

So I'm not going to give you any advice in this book. I want that to be clear from the start.

You only learn by doing. Not by studying. Listening. Or even reading books like this one.

So when you're done, close this book and go build a business. Experiment. Try things. And learn.

2.
I don't own any of these ideas

If you find that I'm talking about things that you have thought, said, or even written before, I believe you.

Don't be stupid like me, I sometimes get mad when that happens.

At the end of the day, you are reading this.

So we are somewhat similar.

3.
I am not an author

As you can already tell, I am not a professional writer. And these books get better over time. So hang in there.

Actually, I wasn't intending to write a book. I just wrote daily for years. And looking back, I realized that so many things had happened.

I started building my first product at 20. Became self employed at 25. Hit a million dollar net worth at 27. Made my first million at 29. Burned out and scaled down my business at 30 to write these books.

In the meantime, I invented software that helps people with epilepsy. Worked at an MIT startup and with NASA. Completed a marathon and a triathlon. Competed in Muay Thai, kickboxing and BJJ. Became part of a Cambridge research study. Traveled and lived around the world. And even got to have coffe with one of the inventors of the internet.

Now I am combining all these daily blogs into a story.

4.
This is not a playbook

Sure, I was lucky enough to stumble into some success.

But that doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. I'm afraid I don't have any of the answers that you are looking for.

I was and still am a total idiot. And I just kept going and got lucky. You'll see that very clearly in these books.

Cause luck is a real factor. And if anyone tells you it's not, they are full of shit.

5.
Too personal, too much information

Finally, this book might become too personal at times.

You can skip those parts.

If you actually end up reading these books to completion, you will know me better than some of my closest friends.

Which is weird. I know. But hey, at least you can call me your friend. And I mean that.

Message me and we can have a chat.

So now, let's begin, my friend.

Table of contents

Introduction

1. Year 0: The Spark

2. The Next Facebook

3. Going Indie

Year 1: Shotgun Strategy

1. January | MMAmatchups

2. February | MultiNewTab

3. March | TalentShare

4. Finding & quitting a remote job

5. April | RemoteJuniorClub

6. Finding a pattern

7. My first successful launches

8. May | GitGardener

9. May | MakerFeed

10. Making my first dollar

11. Starting to believe

12. June and July | Telemonetize

13. Getting praise by my peers

14. Focusing on GitGardener and Telemonetize

15. July and September 2018: Scammers and Pornstars

16. Abandoning GitGardener and Telemonetize

17. October | CryptoSubscriptions

18. November '18 - December '18 | Epilepsy Blocker

19. Year 1 Recap

Year 2: Sniper Strategy

1. Jan and Feb | Epilepsy Blocker

2. Setting north star metrics

3. Hitting $200/month

4. March and April | Ouch

5. A lucky break, at last

6. Going B2B With Epilepsy Blocker

7. Non Profits

8. Clinics

9. TV Channels

10. Business meeting with huge TV Channel

11. Clean slate, impostor syndrome

12. Going round in circles

13. July | Orthios

14. August | LocalTweetTime

15. August | IndieChannels

16. September | Epilepsy Blocker for Designers

17. September | DuckDuckSometimes

18. September | Splash Search

19. Enough! Give me some time to think!

20. Year 2 Recap

Appendix

1. What's next

2. Time travel

Introduction

This is not a success story. This is not a humble brag.

Two years ago, I start with the goal of reaching $500/month from my personal projects or through a remote job.

The idea was that I could survive and live in a country like Thailand. Travel. And be free.

Of course, easier said than done:

• 6 months in, I'm at $50/mo, riding a huge wave of momentum.

• 1 year in, I'm at $200/mo with 3 profitable products.

• Now, 2 years in, I have shut down 2 of 3 profitable products and I'm back at $100/mo.

Going around in circles. Wondering what to do next.

During these two years:

• I have pimps, scammers, arms dealers, and porn stars as customers.

• I'm scouted and offered a job at an MIT startup that works with NASA.

• I have business meetings with the CTOs of multimillion-dollar TV networks.

• And question my ethics and morals multiple times.

This is my story.

Year 0: The spark

It's summer. I'm lying down on the sofa at my dad's house.

I'm bored out of my brain. Watching video tutorials.

Learning how to build a mobile app, I have an idea.

"Alex, the neighbor's son is back from US. Visiting his parents for the summer. He's in tech too, you know. Maybe you should go and ask him questions", my dad told me.

I was in my first year studying Computer Science, so it wasn't the worst idea in the world.

I went. And I'm so happy that I did. My life changed forever.

Turns out he wasn't just a guy in tech. He was living the startup dream.

He had moved from Greece to San Francisco. Had raised millions from top investors. And was planning to take over the world.

I explained to him that I'm I had just started building my first app. So he flipped into founder mode and gave me a 3 hour masterclass.

I don't remember much. And most went right over my head. But I remember trying to hold back my smile because I was getting so excited. Even though I was trying to act cool and tough.

He explained to me that you learn by doing, not studying.

As a 20 year old, I was inspired. I was hooked.

I couldn't even sleep that night. Spinning around. Looking at the clock. Waiting for the morning to come.

Before this moment, all I wanted to do is go out and party. And share crazy stories with my friends the next day about what we did.

In other words, I was lost.

But now I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted to build the next Facebook.

The next Facebook

For the next two years, I built and ran a simple mobile app.

Well, in my mind it wasn't simple at all. It was the next Facebook.

And I actually believed it. I remember day dreaming, talking in the mirror, pretending to be giving interviews to some of the biggest startup podcasts in the world. Preparing my story.

I made all the stereotypical mistakes:

• Kept my idea secret, only told my best friend after making him (literally) swear to keep it a secret and tell no one.

• Perfected my app for 2 years before showing it to anyone.

• Assumed marketing would the easy part and left it for last.

It was your typical university student idea.

It was called "City Vibes" and it helped you decide where to go out and party with your friends.

Bars and clubs could upload real time photos. And people could see them on a map and decide where to go.

You could see if the place was busy or not. If it had girls or not. What type of music they were playing. The price of a drink or a bottle. If there was an entrance fee, etc.

It took me:

• 2 years

• 10,000s of lines of code

• 100s of cigarettes

• and a few all nighters

But now it was ready. At last.

Before launching, I also:

• Printed business cards.

• Designed flyers and posters.

• And came up with my global expansion plan.

These things are important. You cannot skip them.

Long story short, it went nowhere. Had a few conversations. Drove around the city and handed out flyers. Got a few clubs and bars to signup and upload a few photos. Ran a few ads on Facebook. And that was it. A few weeks later it was dead.

Years in the womb. Just to live for a few weeks.

But hey, at least I learned how to code. And I was also able to join a startup accelerator with this product.

I needed help.

Going indie

At the startup accelerator, I liked the people. I'm actually still friends with some to this day.

There were mentors, investor presentations, and a community of other founders to guide us and help us grow.

But everyone was talking about raising money from investors. No one was talking about making money. And most importantly, no one was making money.

That's odd. Meanwhile, that guy with the funded startup?

His company shuts down and he is back in Greece now, building his next startup. I think he's bootstrapped. I think he's doing great.

I run through the numbers and realize that we're playing a losing game. A game not built for us to win. But for investors. Fair play to them, but I don't want to play.

I also learned an important lesson at the accelerator.

To be ruthless with my ideas. And if they don't make sense, kill them. Yes, kill my babies.

With the help of my mentors, I realized that City Vibes needed funding and that it wasn't worth pursuing.

It would only generate profit at large scale, given the business model. And it was in a network effects market, an all-or-nothing model, either you go viral or you die.

I decided to kill it. Years of work down the drain.

Ironically, I slept like a baby that night. With a smile on my face. I felt lighter.

Because after all, I was not my idea.

Now I had a blank slate. And anything was possible again.

I randomly find 2 videos online:

•
DHH's talk at Startup School

•
Pieter Levels' talk at GrowthTribe

They explain the obvious. Which somehow wasn't obvious to me.

Business hasn't magically changed because we now have the internet.

The goal is to sell and make a profit, ideally from day one. Not take over the world with a free app, raise capital and all that crap.

I'm nodding and smiling all the way through, everything makes so much sense.

I discover the "indie hacker" movement on Twitter. A bunch of people building tiny businesses and sharing behind the scenes stuff, like how they built it, how much profit they made, etc

"Who the hell uses Twitter? Anyway, this is cool. I'm in."

That's it. I'm going indie.

Year 1: Shotgun Strategy

In my first year I follow the "Shotgun" strategy.

Build many products, launch fast and throw virtual spaghetti at the wall until something sticks.

And when something sticks, double down.

January | MMAmatchups

Starting out, I went with what was at the time my biggest passion after tech, MMA.

I remember reading through YouTube and Reddit comments and noticing one thing. Everyone loves to talk about who should fight who next.

So, I built MMA-matchups. A simple website that scrapes all fighters from the UFC roster, shows all possible matchups, and you can upvote the ones you wanted to see.

I built the website in two weeks. I launched it on Reddit but got banned for self promotion.

I cold emailed a few MMA journalists, nothing. Zero replies.

I started posting on Instagram for marketing. Got a few signups and hundreds of visitors, but nothing. It was super hard to get the ball rolling and it would die off as soon I took the foot of the gas.

Like, straight away. In a day.

I couldn't see this making any money, nor that people were crazy about it, so I abandoned it at the end of the month.

• Time spent: 1 month

• Revenue: $0

• Visitors: 300

• Signups: 30

• 0 Twitter/X followers

February | MultiNewTab

This was a weird one because I had a huge time constraint.

I wanted to build a chrome extension that allows you to use multiple "New Tab" extensions at the same time. Something that I wanted myself.

I had 1 week to build it, as opposed to 3 weeks that I thought I needed.

But I made it in time. And something tells me that if I actually had 3 weeks, it would have taken 3 weeks to build.

I launch it on Product Hunt, but at the time I had no audience so I couldn't create any real buzz and it eventually got buried.

But it did ok, it actually got 100 users. But I only found out about that 10 days later, when the chrome dashboard refreshed. Until that point I was deflated.

This gave me confidence to keep going.

I found it magical that software I wrote was alive and running on hundreds of computers around the world, right now.

• Time spent: 1 month

• Revenue: $0

• Upvotes on Product Hunt: 67

• Installs: 100+

• 0 Twitter/X followers

March | TalentShare

After products #1 and #2, I realized that my ideas were not targeted to people that would actually pay.

I wanted to sell to businesses, not individuals. My next idea stemmed from real life.

A few months earlier, I had applied for a remote developer position at Product Hunt. It was my dream job.

I talked to the CTO and he told me that although they didn't hire me, I was in the top 10 of 400 candidates.

And that he could share my details to other companies to help me out.

I don't know if this was true or he said it to make me feel better about the rejection. But I agreed. Thanked him. And it worked. Around five companies emailed me with job opportunities.

Unfortunately, no one hired me. But I got close.

And it gave me an idea.

A platform for companies to share the top candidates they couldn't hire.

The platform would be 'Free' for anyone that shares a list of candidates. And 'Paid' for companies that want to have access to the lists without sharing.

I built a landing page, drove traffic to it and collected emails.

From the emails I collect, I see that no one is a founder or works at a company willing to share applicants.

I cold email every single founder of a company that shares any type of data I can find. I find them on Twitter, IndieHackers, TransparentStartups, Baremetrics Open Startups, etc.

Again, no one replied. No one wants to talk to me. As a final resort, I message the CTO again, and he was cool and kind to reply to me.

He told me that a friend of his had tried the same idea but it was very hard to get hiring managers to share applicants.

I stopped working on the product because I ran out of people to reach out. And had no one else to chat with about it.

Finally, I could not launch an empty platform on PH, Reddit or wherever. An empty platform is not an MVP.

• Time spent: 1 month

• Revenue: $0

• Sign ups: 0

• 0 Twitter/X followers

Finding & quitting a remote job

I might have not found a remote job through this whole process, but I found a remote job through a friend.

A friend from university was interviewed for a junior developer position. And told him that they were open to remote work.

He didn't get the job. But he made an intro for me.

The company was in my hometown. They built Wordpress websites for local businesses. Car rental companies, theme parks, supermarkets, anything really.

That alone should've been a red flag.

But I was desperate and wanted a win. Even a small one. So I gave it a shot, interviewed and got the job.

Who knows? Maybe I could work for them, move to Thailand and build my own projects on the side.

I thought that it might work out. But it didn't.

I hated it. I was moving buttons around all day. And my cringey boss would call me every 1 hour to ask me if I'm coding.

(phone ringing almost every hour)...

• "What's up, Champ? Are you coding?"

• "Yes, I'm just changing the buttons on the..."

• "Cool, talk later.. Champ!"

Literally, 5-10 times a day. And he always called me "champ". Wtf.

I lasted one month. The job sucked and they paid me €450/month ($500/month).

All cash. All under the table. Greek style.

Actually, I had to go find him, pressure him and collect the money in person cause he started telling me that I didn't hold my end of the deal and that I don't deserve it.

At this point, I knew that I wanted to reach $500/month through my own projects. Having a remote job like this one would not cut it.

I wouldn't be happy.

April | RemoteJuniorClub

Ok, the job was an epic fail.

But I was a little proud of myself. Cause I did actually find a remote job, which was one of my goals for the year.

And while finding that job, I realized something.

Junior remote positions were super hard to find. Companies don't trust juniors to work from home.

So I built a community for junior developers that wanted to find a remote job. These types of communities were super trendy at the time.

People could log their tasks and there was a leaderboard with:

• number of job applications sent per member

• number of side projects built per member

• number of blog posts posted per member

There was also a chat room. And a job board where I scrapped all junior remote job posts from the internet.

I was envisioning building a community and then having companies pay to post a job. I knew of a design community that was making millions in this way.

I spin up a landing page again and collect some emails.

Out of the 150 emails collected, 8 actually joined the community. And it got a spark of life. It was alive!

But if you don't push it, especially in the beginning, a community will collapse.

I realized that running a community and chatting online is not who I am. I've never really chatted online with people or had online friends. I abandon the product.

• Time spent: 1 month

• Revenue: $0

• Sign ups: 10

• 0 Twitter/X followers

Noticing a pattern

It's May and 1/3 of the year has gone by already.

I take a moment to reflect and notice something.

3 out of 4 products were communities or marketplaces.

Which made my life harder. They are hard to grow. Because in the beginning, without users, they are worthless.

• City Vibes needs clubs to be uploading photos to be useful. Otherwise it's a graveyard.

• TalentShare needs companies to be sharing candidates to be useful. Otherwise it's useless.

• RemoteJuniorClub needs developers in the chat room to be useful. Otherwise it's a ghost town.

I should have known this after wasting 2 years building "City Vibes". But I still made the same mistake.

The only product that was different was MultiNewTab. And it was my most successful product.

It offered the same value, regardless of users.

I had another look at the dashboard. It had 200 users now.

My first successful launches

I start building again.

This time products.

Not communities or marketplaces.

May | GitGardener

I was really bummed out at this moment. Nothing is taking off. And it feels like I'm screaming into the void.

So I go through my idea list and pick the easiest one to build.

It wrote "Automated commits everyday on GitHub to make my github green".

This was not a business idea. But I could build it in a week and try launching on Product Hunt one more time.

Also, it was a product that didn't matter how many users it had. It worked regardless.

I still had zero followers on Twitter. But like a true psychopath, I decided to tweet out loud to myself about what I was building and gave myself a week to do it.

Funny, cause it worked. Saying it out loud publicly made quitting harder, even when no one was listening.

I name the product GitGardener and launch on Product Hunt on a Sunday.

And (to my huge surprise) it was a success!

It ended up as the number 3 product of the day with hundreds of signups.

I could not believe it. It was mind blowing and humbling.

All these years planning to build the next big thing.

And as soon as I let go of all expectations and just focus on building something small, this happens.

The 2 ideas I thought of the least, MultiNewTab and GitGardener, have been my most successful ones.

And all my big ideas, like City Vibes, TalentShare and RemoteJuniorClub, went nowhere.

I even got 100 followers on Twitter from this launch.

I loved it. I decided to build and launch 1 product every week, sharing all the behind the scenes of building and launching it.

• 4,000 visitors

• 400 signups

• Number 3 product of the day

• Bashed on Reddit, but didn't care

May | MakerFeed

Full of energy and motivation from the previous launch, I start building again.

It's Monday. And I'm launching on Sunday again.

I pick another idea from my idea list. One that looks easy to build.

It's called 'Maker Feed' and it's a website to find and follow the best makers that are building products on Twitter.

I build and laucnh it while tweeting every step of the process.

I launch on Product Hunt and it ended up as the number 1 product!

What the hell?! What is happening?! And why?!

Is Sunday just my lucky day? Or is this format working?

This gave me even more motivation and an even bigger audience.

But, again, I could not imagine people paying for this. This was not a serious business idea. So I didn't even entertain the idea of trying to make money from it.

Bye bye.

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue: $0

• Number 1 on Product Hunt with 350+ upvotes

• Went from 100 to 200 Twitter/X followers

Making my first dollar

One morning, someone asked me on Twitter if GitGardener could work with private repositories.

Basically, he wanted to have a green GitHub while hiding all the stupid automated daily commits.

I said no. But I thought about it. And it was a good idea.

I realized it would be fun if I built it as a premium feature.

Charge $5/month for it and see what happens.

I did and launched the new feature. No one paid in the first 24 hours or so. So I kinda forgot about it.

But then... I was blown away. GitGardener went from $0 to $50/month in one week. All free users that upgraded.

Crazy. Building in public, moving fast and having low expectations seemed to work for me.

Again on Twitter, an engineer working at GitHub encouraged me to apply for the GitHub Marketplace. A place where millions of developers would see my app if I was accepted.

To be honest, I was kinda surprised. I thought people working at GitHub would hate this product. It's a hack. Instead, they had no problem. They found it funny.

I tried, but in the end, GitHub did not accept me in their Marketplace.

Who knows what would have happened if they had.

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue went from $0 to $50/month in one week

• 200 Twitter/X followers

Starting to believe

As you can see, May was by far my best month:

• I found a remote job, even though it sucked.

• And I reached $50/month through my projects.

I actually started believing that miracles can happen after all.

Maybe my dream will come true after all, $500/month by the end of the year!

I wanted to keep up this fast pace and build other ideas from my idea list with out giving it too much thought.

Low expectations. Fast feedback loop. Building in the open. Seems to work for me.

June and July | Telemonetize

I go through my idea list again.

I'm looking for something more serious.

One of them wrote "Instantly monetize your Telegram channel or group".

I had seen countless Crypto channels on Telegram that were premium and you had to pay for access.

And I think that they handle every member and subscription manually.

So my idea was this:

• Connect your Telegram channel or group (your community)

• Connect your Stripe account (to process money)

• Automatically get a dashboard and a landing page (to manage users)

• Through the dashboard, you could tweak your products and prices, customize your landing page and have a portal where people can subscribe, manage or cancel their subscription

• When users subscribe or cancel, they are automatically added or removed from the channels or groups

Looking back, this MVP was way too complex. And the product was very hard to build.

Telegram bots. Handling payments. A website builder. Webhooks and automations.

All these were full projects by themselves.

It took two months to build (all day coding) and then I launched it on Twitter and Product Hunt.

The launch goes "viral" (for my standards at the time), but reaches the wrong people.

Hundreds of thousands of impressions. ZERO customers. And even after a week, zero free trials.

This hurt. It was almost insulting.

I realized that even a fake landing page with a "buy now" button could have done the same job.

• Time spent: 2 months

• Revenue: $0

• Front page on Product Hunt: 300+ upvotes

• "Viral" tweet with 300 likes

• Went from 200 to 300 Twitter followers

Getting praise by my peers

Getting praise from some of the people that inspired me to start this journey just 6 months later felt amazing.

I was part of the group now. I was one of the guys.

Things felt happening faster than I expected.

I felt like I was doing things the right way and that my hard work was going to pay off, in the very near future.

Specifically, Pieter Levels (@levelsio) tweeted this:

“Genius. Great work. And fast turn around time from seeing a demand in the market to building exactly what people need with great execution. 10/10”

Focusing on GitGardener and Telemonetize

This is where the going gets tough. And progress flatlines.

I decide to focus my attention on Telemonetize and GitGardener instead of launching new products.

July and September 2018: Pimps, Scammers, Arms Dealers and Pornstars

Welcome to real world.

Launching Telemonetize didn't bring any customers. I had to go and find them myself.

I find a bunch of crypto channels on Telegram and message them.

I try all the techniques I knew:

• 'The Mom Test' on some

• I ask for advice from others

• I sell directly to others

Most of them charge in crypto. And tell me that if I supported crypto payments, they would subscribe.

I take their word for it and build my own crypto payment gateway. They never subscribe. Who would've thought.

I had a small trickle of users signing up for free trials, mostly from some blogs that mentioned Telemonetize.

So I focus on those and try to make them convert.

But my customers were people I didn't want to serve at all:

• I had sleazy crypto guys that were scamming

• Betting gurus that encouraged others to gamble

• A guy that wanted to sell his Thai prostitutes through Telemonetize

• And some white dude in Central Africa with a profile picture of himself with some AK47s, from my research I think he was dealing guns.

• I even had an amateur pornstar from Germany that wanted to sell her "premium content" through Telemonetize. Basically I was building OnlyFans without knowing it, I should be a billionaire by now.

99% of my free trial users were running unethical businesses. It made me open my eyes a bit on what really happens on the internet but we sometimes forget.

They were the epitome of a bad customer. Needy for time. Asking for premium support and custom features. Rude. Stingy with their money. Used burner credit cards for free trials and asked for extra time on the free trial.

I get one customer. He is running some kind of "investing" channel. $29/month.

Abandoning GitGardener and Telemonetize

Here I am. 10 months in. And nowhere near $500/month.

At this point:

• GitGardener is at $25/month with 5 customers

• Telemonetize is at $29/month with 1 customer

• So, in total, $54/month.

Literally 10X lower than where I should be.

I have a brutal internal dialog with myself:

• GitGardener is a stupid hack

• Telemonetize is serving scammers

• And I wanna build a "real" business.

I decide to stop working on both GitGardener and Telemonetize.

I go back to the drawing board and see what has worked for me thus far.

Easy answer. Launching products at a fast pace without stressing about the idea too much.

Right?

October | CryptoSubscriptions

While working on Telemonetize, I had to build my own cryptocurrency payment system.

I won't explain how it works because it's too technical and boring.

I turned it into a separate product and launched on Product Hunt, Twitter, Hacker News and Reddit.

Again, zero signups. Disappointed.

I'm panicking right now, so I don't invest any more time in it. Plus, I hate the crypto space.

• Time spent: 2 weeks

• Revenue: $0

• Front page on Product Hunt: 100+ upvotes

• Signups: 0

November '18 - December '18 | Epilepsy Blocker

I close out the year by building a new project I had in mind.

It wouldn't be ready until early next year, because the tech behind it was, again, extremely complex. Probably too complex.

More on this later.

Year 1 Recap

Went from no product launches under my belt to $50/month. Met failures, successes and learned about the different types of customers you can have.

I was ok with my progress for the year and kept the same goal for the next one.

Reach $500/month.

• $55/month

• 8 products launched

• 2 profitable products

• First 6 months felt like a dream

• Last 6 months felt like a slug

Year 2: Sniper Strategy

This year I take the exact opposite approach.

I stop blindly building new products and try to focus on the profitable ones I have.

I also try to sell to businesses instead of individuals.

January and February | Epilepsy Blocker

Epilepsy Blocker was really hard to build. Actually, I quit many times.

But I believed in the idea. And my girlfriend at the time encouraged me cause she loved it as a project. So I kept going.

And I'm so happy that I did. Because this product ended up changing my life. You'll see how later.

It was a little tool that you installed on your browser and blocked images, videos and animated content that could trigger seizures to people with photosensitive epilepsy.

It would scan the page and hide the dangerous content before you even manage to see it.

The idea came to me from an article I read. A NYT journalist was "attacked" by a flashing GIF that sent him to the hospital.

I remember thinking while googling around:

"For sure there is something like an AdBlocker for this"

But there was nothing. So I built it myself.

For the first and only time in my life, university was useful, as I had to use:

• linear algebra

• histograms

• python packages

• optimized C code

• and so much more

I was proud of what I had built.

I had to study scientific papers, PhD theses, read broadcast telecommunication guidelines and code for months on end.

I didn't have the intention of making money off of it.

This was my invention and gift to the world.

But a few days before the launch I tested the server and noticed that it crashed with heavy use even from one user.

I realize that even with 10 users it will be unusable and cost me a lot of money too.

I add a $10/mo price tag and launch.

I launch on Reddit, in the epilepsy subreddit.

My post gets taken down in the first 2 hours. Shit. Reddit never shows me love.

But by the time it was taken down, it was already number one on the front page. It also had 7 upvotes, 2 very positive comments and 1 paying customer!

"Validation!", I thought to myself. Paying users on day one. I message the admins asking why they took it down. I explained that the people of the sub reddit were finding it interesting and useful.

Guess what happened next. They banned me from the subreddit without explaining why.

I launch on ProductHunt and Twitter, hoping to get coverage. The tweet goes "viral" with 600+ likes, 100+ retweets and 100.000 views. But it reaches the wrong audience.

Many people followed me, but it was mostly designers and software engineers that work at large companies like IBM, Google, Stripe, etc.

So the launch was a flop. Many vanity metrics to stroke your ego like followers, comments calling you a genius and a great human being, a message from an investor, but no actual customers. Zero.

I reached the wrong audience, again.

I also launched in some photosensitive epilepsy Facebook groups.

Zero customers.

Setting north star metrics

Since 3 profitable products are a lot of work to balance, I set a north star metric for each one.

•
For GitGardener
, I double the prices and since I have one paying customer for every 300 website visitors, I aim for more website visitors.

•
For Telemonetize
, since I have a trickle of free trial signups coming in, I focus on retention by talking to them and trying to address their needs.

•
For Epilepsy Blocker
, I want more visibility to validate the idea and try to find a B2B version of the product.

Hitting $200/month

GitHub is acquired by Microsoft. As a result, they make private repositories available on the free tier.

My premium plan worked with private repositories. And now so many more people could use it.

Combined with an extra $10/mo tier, GitGardener reached $130/month.

Telemonetize got a second customer and was at $58/month. I don't even remember what they did, something about Italian football matches and betting odds.

Epilepsy Blocker has one paying customer, and was at $10/month.

In total, $198/month.

March and April | Ouch

I don't have a way for Epilepsy Blocker to get new customers.

Facebook groups aren't working, Reddit is out of the question.

I go to online forums and DM people who have photosensitive epilepsy in order for them to try the service.

Something I did not know is that many people that are challenged with epilepsy also have other conditions.

For example, many are disabled, so they can't work and rely solely on benefits.

$10/mo was too much for them, they told me.

I always ended up giving it away for free. The world's worst salesperson.

Maybe I don't have a thick enough skin, but I remember someone telling me this.

"Hey man, I respect you trying to sell your product but I'm just not interested"

It fucking hurt me so much. It was true, and it hurt. I thought selling Epilepsy Blocker would feel different.

Turns out it feels worse.

I stopped trying to sell to individuals and chasing $10 checks.

I'm thinking of making B2B spin off products and making the browser extension free.

A lucky break, at last

Just like in year one, May ended up being the best month of the year.

In an unexpected way, Epilepsy Blocker ended up changing my life.

The founder of an MIT startup that worked in the epilepsy space found Epilepsy Blocker and messaged me. He wanted to talk.

My younger brother got excited.

"Dude, they're gonna buy Epilepsy Blocker! I can feel it. You are gonna be rich. How much you gonna ask for?"

My luck had been a bit brutal lately, so I was accustomed to having low expectations.

But I thought about it. Allowed myself to dream a little. And now I was seeing dollar signs too.

I started thinking about it...

"Yeah. It could make sense for them. Great PR. A userbase they could funnel into their products. A product that is useful. I think the deal is gonna go through."

While day dreaming, I'm once again imagining being interviewed. This time on Indie Hackers, a podcast about people building little businesses and changing their lives.

I'm walking by the sea front, in my hometown, talking in my head, explaining how I built Epilepsy Blocker, sold it and changed my life. Even preparing my small jokes along the way.

Of course, that never happened.

But! Something good DID happen.

They offered me a job. Yes, I know. Lame.

But it sounded like a dream job:

• They were based out of MIT. One of the founders is an MIT professor and the other founders are MIT graduates.

• They used AI and Machine Learning to save lives.

• They worked with MIT, John Hopkins and NASA.

• And had offices in Boston, Seoul and Milan, which is conveniently right next to Greece. So they offered me a position.

On one hand, I was disappointed. But given my credentials (a bullshit computer science degree from a free public university in the countryside of Greece) it was a major success.

As you can imagine, my parents were ecstatic too.

This was a real job! And they could brag about me to friends and family.

I tentatively accept. But I explain that I'm still finishing up my university degree so I'll start at the end of the year.

Of course, my goal deep inside was by the end of the year to make enough money from my personal projects. And not go.

But at least now I have a "Plan B". Which is good enough.

Sounds like a dream job. And most importantly, it's not in Greece.

I just wanna leave and travel.

Going B2B With Epilepsy Blocker

Now I have a real deadline. The end of the year.

And it's May. We are almost halfway through the year.

I'm panicking. Again.

I take a deep breath and decide to go all in on Epilepsy Blocker.

Non Profits

I start cold emailing and cold calling Epilepsy Non Profits in the US, UK and Canada.

They have large audiences and they might want to let their followers know of Epilepsy Blocker.

They tell me they would not promote my product because it's for profit. But they could run a survey on my behalf.

No bueno.

Clinics

I have an epiphany during my university class.

The idea was that I could go and ask neurological clinics directly if this software could be of ANY USE for them.

Huge stretch. But who knows? Worst case scenario, they say no.

Right after class, I go to the hospital next to my university.

I visit the neurological clinic and talk to the doctor in charge. She really likes that I had the confidence to just show up and talk.

They are super friendly, and tell me that they could possibly see a use case where the software is being used.

It was probably out of kindness because nothing ever came out of this and they never emailed me back.

I also remember her telling me that in Greece something like this would be very hard to be used, but I should look into other hospitals abroad. Yeah right, as if that's easy to do.

I cold call some other experts in Neurology in Greece.

They tell me the exact same thing. I should keep my hopes very low when it comes to innovating in Greece.

I hate the idea of blaming your surroundings, but I can't risk wasting months or years on something experts tell me cannot happen.

Finally, another neurologist shut me down on the phone because I mentioned the wrong university while explaining how my algorithm worked.

"Professor Graham Harding that you're referring to was not at Cambridge, he was at Aston University. He was my friend and he's dead now."

I tried explaining that I knew that he's dead already but I only made it worse. Way worse. I was blushing and red like a lobster.

TV Channels

I randomly find a new law that would enforce all Greek TV channels to check their content and issue a warning in between commercial breaks if the content is dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy to view.

Something like this:

"Warning, the following scenes may include flashing images that could trigger seizures."

The law would start on September 1st.

What? That's in 3 months! Destiny!

I call the Greek "Ministry of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media" to ask questions.

I go through multiple people and end up talking to the minister's secretary on the phone. She forwards my call to the lawyer in charge of this specific law.

I was kinda surprised at how easy you can reach and contact people at the top with a little persistence and an open mind.

The lawyer answers all my questions. This law is for real.

Now that I had validated this law, I messaged the CTOs of major and smaller TV channels in Greece.

I don't get a reply. Typical. But I call one of the coaches from that startup accelerator I joined a year before, on a weird hunch.

Turns out I was right, he had the perfect intro for me.

The call went something like this.

"Do you think you could help me? I can't seem to find CTOs of TV channels."

"Hang up, I'm calling the ex-CTO of a large TV channel in Greece."

"What?!"

...

Ten minutes later, my phone rings. The ex-CTO of a TV channel calls me and we arrange a coffee.

I met up with this guy. Cool guy.

We talk about London as he used to work at BBC and Bloomberg.

I explained to him what I'm building. And I explain the new law that is coming into action.

He calls the current CTO in front of me and arranges a meeting. Wow.

Business meeting with huge TV Channel

Now shit just got real. I have a meeting booked with the CTO of a multi-multi-multi-million dollar TV network in Greece.

This time, I haven't wasted months building the solution.

I'm gonna cut this deal first. And then I can build a solution that fits their needs.

I have the magic algorithm and demo ready for them.

I also conduct some research. The industry's price range for analyzing ONE(!!!!) video file is about $350!

Imagine the type of deal I could cut with a huge TV channel to check all of their content, ads, movies, etc

Millions.

I visit their offices and I only carry my laptop in a bag and a piece of paper with the new law in a transparent folder. The important parts are highlighted. I am organized.

I even wore jeans and a polo shirt to look smart.

I drive to the other side of town and find the headquarters. They treat me well, they bring me coffee, we sit down and chat.

I show them the piece of paper and go over the important parts. The CTO gives it a good look, and then he starts laughing.

"Hahahaha! This law? In Greece? They have been talking about this law for 5 years already. And I honestly don't believe it will go in effect for another 5 years. However, I have your phone number if something changes. Hahahaha."

Again, the "Greece" argument. I hate the idea of blaming your surroundings, but maybe they are right.

Years later, I still haven't seen a single photosensitive epilepsy warning on TV. And my phone never rang.

Clean slate, impostor syndrome

It's June now. Time is running out.

I get a message from an anonymous user in the chatbox of one of my products.

"You just do anything for money, don't you? Even good things, like helping with epilepsy and github commits."

In the beginning, I laugh. Is he comparing a neurological condition to github commits?

Epilepsy Blocker is cheap just to cover costs.

And GitGardener is open source and anyone can use it for free.

I go on about my day but it keeps popping in my mind.

Every single one of my products that made money is kinda controversial.

• GitGardener is considered cheeky and a hack.

• Telemonetize is basically serving scammers.

• Epilepsy Blocker is asking money from disabled people.

Is this unique to me, or could you criticize every product if you really wanted to and tried?

I decide to:

• Make Epilepsy Blocker free.

• Kill Telemonetize.

• And put GitGardener on the backburner.

It felt amazing. GitGardener made me my first dollar. Telemonetize taught me how to code complex stuff. And Epilepsy Blocker got me a fantastic job. Maybe that was enough.

Enough of this shit. Let's sell to businesses.

Going round in circles

If you start thinking, you lose.

I knew this from my Muay Thai fights.

This is exactly what happened to me here. I was thinking and doubting myself too much. So I could not confidently commit to anything I did. And the results were crap.

The rest of the year was super stressful. I don't know what strategy to pick:

• Shotgun strategy?

• Sniper strategy?

• Something in between?

Nothing seems to work. Panicking does not help either. And the shadow of a self-imposed deadline makes things even worse.

Shit, I'm six months through the second year. Maybe I'm not going to make it after all. Not even this year.

I am finishing uni and starting my full time job in January.

I have five months. Maybe I can make it.

July | Orthios

I go back to the drawing board and think about what got me results so far.

Definitely not the sniper method. Definitely the shotgun method.

I pick an idea from my idea list and build it.

It says "Uptime monitoring for chatbots", a simple service that notifies you when your chatbot is down.

It was a problem I had sometimes with the Telemonetize Telegram bot, it would go down and users would message me about it.

This would check if the bot is down every 10 minutes and notify you. I could start from Telegram and expand to other platforms in the future.

I launch on Product Hunt. Zero signups. I panic. No time to waste, on to the next one.

• Time spent: 2 weeks

• Revenue: $0

• Sign ups: 0

August | LocalTweetTime

The idea part of my brain is in full motion. I find ideas all day long, like, at least five new ones a day.

One of them was to be able to see the local time a tweet was posted. It gives a little more context to it.

A tweet posted at 4:00 AM does not mean the same thing as a tweet posted at noon, even if the text is the same.

I build a browser extension and launch it on Product Hunt, just to get that momentum going. On to the next one.

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue: $0

• Installs: 50

August | IndieChannels

I realize that I am good at building products. But suck at marketing.

I am doing research on distribution channels that I can leverage and have nice stable traffic on autopilot.

Places like the GitHub marketplace, where I almost got accepted and shown to millions of users.

I gather all of my research and turn it into a website.

I launch it on Product Hunt. It does well and gets 500+ upvotes.

But that doesn't mean anything, this isn't a business.

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue: $0

• Number 2 on Product Hunt: 500+ upvotes

September | Epilepsy Blocker for Designers

I have an idea that maybe Epilepsy Blocker could be useful for designers.

I don't jump into coding this time. I think I've learned my lesson.

I post a question on Reddit and get a shit ton of feedback. People want this.

I build it in two weeks. I launch it on the brand new Figma Marketplace and get hundreds of downloads.

I try to monetize it by adding a price, but no one converts.

I was wrong. Again.

• Time spent: 2 weeks

• Revenue: $0

• Installs: 300+

September | DuckDuckGoSometimes

DuckDuckGo is a privacy focused search engine that doesn't track you.

This is a real trend at the moment. Privacy focused tools.

I have tried using it in the past, but always find myself going back to Google.

It's good, but not a full substitute to Google yet.

I build a small chrome extension that redirects some of your Google searches to DuckDuckGo.

It gets around 250 downloads.

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue: $0

• Installs: 250

September | Splash Search

Unsplash is the biggest image directory in the world.

However, I sometimes find it hard to find a cool image for a wallpaper for my laptop. Boom, new idea.

Another browser extension. This one allows you to "advance search" unsplash.

Beyond the basic keyword search (eg. new york skyline) you can also choose orientation (vertical, horizontal) and color scheme (light, dark).

I build and launch it in a week. This also gets around 250 downloads.

However, it got copied by the platform itself. They made it part of their main product, which technically means that my product indirectly affects millions of users every year.

That's cool.

But what am I doing anyway? Are these even businesses?

• Time spent: 1 week

• Revenue: $0

• Installs: 300+

• Indirectly affects millions of users every year

Enough! Give me some time to think!

Now I'm completely lost. I'm just blindly building products.

On one hand, I'm building crap hoping to find another GitGardener that makes money.

On the other hand, I go all in on a idea I fall in love with, for months on end, with no results. Like City Vibes or Epilepsy Blocker.

I think I'm going round in circles.

Taking a step back and reflecting

At the end of the year, I decide to take a step back and reflect.

I have probably failed. I'll probably have to take that job.

I just need to know what to do next.

October | Researching

I need to understand what successful people are doing.

I listen to some podcasts on IndieHackers:

•
Justin Jackson on the power of a good market

•
Steli Efti on the importance of sales and feedback

I decide to try out what they are saying:

• Pick a good/healthy market

• Ask for feedback/advice to dig deeper

• Build a product/solution for their painpoints

I pick the cybersecurity market.

I send out cold emails. Not pitching. Asking for advice. And even offering to pay them for their time.

It converts well, I arrange about one Zoom call per day with penetration testers, security consultants and security engineers.

Everyone is super friendly, helpful, and no one accepts money from me.

Their guard is down. I learn a lot, I immerse myself into their world and start to notice patterns and common pain points.

But although I started to learn their pain points and workflows, it felt like a black box.

I did not have the confidence, experience and know-how to come up with a solution. And even if I had, I could not improve it or have a grand vision of it.

I can see the tree. But I can't see the forest.

November | Interviewing

I pick the Web Accessibility market and follow the same method.

I reach out to software engineers and designers that try to make websites accessible and usable to blind people, deaf people, people with epilepsy, etc

The difference was crazy.

• Most no one replies to my emails

• Another asks me to pay $150/hour or buy their books

• Others tell me that if it's a free product they would help with giving me advice, but if it's for profit, they have no time.

Ironic. I was expecting it to be full of kind people.

I don't know what product to build next, but I know I have to pick a good market.

December | Writing

This is me now writing this.

I have decided to take the rest of the month off. To reflect on the past two years and come up with a plan for next year.

Year 2 Recap

Went from $50/month to $200/month, shut down Telemonetize, abandoned GitGardener, made Epilepsy Blocker free and went down to $100/month.

Tried to go B2B with Epilepsy Blocker but didn't manage to do it. Built some other products but none had potential.

Two years in, I still haven't received a paycheck from a company.

• $100/month

• 7 products launched

• 1 profitable product

• First 6 months were spent trying to go B2B with Epilepsy Blocker

• Last 6 months were spent panicking and trying to build new products

Appendix

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading all of this.

Hopefully you learned something. Maybe you learned what not to do.

What's next?

What's next for me? Honestly, I don't know. I had to accept that job, so I'm moving to Italy soon.

But I am still giving it my all next year!

This was my story. Thank you for reading.

Time travel

Hey. This is Alex from the future writing this.

I decided to clean up and re-post my blog posts as free books.

Nothing changed. Even if I disagree with things I said back then.

Regardless of marketing or algorithms, the greatest books have always ended up in my hands through recommendations.

So if you you enjoyed them, you can do the following:

• Share them on X or LinkedIn

• Leave a review on Amazon

• And message me so we can have a chat

Or don't. It's ok.

Thank you for reading.

Wall of love

Thanks to everyone that has been reading for the past years.

• I just finished the mini book series by @alexwestco and it’s awesome. He brings you to his startup journey, and go personal in every stage: from shouting in the void for 2 years, to désillusion, to finally making it. It’s raw and honest. It feels like you’re with him. Much better than most biographies made to be published. The books are free. Go read them!
@marc_louvion

• Got a long day ahead traveling back home so I got myself some nice books to read
@florinpop1705

• Finished all of them in one go. I could not stop. Oh, the pain!! Such an eye opener..
I am on my 3rd (failed) project in 6 months, but now I feel @alexwestco saved me months, possibly years. thanks
@Andrei0Vlad

• The time is never right!!
@thepatwalls

• This is perfect!
@dvassallo

• That is the most inspirational piece of content I read. Bookmarking this for my future references
@tejas3732

• The most honest, powerful and inspiring thing I've read all year. Gives me so much hope to see that I can have a stable life without giving my life to a boring 9-5 desk job. Congratulations man.
@consolerod

• When I was a child I remember reading The Eternaut comic at night I was completely hooked up, waiting for the next night to read again and continue the story.
Yesterday I had the same feeling reading @alexwestco books and I woke up desperately to finish the sixth book.
Looking forward to the rest of the books
@AgustinVqz

• "Most advice is bullshit". I'm sold.
@martinrue

• Reading @alexwestco's third book and it's blowing my mind. His mini books aren't playbooks, but I've learned a ton from them. Really appreciate it.
@dzung_fz

• This is really a great read for aspiring indie hackers. Raw, authentic and super honest. I used to read @alexwestco blogs 4 years ago and this part feels super relatable to me.
Yeah, those cute little side projects.
@ShresthaBheart

• Just started reading Alex's books.
Finished the first 2 today.
So much value + it's FREE.
Thank you so much Alex!!
@HsanC_

• halfway through @alexwestco's book one, and i gotta say im surprised how brutally honest it is.
wish for more books to show the real mess of being an entrepreneur instead of handpicked highlights
@todorovskiognxn

• This is exactly what I needed. Great read.
@Renatello

• this feels like holding a mirror
this isn't some polished picture-perfect fairytale
just a raw, gritty, and accurate depiction of what figuring it out looks and feels like
reminds me that this shit is hard for everyone
@luisgnet

• Book 2 done, on to Book 3
but maybe I should get some work done first
Thanks for sharing all this knowledge Alex.
@lovish888

• I'm currently reading the books of @alexwestco and I had to laugh very loud in public at one part. A lesson every indiehacker/founder has to learn the hard way.
@TweetsOfSumit

• Feels illegal to read all these for free! Amazing stuff, zero BS, great work.
Already waiting for the last two books.
@mysancaktutan

• Been reading @alexwestco books and they are fire. so authentic and real, you feel like he's talking directly to you. Hella inspiring brother, keep going!
@MaximilianDrago

• On to book 3 @alexwestco
This speaks a lot as well to me. Humbling.
"The world is random and chaotic"
I can't go around and making sense of everything.
@cyphorous

• These words from the book 1 of @alexwestco hits different for the perfectionist I used to be.
Reading is a leverage for your actions.
Without action it's just a form of procrastination.
Damn, it's even a good sign, it means you're growing.
@kevin_miguet

• I am only fishing up the book 1 @alexwestco but I can see myself at the very beginning of this journey. Thanks for sharing, it gives me the strength to build and document as well
@YAVIIIN

• Goated quote by @alexwestco.
"Someone holds a gun to your head: "You have to generate revenue online by the end of the week. If you don't, you're dead." Extreme. But effective. All the pretend work goes out of the window.
@byteberserker

• "Life is chaotic. And you shouldn't try to change that. Embrace it's unpredictability and make it work for you. Not against you."
Please, never stop writing man.
Thank you very much for sharing
@luisetelo

• Exited to dive into @alexwestco's second book. I am a total newbie and I find it interesting to read his experience when starting out.
@lastFitStanding

• Yesterday went to the beach, brought the tablet with me to start reading N1, got so hooked, read until 50% of N5 haha
Thanks for such a nice write!
@rrmdp

• I'm reading the first one now.
Great writing and very honest. Love it!
@fisheryeah

• Just finished book 6, tight in time
@rasulkireev

• Loved the book - been reading your tweets for years now, and it was really interesting to hear the whole story. Can't wait for the next one :)
@scalingspencer

• Loved reading this, excited for the next one. Remember reading your blogs from when you were working in Milan. Inspired me to pursue my own thing and very happy I did
@alexanderaeswan

• I read this in one sitting thanks for sharing man.
It is really eye opening the amount of struggle that is required to building something. Thank you for being this honest.
@JacobSchwarz963

• Great work, and great thoughts
@jdnoc

• Can't wait for book 2!
@GlitchPhoton

• Hey Alex, anxiously awaiting the next drop. Didn't see it yesterday. Any idea when we might expect it?
@KevinSidwar

• "It's easier to become 10x luckier by increasing your exposure, than it is to become 10x better at understanding and predicting the world." Love this, man.
@colestriler

• great read. you write very concisely yet cover a lot of ideas. it also shows that you are building mental fortitude to handle anything. congrats!
@swyx

• Mate, at the end of your article "Two Years" I was like: This is so sad, but here comes the happy part about the sales...nothing.
Great read. I'm literally in the exact same spot!
@rubenkenes

• "You can't make people buy. All you can do is keep them in your orbit by showing them what you do and staying top of mind." Love this from @alexwestco
@fredrivett

• Reviewing 300 applications for notJust Incubator, I saw many founders doing the same mistakes we all go through at the beginning
Just read the first book by @alexwestco, and this hits home
@VadimNotJustDev

• Just finished @alexwestco Book 3. Learning Through Scars - a raw, unfiltered journey of building a $3K/month business without selling courses. No fluff, just real talk about failure, luck, and the grind. If you're tired of gurus and want a real story, this one's for you.
Davide Agostini

• Amigos, this is my truth that I have been drowning in for the last five years. Alex's book are a must-read
@Amigov_AI

• Had to add @alexwestco as a case study in my upcoming Solopreneur Masterclass, among other incredible solopreneurs and small business owners we can all get inspiration from!
@flaviocopes

• I've never read a book in my life but I'm halfway on book 1.
It's inspiring and makes me want to start a business.
@bel4dm

• Recently read @alexwestco's two Kindle books. Really is a great reminder that it may seem like everyone knows what they're doing... But we usually see only the successes, not the uncertainty, building + getting no traction, etc
You just gotta keep moving forward + building
@gavin_wiener

• Last Sunday evening downloaded all @alexwestco books
by chance opened the number 6 and started to read it
I couldn't stop until I finished it
such a nice, authentic and hooking reading
a real not BS entrepreneurship story
Nice one Alex.
@rrmdp

• I'm getting a lot of motivation out of these. Seems like all of builder X is reading them right now Alex!
@martinrue

• It seems like everyone is reading them right now!
@MahdiEzz_code

Credits

Finally, special thanks to everyone that inspired and supported me, whether they know it or not.

• Pieter Levels, thank you for building in the open and making this movement happen for all of us. It was your revenue tweets and blog posts that made me realize that I could do the same.

• Courtland and Channing Allen, thank you for building Indie Hackers and putting a name to our little movement. I have read every single post, listened to every single podcast and have day dreamed countless times being on your show.

• Patrick and John Collison, thank you for building the tool that has allowed us all to make a living online. No joke, Stripe changed our lives. In awe of what you're building with Arc Institute. And huge fan of your podcast "Cheeky Pint".

• DHH, thank you for bringing common sense to the tech industry. Reminding us that you don't need to run a VC company and become a billionaire to be successful. And that you can have work life balance.

• Jason Fried, thank you for sharing your contrarian views regarding work. It's inspiring to see how ahead of the culture you were with remote work and SaaS. Your books are awesome too.

• Pat Walls (and Demi), thank you for replying to my emails back in 2021. Also for your awesome daily blog, which definitely inspired me to continue to write daily. Finally, thank you for showing us the power of focusing on one business, which you can adapt and evolve over time.

• Daniel Vassallo, thank you for introducing me to Taleb's books and philosophy, they changed my world view and helped me with my journey. Also for sharing your authentic thoughts and taking a stance, even if it's not popular.

• Stamos Venios, thank you for inspiring me to start this journey and for teaching me that you learn by doing, not studying. Your story inspired me a lot. I've told you this directly, but it's true. You are one of the main reasons I'm here today.

• Sam Parr, thank you for sharing my little business with your audience. Even more importantly, thank you for always being nothing but kind and generous to me. Funnily enough, your show, "My First Million", helped me make my first million.

• Derek Sivers, thank you for having the most awesome blog on the planet. Also for writing all your books and giving everything back to charity. You are awesome.

• Jon Yongfook, thank you for building and failing products at the same time as me, from 2018 to 2020. You launched BannerBear roughly at the same time I found CyberLeads, after roughly the amount number of failures. It was cool to not fail and succeed alone.

• Damon Cheng, thank you for showing us that even indie makers can acquire and grow businesses. Your run from quitting your job till today is legendary.

• Marc Köhlbrugge, thank you for building WIP.chat. Seeing other successful makers public TODOs made me realize that everyone just builds things, fixes bugs and makes mistakes. Like me. This was actually one of my most important realizations. It was frame breaking.

• Danny Postma, thank you for showing us that even indie products can exit to a larger company. And that even after an exit, if you want it bad enough, you can go back to square one and try again and again until you succeed again.

• Jason Cohen, thank you for your amazing blog and talks. Probably the best business blog in the world. And for your talk on boutique bootstrapped businesses. Seriously, that talk helped me niche down, raise my prices and change my life.

• Dru Riley, thank you for running an amazing campaign for CyberLeads together, back in 2020. Those high revenue months were the final push and confidence I needed to quit my job. Thank you my brother. Forever grateful.

• Andreas Klinger, thank you for being a class act and making an effort to help me find a job when I needed one. Also, for always replying to my emails and DMs.

• Vic, thank you for helping me find the next lever of growth for CyberLeads. No joke, you helped me change my life.

• Mubs, thank you for launching 50+ projects in public throughout the years and showing us how fast one can build.

• Andrey Azimov, thank you for your epic 2018 run, becoming Maker of the Year and changing your life. Your scrappiness and determination were infectious.

• Dimitris Raptis, thank you for being one of the very few people from our little hometown that is in our little bubble and industry. Also, thank you for reminding me that working on products you enjoy is more important than the money you make.

• Katerina Limpitsouni, thank you for being the final person from our little hometown that is in our little bubble and industry. I've used your designs and illustrations countless of times. They are awesome.

• Dimitris Kourtesis, Nikos Tsoniotis and Stefanos Tsiakmakis, thank you for accepting me in your startup incubator back when I knew nothing. Thank you for teaching me that killing projects is just as productive as building them. This was one of the biggest lessons I ever learned.

• Justin Jackson, thank you for your essays and podcasts regarding the importance of markets. You might not know it, but they were super impactful to me and helped me end up in the lead generation market, which helped me find CyberLeads and change my life.

• Josh Pigford, thank you for being one of the first people to show your complete list of failed products before your big success. I remember seeing the list and preparing mentally to go through the same. I built 19 failed products, then the 20th changed my life. Thank you.

• Nathan Barry, thank you for being one of the few people continuing to share revenue numbers after reaching millions in revenue. We have small businesses like myself doing that. We also have huge public companies doing that. It's great to have companies in the middle, like yours, do that too. Also, thank you for showing me the value of niching down and focusing on one segment of the market at a time. It really helped me grow CyberLeads and change my life.

• Ali Salah, thank you for being one of the OGs from 2018 and showing me that slow, consistent growth, in a saturated market, while focusing on product, can actually happen. This hasn't been my own experience and it's another example that anything and everything can work, there are no magic recipes.

• Michael Aubrey, thank you for being another story of hard work. Seeing you try for multiple years before finally achieving success is inspiring. Reminds me of my own journey.

• Reilly Chase, thank you for showing me that you can build a boring business, on top of an existing platform, and grow alongside it. Been inspiring to watch you grow over the years, build a team, a house and a life for yourself and your family.

• Rob Walling, thank you for your books and for your amazing podcast. I've listened to so many episodes over the years and there is always something interesting to take from them, because you and your gueststalk from experience, not theory.

• Jack Butcher, Bilal Zaidi and Trung Phan, thank you for the awesome podcast, the great art and the funny memes you've all been sharing with us for the past many years.

• Nico Jeannen, thank you for showing us that building and exiting multiple little businesses is possible. Also for keeping it real and sharing the good and the bad. There aren't that many people that do that and it's inspiring to see.

• Marc Lou, thank you for setting a new standard on shipping fast. I thought I was prolific for shipping 20 products from 2018 to 2020, but you took it to a whole new level. Respect.

• Peter Askew, thank you for blurring the lines between boring and cool. Selling onions online is simultaneously one of the most boring and one of the coolest businesses in the world.

• John O' Nollan, thank you for inspiring me to build a remote business and travel the world. You were one of the first entrepreneurs I looked up to, and still a massive fan.

• Harry Dry, thank you for showing me the power of storytelling and copywriting. Seeing your Yeezy.Dating saga unfold in real time back in 2018 was awesome and your climb to the top of the copywriting world is inspiring.

• Jordan O' Connor, thank you for your amazing blog. I remember reading every single post, multiple times, as you grew your business from zero to tens of thousands of dollars per month, changing your life for yourself and your ever growing family.

• Sahil Lavingia, thank you for building Gumroad, it helped me make my first $100K online. Also, thank you for challenging the status quo, thinking out of the box, doing things your own way and never being too busy to reply to my DMs back in the day. Truly grateful.

• AJ from Carrd, thank you for showing us that you can build and grow a simple, elegant and useful product by yourself and make great money without charging high prices. Frame breaking.

• Alex Napier Holland, thank you for being real and having authentic thoughts and opinions. Your are one of the very few non BS and non cringe people on my timeline.

• Florin Pop, Mr Purple, thank you for staying humble and ambitious at the same time. It's inspiring to see you set goals and then go after them.

• David Park, thank you for sharing the good and the bad so openly and authentically. Not only in business, but in life too. Your story is inspiring.

• Andrea Bosoni, thank you for showing me the value of being consistent and for being one of my Italian brothers. It's been great your amazing content for all these years, whenever I see your posts I always get a nice feeling of familiarity.

• Flavio Copes, thank you for showing me the value of writing daily, with the simple heuristic of "do stuff, encounter problems, write about the solution". Your website and blog remind me of what the internet was originally made for, real and authentic.

• Lim How Wey, thank you for sharing all of your knowledge around SEO. It was really helpful to me. And thank you for always being kind and supportive, I truly appreciate it.

• Arvid Kahl, thank you for sharing the story of exiting your SaaS business. It's been awesome to see you re-invent yourself and write your books.

• Swyx, thank you for inviting me on your podcast back in the day and for always being kind and supportive. Also for being prolific and constantly working on new things and technologies, it's contagious.

• Dmytro Krasun, thank you for showing me that progress happens slowly, then all at once. Your journey is awesome.

• David Perell, thank you for spreading the benefits of writing and specifically of writing daily. Your essays, podcasts and newsletters are fantastic.

• Noah Kagan, thank you for building AppSumo and for always keeping it real and honest. Seeing you embark on random new side quests like YouTube and being successful is cool to see also.

• Andrew Wilkinson, thank you for showing me that you can build insane wealth with boring businesses. Your essays and books are amazing. It's great to see your progress from being a freelancer, to running a small studio and being afraid to hire people, to managing hundreds of employees, to running a portfolio of companies, to finally going public. Insane.

• Andrew Gazdecki, thank you for building Acquire (formerly MicroAcquire) and helping indies like myself exit our companies and change our lives. Gazdecki style.

• Steph Smith, thank you for all the amazing essays. I remember reading "How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably" and realizing that I don't have to be fancy, just consistent. Also, every single one of your MFM appearances was great.

• George Mack, thank you for being one of the few, modern, original thinkers, popularizing new terms and expanding the lexicon. Your newsletter is one of the best I've read in my life, your ability to explain concepts is on another level.

• Jonathan Garces, thank you for all the amazing memories working on CyberLeads together. You are the only business partner I've ever had and helped me more than I could even imagine. It was a blast, my favorite business era.

• Lachlan Kirkwood, thank you for all the amazing chats over the years, going through similar milestones and challenges with our very different businesses. I'm really proud of you exiting your business and re-inventing yourself.

• Vytas Bu, thank you for believing in me and trusting me to work together. Even more importantly, I'm grateful to call you a true friend and thank you for treating me like a brother.

• Andreas Asprou, thank you for reminding me what true wealth is and for pushing me to take a break and write these books. I wouldn't have done it without you.

• Max DeMarco, thank you for inspiring me to continue being the main character of my life. You always have main character energy and it's contagious. Seeing you grow and always challenge yourself was amazing. Hope to make it to your next Muay Thai fight.

• Niklas Christl, thank you for being one of the most successful yet humble and honest people I've met. That contrast is amazing and inspiring. Hope to see you soon and catch up again.

• Giuseppe Ettore, thank you for growing side by side since 2020. I still remember showing you CyberLeads when it was just an idea, during lunch break at the office. Time flies. We started our jobs on the same day in Milan, we both quit our jobs since then, have achieved a lot and always support each other. And I believe we always will.

• Justin Gluska, thank you for the amazing chats in New York. I hope to see you again somewhere around the world.

• Eracle, thank you for welcoming me to Las Palmas. We had many amazing chats and nights out. Hope to visit again.

• Nikolas Konstantinou, thank you for welcoming me to the island of Cyprus. You have always helped me when I needed help, without asking for anything in return.

• Dawid Cedrych, thank you for being a dream client and for showing me that true business is a win-win game. I'm forever grateful for your trust in me, for encouraging me to write and for always being humble and real.

• Pete Codes, thank you for featuring me in your awesome newsletter and for being supportive over the years. It was also cool meeting in person a few years back.

• Jonny Ward, Daniel Ward, Doug Ward and David Carter, thank you all so much for being generous enough to invite me one of the impactful coffee/dinners of my life, when you had absolutely nothing to gain from me. I will never forget.

• Mohammad, thank you for giving me perspective on life and how you can continue being happy and positive no matter what happens.

• All the staff and friends at Cafe Nero for giving me free coffee and letting me write my books all day.

• Eneas Lari, for being my best friend in life.

• My family.

And to all the people that have supported me over the years or have shared my books. If I missed you, it's not on purpose.

Constantly updating this list.

Table of Contents

- Book 1 (June 10th 2026)

- Not Business Advice

- How I made a million from my personal projects

- Book 1: Screaming into the void

- ($100/month, years 1-2)

- Preface
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- Year 0: The spark
- The next Facebook
- Going indie
- Year 1: Shotgun Strategy
- Finding & quitting a remote job
- Noticing a pattern
- My first successful launches
- Making my first dollar
- Starting to believe
- Getting praise by my peers
- Focusing on GitGardener and Telemonetize

- July and September 2018: Pimps, Scammers, Arms Dealers and Pornstars

- Abandoning GitGardener and Telemonetize
- Year 1 Recap
- Year 2: Sniper Strategy
- Setting north star metrics
- Hitting $200/month
- A lucky break, at last
- Going B2B With Epilepsy Blocker
- Business meeting with huge TV Channel
- Clean slate, impostor syndrome
- Going round in circles
- Enough! Give me some time to think!
- Taking a step back and reflecting
- Year 2 Recap
- Appendix
- What's next?
- Time travel
- Wall of love
- Credits