At last I did it!
After more than 2 years of launching failure after failure, I managed to build a successful, profitable business and reach financial independence!
In this book I will explain in detail what happened and how I went from no idea to $2k/month with CyberLeads in 6 months.
The story of how I found a good B2B idea. How I launched it. And how I found a good marketing channel and grew it.
Moving abroad. Starting a full time job. Doubting myself. Crying. Finding CyberLeads. Launching it. Growing it. Everything.
Ok, let's do it. Let's go back in time to the beginning of the year.. January 4th...
I'm getting off the plane. I'm in Milan, Italy. Going to get the bus to find the place I would call home for the next year. A little room, in a house with four Italian flat mates I've never met before in my life.
The weather is perfect. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. I keep asking myself, “What the fuck am I doing here..”
The reason I'm here is because of Epilepsy Blocker, a product I built one year before. It's a browser extension that protects people with photosensitive epilepsy while browsing the web.
It managed to get the attention of an MIT startup, which offered me a job in their office in Milan.
It sounded like a dream job:
• They use AI and other cool technologies.
• Build life saving medical devices for people with epilepsy.
• Work with organizations like NASA, John Hopkins and MIT.
• And the founders are all MIT professors or graduates.
They also offered cool perks:
• Free lunch every day.
• Free gym membership.
• Free weekly massage.
• Free MacBook Pro.
• Flexible working hours.
• Summer offices in Sardinia.
• A good salary of EUR 2,000/month after taxes.
But no matter how cool the job, it still felt like a golden cage.
But I had ran out of time. I wasn't able to reach financial independence with my personal projects.
So I had to throw in the towel and take the job.
And this was definitely the best job I would ever land straight out of uni. Especially with my credentials.
I also needed a change. Moving abroad excited me.
I remember reading this quote:
"When in doubt, do the exact opposite of what you are doing."
So here I am, I've arrived in my small bedroom in Milan, and I'm getting ready to go to "work" tomorrow. At the office. Like a proper grown up.
I set my alarm clock for 07:00 AM.
I look at my jeans, white polo shirt and watch on my chair. My shoes nice and clean. All ready to be worn the next day. Ready to make me look professional.
"Damn.. I'm a boring adult now."
Only my closest friends and family know about this, but at that moment, I started crying like a child.
I wasn't afraid that I was going to hate the job. The opposite, actually. I was afraid that I was going to love it and forget everything about my goals.
I was afraid that in the blink of an eye, my life would be work during the week, and having fun on the weekends. Before I know it, three years will have gone by and I'll still be at the same job. I will have forgotten everything about my goals and dreams. My side projects would seem like a very distant dream that I can hardly even remember.
"Oh, yeah. Back in the day when I used to build little side projects.. Cute."
I promised to myself that I wouldn't stop working on my personal projects, no matter how tired I am.
So, yeah.. Picture this.
A grown ass man crying because he would start a comfy job. At twenty five years of age.
It's pathetic. I know. But it's the truth. And in this blog, you'll get nothing but the truth.
Luckily, reality was different to my expectations.
There were no NASA scientists at lunch break. I wasn't saving lives with my code on a casual Tuesday. And I definitely wasn't discussing about AI, side projects or making the world a better place with my colleagues.
Welcome to reality!
I was tucked in a corner, with my brand new laptop, programming an internal dashboard for the logistics team.
Clocking in eight hours per day, plus one hour for lunch break.
I would enter the building at 10:00 AM and leave at 19:00 PM. It was already dark at that time in January.
It was depressing.
The perks? They weren't lies. But they weren't true either.
• The free lunch was a salad bowl. I was always hungry 2 hours later so I had to bring my own food.
• The flexible hours were only upwards. There was always an invisible power play going on with people trying to show that they leave late.
• The gym we had a free membership for was a shitty one in the other side of the city. So I had to pay for a different gym.
• The Macbook Pro they gave me wasn't new and the keyboard was all messed up.
• The summer offices in Sardinia were closed due to the pandemic.
• And the weekly massages weren't performed by beautiful women with hot oil at a spa with candles and music. I'm not even joking, there was a guy called Fabio who would come to the office once per week with his foldable bed and take you to a little room to massage you for 10 minutes. What. The. Fuck.
Anyway, obviously I didn't go there for the perks. But it was kinda disappointing. I felt like they tricked me.
But weirdly, it was liberating too.
Things were like I had hoped. It was a golden cage. And I had daily fuel and motivation to change my life.
I didn't really connect with my colleagues. All our conversations were at surface level.
Maybe it was because I was the youngest person in the company. Or maybe it was because I didn't give it enough time. Who knows.
Initially I thought that something was wrong with me. That I'm a "special flower" who doesn't like working in an office.
But no.
One day, during lunch break, I overheard my colleagues talking about sleep. Somehow the conversation ended up in how lovely it is to lie down in bed on a Friday night. Knowing that you don't have to wake up early for the next two days. And how depressing Sundays are because you know you have to go to work the next day.
"Ok, so I'm not the only one."
I'm not the cancerous cell growing inside this company. And I'm not special.
Maybe no one enjoys working on a desk for eight hours a day, five days a week. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Decade after decade. No matter how cool the company is or fulfilling it's mission is.
I just think most people don't know you can actually escape.
All I needed was a plan.
It's morning. I'm drinking my coffee.
I'm researching about Epilepsy Blocker and the Epilepsy market.
I don't like what I'm seeing.
I am checking how many people have photosensitive epilepsy. And trying to calculate what percentage of the market I could capture.
Around 1% of the world population has epilepsy. That's good. But only around 5% of those people have photosensitive epilepsy.
So the final number is much smaller than I expected.
"Damn it. Couldn't more people have this?"
I'm scrolling through Twitter. I stumble upon an article titled "New miracle drug has the potential to cure epilepsy forever".
"Shit. I hope this is just a clickbait article and not true."
My incentives are getting mixed up before I have even started.
I don't like this. At all.
Maybe trying to turn my passion into my job is dangerous, after all.
Maybe what I want is a business that gives me the freedom to explore my passions, without having to worry about making money from them.
I'd seen this idea before. In articles and books. But this was the first time it actually made sense.
I am researching for new product ideas.
Every idea I have is already built. And none of them is actually making the world a better place.
I think this is the reason I cannot give up on Epilepsy Blocker. No matter how hard I try.
I ask myself a brutal question.
"Do I really want to be unique and make the world a better place? Or do I just want to sound cool at parties and to girls?"
Maybe I should try and change my world first. And then I can start worrying about the rest of the world.
To be honest, I feel like I cannot help anyone while I'm drowning.
If I really want to make the world a better place, like I say I do, why don't I do something boring, make a lot of money, and donate like 50% of my income to charities, every month?
Am I going to do that? Or am I all talk?
I mean, honestly, ego aside, how can I be more useful to the world?
This question troubled me for weeks.
Finally, while researching for ideas, one thing was clear.
I want to build a B2B product. Years after starting this journey, I still haven't received a paycheck from a company.
And I want to stop guessing what will work. I don't want to be unique anymore. I don't care.
I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I think I just want to make money. I want to escape this job. And then I'll see what I'm going to do.
I just want to enter a large B2B market. A market, where no matter how many are competing, there is room for me.
Especially for me, as a solopreneur, whose costs are low and wants to build a "humble" $5k - $25k per month business.
But do I want to compete with companies? The reality is that I have no idea what I'm getting into.
The first thing I noticed working at a company is that they aren't scary after all.
I used to think that when you're competing against a 50 person company, you are up against 50 people.
But working for a company has made me realize that it's not the case.
If you were up against my company, you would be up against 5 motivated people and 45 yes-men. Forty five people that are bored out of their brains and dragging their feet until they finish the tasks that have been assigned to them. I know this because I am one of them.
They don't care about the company. They have their own lives to care about.
They have their own financial problems. Dreams. Aspirations. Problems with their parents. Stress. Insecurities. Health problems. Maybe even sexual problems, who knows. The point is that they are not the company. They are humans. And just like all humans, they care about themselves first and foremost.
In my company, people were not "bored" per se, but they were not as passionate as I had envisioned them to be.
Me included. I contributed to the company and it's cause, but first and foremost I was thinking about my own life.
My main objective was to keep my manager happy. And my manager, well, he was trying to keep his manager happy. No one was really thinking about the company apart from the founders.
I think it's natural. I actually promised to myself that if I ever hire people, I will never expect them to care about my company the way I do. I want them to be cool, to know that I know how they feel. I want them to take care of their own lives, and that will hopefully show in their work as well.
The second thing I noticed is that companies are slow.
Everyone is trying to minimize the work they have to do. Throw the ball to another team. Try to explain why it will take too long to implement. Request a change in the requirements.
So don't worry if you are competing with companies. You are faster and you are not even on their radar. They are looking at bigger players than themselves, just like you are.
And their employees are actually on your side. They will try their best to do the least amount of work they can.
They will open tickets. Forward them to other departments. Get feedback. Have meetings. Syncs. Quality Assurance. Go through regulatory. All that just for one feature or even change.
Remember this.
You can pivot 180 degrees in one day. Large companies have to hold meetings to change the color of a single button.
I also saw what company budgets look like.
Remember that free lunch perk we had? The company paid hundreds of dollars per day for that.
Yes. Hundreds of dollars. Just for lunch. Every. Single. Day.
And they are not the only ones doing this. Thousands of companies are doing exactly the same thing.
In my first two years of building products, I had never succeeded in getting a business customer. Not even once. It was all individuals.
While some people were charging hundreds of dollars per day to companies for salad bowls, I was trying (and failing) to get people to pay me $10/mo for software that could save their life.
It's crazy.
Last but not least, I saw the ugliness behind a sexy product.
Not glamorous. I can assure you.
Building a life saving, innovative product comes with great responsibility. I saw support tickets from people complaining. Requesting refunds. Reporting bugs. The list goes on and on.
What? You thought just because you are trying to make the world a better place, people forgive you? The opposite. You have more responsibility. And when you charge money to cover your costs, they hate you even more.
Plus, writing critical code and keeping uptime for these kind of systems is scary.
Servers breaking and coming down in the night. Peoples' lives on the line. Ugh.
This experience haunted me, so I didn't want to write code either, if I could avoid it. The last thing I want is to be coding all day or worrying about servers going down.
I mean, does my product have to be a software product? Why can't it be something else?
Actually, I sort of fell out of love with programming, after doing so for eight hours every single day. I realized that I wasn't in love with coding after all, but creating.
And you can create without code.
All the above helped me decide and formulate my final plan.
I was working for just one month, but I had completely re-structured my business and life philosophy.
I had flipped my priorities 180 degrees and had a clear plan. All that was needed was for me to execute.
Work in the office became my daily motivation. I would look out of the window and fantasize going back home to start working on my side-projects.
Create my escape route. Dig through the prison wall with my tiny little spoon when no one is looking.
I would write down in a small notebook every day my habits.
• In green if I did them, eg. woke up at 7am
• In red if I didn't do them, eg. did not wake up at 7am
I stole this idea from a book. It really helped. And my monkey brain subconsciously wanted to make the pages green.
But it wasn't that easy.
Initially, I was working, or at least trying to work, on my side projects in the evening after work. But I couldn't.
I only had the capacity for 2-3 creative hours per day.
I could get serious work in, when I was in this mode.
But I had it all wrong. I would use up all of my precious brain power every day at the gym and my day job.
So, when I got home in the evening, I was toast. I would stare at my screen, pretending to be working, feeling guilty and sorry about myself.
I. Just. Could. Not. Work.
I had a brutally honest conversation with myself.
"If your side projects mean so much to you, how come you are doing them last thing before you go to bed?"
Such a simple, yet powerful question. I hated the answer because I was never a morning person.
But I knew that I had to do it.
I started working on them first thing in the morning.
It was a game changer.
In my opinion, idea phase is the hardest part. The part that calls for the most creativity.
Many people pretend that this phase is trivial. They say that ideas don't matter and it's all about execution.
But I remember reading this somewhere.
"It's very difficult to become a 10 times better executioner of ideas, but it's easy to have a 10 times better idea."
Of course. Ideas mean everything and nothing at the same time.
They mean everything, because you can multiply your odds of success by simply picking a better idea.
And they mean nothing, because with bad execution you'll achieve nothing, no matter how good the idea is.
I mean, you could copy any good idea.
Anything that already exists, is making good money and is not in a winner-take-all market.
The problem is that you have to find the right idea for you. The idea you know how to build, run, and be able to get it in front of potential customers. Again and again. At a good cost.
The question is, how do you do that?
I woke up every morning at 05:00 AM and worked on my own stuff until 08:00 AM. I would have a clear mind and get serious work in.
Then I would go to the gym until 09:00 AM. And finally I would have a shower and get to work by 10:00 AM.
When I got back at night, I had no guilt. I had conquered the day already. I would enjoy a book and go to sleep early.
These constraints set me free. I knew that I only had 2-3 hours per day to work on my own stuff, so I made them count.
Honestly, in those two hours, I got far more done that I did back home in Greece, when I had the whole day to myself.
I started noticing "Pretend Work" all around me. In myself. In companies. People with their hobbies. Everywhere.
People staying busy, but not really getting anything done.
Some examples in myself.
Pretend work:
• Restructuring the code of my business (when I had zero users)
• Seting up A/B tests (when I was getting 300 visitors per month)
• Redesigning my landing page (when it was converting is just fine)
• Setting up a business email, business cards, flyers
• Adding features (that customers never asked for)
• Improving speed of website (no comment)
True work:
• Send 10 emails to potential customers and get feedback
• Post my product on FB groups, Twitter, Reddit, etc
• Build a landing page with a signup form and soft launch
• Go to a local business, ask for feedback and payment
• Launch my product on ProductHunt, Twitter, etc
I first started noticing "Pretend Work" when I was reflecting and writing all about all the products I had built.
With every launch, I found another little piece of excess fat that could be cut off.
• From my 1st failed launch, I understood that the ".com" domain I bought and was proud of didn't save me.
• From the 2nd failed launch, that the awesome logo I designed didn't guarantee my success.
• From the 3rd failed launch, that those extra features I built didn't make me or break me.
• From the 4th, that the amount of upvotes and positive comments I got didn't mean shit, because it was the wrong audience.
• From the 5th, that the faster I launch, the better.
The list goes on and on. By the end of it, I realized that all I needed was a simple landing page and a payment button.
Which.. I knew already. We all know this. This is day one stuff. Written everywhere. It's in every startup book. But unfortunately, I don't seem to learn by reading, but by doing. Only when I actually made those mistakes, did I really "get it".
Nowadays, I still try to find "Pretend Work" in my daily life. It creeps in and never leaves me alone. However, I've came up with this bizarre scenario that helps me identify it. Sounds stupid, but bear with me.
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. Maybe even stupid. But effective. All the pretend work goes out of the window.
All that matters is that you get someone to pay you. And you would find a way.
So do those two or three things you know you have to do, and trust me, you are good. No need to work anymore. No need to feel guilty. Stop pretending to be working and do what you are supposed to do.
Then relax and allow your brain to have new ideas.
Nowadays, I still think the same way. But I frame it a little different.
Someone holds a gun to my head and tells me:
"If CyberLeads doesn't grow by the end of the month, you're dead."
It helps me identify and quickly kill "pretend work".
There are two schools of thought when it comes to building products and businesses.
The shotgun approach. And the sniper approach.
The shotgun approach is building many products and waiting for one of them to take off.
Sniper approach is building one product and sticking with it for months/years, even though it might not be generating any revenue or is stuck at a plateau.
Both approaches have worked for different people.
There is an expression I love.
"Don't tell me what you think, show me your portfolio."
I went through the entire archive of my favorite business podcasts. Hundreds of episodes. And took notes.
Instead of listening to what they were saying, I started observing what they actually did.
I noticed a clear pattern:
• They were playing around and building stuff
• They launched a product without thinking much of it
• It immediately got some traction and then kept going
In contrast to popular wisdom and startup culture, that says you should focus on one and only one idea, for as much as needed, all the people I admired and looked up to didn't get there in that way.
And I had my own experiences and scars as well.
In my first year of building products, I built and launched 12 products and had good results. I went from zero experience in building products to almost $200/month.
In my second year, I focused solely on Epilepsy Blocker, but didn't manage to make it work.
Maybe the real answer is somewhere in the middle. Persistence is definitely needed, but you need that initial traction to know it's worth it.
At least that's what happened for me.
I started building small products like I used to, but this time I went market first.
The goal was not to just come up with ideas, build a solution and then hope that there is a market for it.
It was to go market first and find already validated ideas. I was going idea hunting.
I had 3 markets in mind. The Cyber Security market, the Recruiting market and the Lead Generation market. There are more markets out there, but these happened to be the ones that interested me and I knew were healthy.
These were markets that were not winner-take-all and many players were making good money with products I could build and market by myself.
My idea was that I could just join the race and take a little slice of the pie.
In my case, my only successful marketing channels were Twitter and Product Hunt. It's mostly tech people and startups that hang out there, so I kinda knew I wanted to build stuff for them.
These are the products that I tried.
Cyberflake
A collaboration tool for cybersecurity penentration testers.
I cold emailed several people and scheduled calls. Also went undercover on Reddit and asked questions regarding their pain points.
Something like, "I'm a student, I want to enter the market, what is the worst thing about your work?"
Or, "I have time and want to build a free tool for you guys, what do you wish existed?".
Shit like that.
I tried to find ideas in the market. Eventually, I realized that the Cyber Security crowd is far too technical for me, and I'm not a geek or engineer at heart. I would suffer in that market.
Scrapcat
An uptime monitor for web scrapers.
It's a bit of a saturated market, but that's not really a problem. We are not aiming to build a billion dollar company.
I built a lancing page. Designed a mockup of what it would look like and posted it on Reddit.
Got emails from the landing page and some comments on Reddit.
No real interest though. Bye bye.
Cyberhound
While talking to security and accessibility engineers last year to conduct research, I figured out a little process to find them and their emails.
I thought it might be interesting for startups that sell to developers.
A platform where you can find software developers to reach out to and let them know about your product.
Built a landing page with a subscribe button. Nothing.
Launched on Twitter. Nothing. Reddit. Nothing. Cold emailed a few people. Nothing.
Bye bye.
Birdleads
Get notified when people talk about something on Twitter, eg. if you sell coffee beans, people that are talking about coffee.
Again, a pretty validated space. I had seen similar products do well.
The bad thing was that I definitely would have to code.
For that reason, I didn't get to try this one. I prioritized CyberLeads before getting my hands on it.
This is it. My muse. The product I was waiting for so long. So the big question I get asked all the time. How did I get the idea for it?
Spoiler alert, I didn't. I found it by accident while idea hunting.
Most people have a cool "epiphany" moment. They were walking through Central Park. Or lying on a beach in Bali. Looking at the stars. One little puff of weed. And like in some movie, the idea hits them.
Bu my epiphany moment was super boring.
I was scrolling through Reddit, researching for my other ideas, and saw a post with a list of startups that recently raised money. The post was doing well, and people were interested. It seemed strange to me, so I started googling around.
I found out that recently funded startups are like the hot girls in school that everyone wants to date. These startups are scaling quickly and since they have a truckload of money, they will happily spend it to solve those scaling problems and grow even faster.
I had seen this first hand from my day job, where we were paying thousands every week for salad bowls. So I got the gist of it immediately. It made total sense and I liked it.
I found at least 10 businesses offering this information in one way or another. As a service. As a database. As a one time downloadable list. As a newsletter. As an insight and business intelligence platform.
And they were all making money. People were paying for this.
They were also selling it to many different types of customers.
Some were selling to investors. Others to sales people. Others to journalists. Others to people looking for a tech job. Others to anyone and everyone interested in tech that wants to keep up with the news.
This looked promising. But again, I had felt the same way countless times before.
Explaining how I "rationalized" launching CyberLeads is dangerous, and can be very misleading.
So let me re-phrase.
I didn't know that it would succeed. It just looked promising. It was just another product idea. Product number 20. I had felt confident many times before and failed.
The big difference was that for the first time, I stopped looking at ideas as if they were fucking bus seats.
"Oops. This is taken! Sorry! On to the next one."
I was actually glad it already existed. That meant it was already validated for me.
I felt bad that I was going to copy others and compete, but I decided that it was time to grow up. And I decided to go for it.
Ok, so now I had a validated idea in my hands. How easy was that?
But the idea isn't everything. Ok, let's say it's validated. Now what?
The important thing is to find a distribution channel and get it in front of people.
I was going to try Product Hunt, as none of those other companies had launched there and I knew the ropes.
I chose the newsletter format, since it reduces friction, makes it super easy to sign up and doesn't require me to code.
So, basically, CyberLeads offered company, funding and contact information for hundreds of startups that had just raised money in the past month. You subscribe, and get a new list with all these startups, on the 1st of every month. You can reach out to them and close deals. Dead simple.
I narrowed my focus to companies looking to grow, and positioned myself as a tool to help you grow your business. And chose Product Hunt as my launching platform.
Nowadays I have narrowed my focus even more, to agencies. But that's another story for another time.
I was ready to launch.
There was no epic launch. No epic event. No going viral.
I built the website with a no-code tool and launched it on Product Hunt out of the blue. If people did indeed subscribe, I would rush and create the list before the 1st of the next month and deliver them the list, as my website stated.
No pretend work this time.
Even those mockups, soft launches, Reddit posts and cold emails had started to feel like "pretend work" now.
Just launch already.
The launch went well, and I got ten paying customers. Just like that. With a $29/mo price tag, I was at $290/month!
Some subscribers had business emails as well. I had officially built a B2B product at last!
All in all, I went from no idea to $290/mo in two weeks.
Or two years. Both answers are technically correct.
I was pinching myself.
So all this just to tell me that you found a simple, already validated idea, built it, and launched it?
Exactly.
I took me two years of pretend work to be able to do two weeks of true work.
I needed time to build these skills and abilities:
∙ The ability recognize a good idea.
∙ The ability to recognize a good distribution channel.
∙ The ability to kill my perfectionism.
∙ The ability to launch fast.
∙ The ability to know which idea suits me, my skills and resources.
Alex from 2 years ago would have never found this idea. The way to position it. Know what to include in the MVP and the landing page. Have the guts to launch this early without even building a product. Have a small audience to push it to. Know which channels to use and know the ins and outs of them.
It took a very long time, but at last, after two years, I had for once played my cards perfectly. It was time to make the most out of it.
I'm not even going to go over how I built the first list in the next 2 weeks. But the important thing is that I made it.
After all these months and much automation, the monthly lists still take me 50-100 hours to compile every month.
The craziest thing is that I didn't even know how to do it at that point. This was my first list.
I was building my parachute while falling.
I had to find the sources. The tools. Go over and double check everything by hand. You name it.
But when you throw yourself in the fire, magic happens. I would wake up at 04:00 AM and work until 09:00 AM on the lists. Go to work. Come back at 07:00 PM. Work until 10:00 PM.
Some of the most stressful days of my life. Two weeks of pure chaos. No sleep. But crazy excitement.
I would have never worked like this, if it wasn't for my paying customers waiting for their first list. If I was to create my first list before launching, this would have taken multiple months and I would have somehow changed the product along the way, I'm sure.
I managed to send the first list on March 1st.
Some unsubscribed. Others loved it. One asked for a refund.
I was happy, excited, stressed and shattered at the same time.
It was crazy.
Yeehaw!!!
So you launch and get your first paying customers. Now what?
I had absolutely no idea. I had never reached this point before.
Wouldn't it be great if we could launch on Product Hunt every week? We’d all be rich!
Well, that's why you need a marketing channel and a way to utilize it. Repeatedly. At a good cost.
A way to generate traffic so it's essentially like launching every month/week/day.
It was the final piece to the puzzle. Something I had never figured out before.
Unfortunately, nearly all of March was spent building a new product.
I know, I know.. What the fuck, Alex?! I was angry at myself too.
It was a similar product to CyberLeads. Instead of a monthly list of startups that raised money, it was a monthly list of investors that were actively investing. The target market was startups that wanted to raise money by reaching out to investors.
I was acting off of momentum, and was picturing myself launching multiple products in different verticals.
Although this idea was also "validated", it didn't go great at all. I got zero customers, although I tried a lot. More than I tried with CyberLeads to be honest. It reminded me to stay humble.
You have no magical powers all of a sudden. You have a gift in your hands, CyberLeads, and you have to make the most out of it.
Luck smiled at you. You have everything you wished for.
Double down and show it the attention it deserves.
From this point on, I want you to know that things got easier. I was out of the dark ages and had at last changed chapter.
My breakfast tasted better in the morning. The sun felt warmer. The people kinder.
Literally, the whole world was burning down, going into complete panic mode with a pandemic, but I was in my happy little bubble.
We started working remotely at my day job as well.
While working from home, I found myself having more energy. I had way more time for CyberLeads, and I actually started enjoying my day job.
The future was uncertain for funded startups. So all bureaucracy was gone. We were all working as a team. Getting shit done. No pretend work.
All of my flat mates, but one, left the city and went to be with their families. So it was only me and my one other flat mate who was also working remotely.
I had no problem being stuck at home. I was focused and on a mission.
All I needed was to find a way to get new customers in a repeatable and predictable way. A system.
I tried everything. Facebook Groups. LinkedIn. Reddit. Cold outreach. Banging my head against the wall. Hacker News. Direct Sales. Twitter.
Over a month went by. Nearly two. Revenue was dropping.
That's another thing I didn't know about the lead generation market. Churn is high, people don't stick around paying forever. You have to keep rowing. You can't really take a break.
Many will come in, copy paste and blast a cold email template to everyone, and then unsubscribe when they don't get results.
I was very disappointed and started questioning myself again. Doubt had started to creak in a little. I was back at $100/month. The infamous $100/month, the dark place I was stuck in for more than two years.
When I felt down, I would open my revenue analytics dashboard and look at where the numbers were after the launch.
"Wow man.. I was at $300/month.. That's so close to my $500/month goal.. Man, that means it's useful. I just have to get it in front of people again."
My habit tracking notebook came to the rescue.
Some of the habits I was working on was tweeting every day. It was something that I enjoyed and something I knew might help me.
It ended up changing my life.
On a random day, April 21st, completely unexpectedly, a tweet of mine went viral.
I had around 600 followers at the time and this was the tweet.
"Got my first $50/mo customer!"
That's it. Seriously.
I posted it and went to bed. Thought nothing of it. Didn't even check it until the next day. It ended up getting 2,000 likes and 100,000 impressions. What the hell..
It also brought 10 new paying customers! What?
The next week I wrote a monthly update and posted it on Twitter. Someone shared it and it went straight to the top of HackerNews. The blog post went viral. Tens of thousands of people read it and shared it. People were even reading the blog post on radio shows and podcasts. So strange. So cringe.
That brought another 10 customers.
What?! Is this it?! I found it?!
It was the least expected traffic channel.
Social media is crazy powerful.
This is where things got much, much easier.
I had a product and a distribution channel.
Once again, I was tempted to start utilizing the other channels that were working for me. Just like I wanted to build new products.
But this was one of the biggest lessons of this year. Less is more. Focused attention on one thing is far better than scattered attention on multiple things.
So I focused solely on CyberLeads and Twitter.
I would share my progress, just like I did before. The way I did before I even knew it could result into paying customers.
I wasn't promoting it. I wasn't selling it at all.
I was sharing my personal journey, lessons and milestones.
The best marketing is no marketing. No one wants to be sold anything.
I was just being myself.
This is where the real fun begins. Things get even easier from here.
You have your product.
You have your distribution channel.
And now you have a system to repeatedly get new traffic and customers.
Now all you have to do is put the reps in. That's it.
Until your reach this point, you have to be an artist. Be creative. Think out of the box. Do different things every day. Try to crack this puzzle.
But from here on, you have to become an athlete. Be disciplined. Focused. Do the same things every day.
The two main things so the guy with the gun doesn't kill you.
I would work 2 hours in the morning on marketing. And 2 hours in the evenings on the lists.
It was simple. I had clarity.
Barely anything happened in the first 2 years. Now everything was happening all at once.
Inside three months, I was already within striking range of my monthly salary.
CyberLeads was only 4 months old, but was already at $1.5k/month.
Two months later, at 6 months old, it was at $2k/month.
If I were to leave you with one thing, it's this:
Remember that things get easier after you find that product/channel/system combination. And you don't have to find it many times. Just once.
So don't give up just because you haven't found it yet.
What a ride. This year was crazy.
I am pinching myself every day.
I'm living my dream.
I'm still at my day job.
I enjoy it more now. I love that I'm working remotely. That there is less bureaucracy. That people listen to what I have to say.
I also feel more confident now, after proving to myself that I'm capable of building a business.
Working like this isn't as bad as I thought.
But it's still a cage. And I have to escape.
For now, I want you to keep this.
No one knows what they are doing. I don't. As far as I can tell, almost everyone is winging it.
But most people don't keep it real.
I could easily "forget" about the previous two years. The crying. The doubt. The fear. The failures. The stupid things I said and blushed.
I could just pretend to be smart.
Write about finding an idea and launching it successfully straight away. Building an audience and reaching $2k/month in 6 months.
How cool would that be?
It would be very cool, but it would not be the truth. I'm not that smart. And maybe no one is.
The stars just happen to align sometimes.
• Like randomly getting the idea for Epilepsy Blocker.
• My girlfriend at the time pushing me to pursue Epilepsy Blocker even though I was burnt out.
• That specific company finding Epilepsy Blocker and reaching out.
• Accepting that job and moving to Italy.
• Seeing those specific things in the office at work.
• Being sick the day I was scrolling through Reddit and finding the idea for CyberLeads. Normally I would have been at the gym at that time.
• Having a pandemic. I launched CyberLeads on Valentine's day and I would have probably been out on a date if it wasn't for that.
• The idea making sense to me because I was working at a funded startup.
• Tweeting that random tweet.
• Reading those specific books.
• The list goes on and on.
Many people have actually read my blog and tried to do the same thing. They built a product identical to CyberLeads. They built a landing page the same way I did. Launched on Product Hunt like me. Tried to promote it on Twitter.
Some even started a daily blog as well. But all of them quit and shut down the product after a few weeks. All of them. It's strange.
It didn't work out for them. The stars didn't align for them. It wasn't the idea that matched them perfectly. I think that the world is so random that we have less control over it than we think.
You can't predict these things.
You need luck.
But guess what? If you show up every day for two years, one day you'll get lucky.
There are so many more things I wanna write about.
Things like:
• Positioning
• Copy
• Features & Design
• Going viral
• Stress
• Fear for the future
• Mentality
• Inputs vs Outputs
• Playing the long game
And who knows what else.
But I guess I will have to write about them in the future.
Thank you for reading.
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
• Or leave a review on Amazon
• And message me so we can have a chat
Or don't. It's ok.
Thank you for reading.
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 Stripe. You made it possible for people like me to make a living on the internet. Most importantly, thank you for building Arc Institute. I really hope from the bottom of my heart that you succeed. Not only because of you. But because if you do succeed, all of us succeed, and even the next generations succeed. You’re the ultimate inspiration.
• 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.
• Nassim Taleb, thank you for writing the Incerto. They felt like throwing a grenade in my skull. Rewired my brain. I don’t say this lightly, but they completely changed me, forever. I have read them all, twice, and even bought them to have physical copies in case the world gets destroyed. Eyxaristo poli re Nikola.
• 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. If I was to summarize the whole book series in one sentence, it would be exactly that. My wildest dream would be to inspire someone, just as much as you inspired me.
• 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.
• Jordan Mechner, thank you so much for writing and publishing “The Making of Prince of Persia”. It's amazing, raw and authentic. What an beautiful piece of art.
• Mubs, thank you for launching 50+ projects in public throughout the years and showing us how fast one can build.
• Paul Graham, thank you for the amazing essays. Every time I felt lost, I would go to your beautiful blog and pick an essay to read. They always helped. They weren't an accurate map, and they never pretended to be. They were like a compass.
• 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.
• Shaan Puri, thank you for the podcast, the awesome thoughts, writing and funny stories. I love that you are always optimistic. I love that you are always excited about the future. And I love that you are always planning and setting goals for yourself. Your passion for life is contagious.
• 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.
• James Clear, thank you writing Atomic Habits. It is the most practical book I have ever read in my life. Inspired by the book, I remember writing my daily habits in green if I did them and in red if I didn’t. That alone made me stay consistent and helped me discover the marketing channel that changed 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 everything you have been sharing with us for the past years. Jack, for your amazing art and thoughts. Bilal, for the great podcast episodes, both with NIA and Creator Lab. And Trung, for the funny memes and history insights. As you can already tell, even the title of this book series is inspired by you.
• 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.
• Tim Ferris, thank you for writing the 4 hour work week. I remember reading it back when I was still in my hometown, lost, and dreaming of a life of adventure, travel and experiences. Fast forward a few years, I managed to do that. Thank you.
• 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, 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.
• Amjad Masad, thank you for the amazing blog. I love how you combine philosophy, powerlifting, science, history and business. Also thank you for building Replit, it’s amazing.
• 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.
• Jakob Greenfeld, thank you for being a class competitor. Smart. Ethical. Hard working. And a brilliant writer too. You were the only person I didn’t mind seeing grow and killing it. You deserved it.
• 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.
• Naval, thank you for the writing “How to get rich without getting lucky”. I remember walking around Milan, listening to it, on repeat, again and again, week after week, month after month. I think I can recite huge passages from it. Gave me a new perspective.
• Rico Go, thank you for always pushing yourself and placing crazy goals. Some days you make me wanna think bigger and take over the world too. Your passion for life is infectious. Keep being you.
• Luca, thank you for all the amazing conversations in Milan. About science. Philosophy. Or just life. Also, thank you for showing me the correct way to make coffee and pizza. Hope to see you again soon!
• 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.
• Moch, 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.
Thank you to everyone that has been reading throughout the years 🖤