Today is a special day for me.

I've made $3M with my 36 startups.

Solo.
85% margin.
Bootstrapped.

It took 10 years, and I loved every second of it. Here’s my story.

Mark Zuckerberg Aura

I graduated in Computer Science in 2016. My friends applied for a job in Paris, but it didn’t feel right to me. My exchange semester in Hong Kong in 2015 transformed me. I didn’t know what I wanted—I just didn’t want that.

On a regular hangover Sunday morning (2 pm), I watched The Social Network movie and had an epiphany: I will be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

My secret unicorn idea? Tinder for sports lovers. I spent an entire year:

• Learning to code because I was partying instead of studying at the university

• Asking people to sign an NDA to listen to my idea

• Designing a logo and business cards

I was making $10/hour and believed I was Mark Zuckerberg

To pay the bills, I was a waiter in a restaurant in Paris. During my shift, a customer mentioned a new school to learn entrepreneurship.

I was lonely, so I registered. The teacher asked how my startup would make money. I froze. How come I didn’t think about it after a year of work?

My app was a disaster. Users couldn’t even sign up. And I was the only user. My relationship with my girlfriend wasn’t working either.

On March 10th, 2017, I quit everything. The next week, my parents drove me to the airport. I cried in the car.

My friend, Sacha, was waiting for me in Seoul, South Korea. We raised $100,000 from angel investors and built an AI startup with 2 employees.

We were trying to reverse-engineer flight ticket pricing to predict future prices. 9 months later, we had a bad product, no income, and I was wearing a shirt every day. So I quit, again.

In December 2017, I was broke, in a foreign country, and had zero self-confidence. I started to smoke again (I smoked for 7 years in university and stopped when I arrived in Korea).

After reflection, a pattern started to emerge: Big goals, big failures.

I saw an ad on Facebook selling gloves for couples (1 big mitten to hold hands together). I decided to copy and sell them on Facebook for Koreans.

As a product-obsessed engineer, I didn’t think about dropshipping. I had to build the product. A lovely Korean grandma knitted 50 Glovers™: Gloves for Lovers (I was quite proud of the name).

It took a month and a half to knit 50 Glovers™

My new Korean girlfriend helped with the translation. I burned all of my savings on Facebook Ads (a few hundred dollars) with this video. I made 0 sales.

In January 2018, my 8-square-meter bedroom was filled with Glovers™, but my bank account was empty. At $20 per piece, I had to sell them to pay the rent. My girlfriend and I went down the street every night to sell them. 

To brave the minus 15 degrees Korean winter, we had to drink 1 liter of beer before standing in the street for 2 hours. We would sell 2 gloves per day. I would wake up sick and coughing.

What the fuck I am doing with my life?

She said “Yes”

In April 2018, I was more broke than ever, out of shape, and unhealthy. I needed a big change.

I applied for a second acting role to pay the bills. I would get a call once or twice a week and get paid $200 per gig. Then I started to work out every 2 days for clarity of mind—20 minutes of intense jumping rope. I got shredded in 1 month.

Finally, I set a simple goal: Make $1 online with code. 

To avoid another failure, I focused on problems, not products. Every business wants to grow. So I decided to build a gamified marketing tool for escape rooms.

At a startup event, I met Andrey, a talented marketer who became my friend. He said: Why don’t you sell it before you make it?

I’m an engineer. I love building. Marketing? Not at all. But I failed for 2 years, so I decided to listen. He taught me the foundation of marketing. After a few cold emails, Daniela from Time's Up Escape Rooms in Australia wanted to learn more about the product over a quick call.

On Friday 13th, 2018, I was in Osaka, Japan for a 3-day visa run. I just had a bad night of sleep in the cheapest guest house I could afford. 9 am. I was in the common area, it was hot, and the wifi was bad. The call started. 

There are no words to describe how cringe I was. So here’s the intro of the sales pitch. After 42 minutes, she said “yes”. By the of the day, she subscribed to the $99 monthly plan. YES!

I went back to Korea and built the product. That call started a SaaS business called VirallyBot. It made ~$100,000 ($30K in old PayPal account).

1 call paid the bills for 5 years

Growing a SaaS

After making my first $1 online in 2018, my Korean girlfriend and I had no reason to stay in Seoul anymore. We’d rather be somewhere hot and cheap. So we moved to Bali in September.

I was working on VirallyBot: a gamified marketing tool for escape room businesses, priced at $199/month. A typical day would be:

• Marketing in the morning: Collecting leads and sending cold emails. I tried cold calls, but it was not working for me.

• Product in the afternoon: Adding games and features while learning how to code.

We lived in Canggu with 2 roommates

Life was good. I was not living in a bug-infested room anymore. I learned how to surf, and the SaaS was making $1,500/month.

But churn was high. To earn money with my software, escape rooms had to use it. Most didn’t.

I felt like on a treadmill: New customer, new churn. So I offered a yearly plan for $1,999 and got some sales. My revenue hit $3,000 in early 2020. But I was just running faster on the treadmill. 

So I built a new product called GameWidget: An embedded mini-game on websites to entertain visitors and offer discount coupons.

Winners of the game get a discount coupon for the escape rooms

Same market (escape rooms) and same strategy (gamification marketing) but different fulfillment. Instead of using the software, my customers just had to add a script to their sites and let the magic happen.

I beta-tested the product for 2 months and the results were impressive: +0.6% conversion rate (3% is considered great in the industry). I was excited.

Failing life

When COVID hit in March 2020, all escape rooms closed. My revenue went to $0 in a week.

I was fortunate to be in Bali because I met Hugues, who became my best friend. We spent 6 months surfing empty waves and talking about life.

We surfed 6-9-foot waves in tandem

Just like my girlfriend, he never judged me—I could show him every weird side of my personality. Thanks to them, I stopped caring about what others think of me.

In the summer of 2020, my girlfriend and I decided to get married. We flew back to France. My Korean parents did too. The wedding was wonderful. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go back to Bali due to COVID restrictions. We lived in Paris with my parents and sisters for 1 year.

I worked on my previous SaaS and got it back to $1,000 MRR, but something was off. I didn’t like it anymore, so I quit.

After a few months of nothingness, I had to start something new. Anything. So I launched The Golden Plumber in January 2021. Males often dribble after going to the toilet, due to the nature of our engine—as my sister explained (she’s a doctor).

Entrepreneurship at its peak

I created an info-product (2-page PDF) and ran ads on adult websites. I made $4 in 2 months. I quit, again.

My parents gave me $100,000 as an early legacy. I invested everything in Tesla in March 2021, when the stock hit an all-time high. I refused to use the money for at least 20 years. I still believe it’s not mine.

2 weeks later, my portfolio went down by -$36,000.

I was 27 years old, broke, and living with my parents. A recurring thought started to echo:

I am a failure…

On Wednesday, 9th, June 2021, while drinking a morning coffee in my bedroom, I started to cry. Sadness turned to anger, and I dug 4 holes in the wall.

Overcoming depression

It’s not common to see a 27-year-old boy crying in his mum’s arms on the sofa. But life isn’t like movies. I needed a change, a big one:

Quit entrepreneurship and get a job.

Within 2 weeks of applying as a software engineer, I got an interview. At the end, HR asked: Do you want to say anything to Tai Lopez? It wasn’t written on the application, but it was a $9,000/month job offer to work for Tai Lopez. I accepted.

I started reading. I thought I hated books because it was boring in high school. It turned out to be my favorite activity. My first book was “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker. It changed my life. I realized I was tired without knowing it. Fixing my sleep unlocked more motivation, happiness, and less anxiety.

While I worked for Tai, I also learned Korean. 1 hour a day, 6 days a week. 3 months later, I could have a conversation with my wife.

My mood improved every day. I was growing, and I finally had a sense of purpose.

In October 2021, we went back home to Bali

In November, I got fired.

But it didn’t matter. I was so inspired by Pieter Levels building startups in public that I went back to entrepreneurship. I had a new dream.

Just for fun

When there isn’t much happening in your life, it’s hard to find a startup idea. I was so frustrated with my previous years of go-big-or-go-home mindset that I needed a simple project everyone could understand.

In December 2021, Mood2Movie was born: A movie recommendation app based on your mood. It sounds fancy, but it’s just a simple if [mood], then [movie_genre].

This app got 20K+ visitors by going viral on Hacker News

This project kickstarted my build-in-public journey. The app is free, so I could launch it everywhere on Reddit. One post went viral and got 10K visitors. So I had somewhat valuable content to share on Twitter.

In 6 months, I launched 7 projects without thinking about business, just for fun. I learned much about coding, SEO, writing, launching, and marketing. My Twitter account reached 1,000 followers in July 2022.

Meantime, I ate healthy food, prioritized sleep, and worked out every day (surfing or skating). I also raised a chick.

SWE 2020 (left) | Solopreneur 2021 (right)

Even though I was making just a few hundred $ a month, it was too much fun to give up.

I fell in love

In August 2022, my gamified habit tracker, Habits Garden, was making ~$200/month, so I went all-in. But I’m a product-obsessed developer. I don’t like marketing.

Side-project marketing saved me: Ship free tools to promote a paid one.

For instance, I launched VisualizeHabit—a free tool to visualize the compound effect of tiny habits. I plugged Habits Garden, and it brought 30,000 visitors in 2 months.

If you read 5 minutes/day for 1 year, you’ll finish 6 books!

For a side project to work, I had to be good at launching. I started to make fun launch videos. People enjoyed and shared them, creating a viral loop. Each side project grew my Twitter following and brought decent traffic.

Skit for the launch of ByeDispute

Thanks to side-project marketing and launch videos, Habits Garden reached 10,000 users in January 2023.

Users requested a mobile app. I had no idea how to code it, but I tried. After 14 days with the help of my friend Martin, Habits Garden was live on the App Store and the Play Store.

It was making $700/month. Not bad, but not worth 6 months of my life. I fell in love with the wrong product.

Back on the grind

Early 2023, I sold a micro-startup I built in 2021. It was making $80/month and was acquired for $4,300. I had stories to tell. My Twitter account grew by ~50 followers a day.

But I was still not making enough to cover my cheap lifestyle.

So I did the 2021 strategy again: Ship startups like a madman. But this time, I applied some rules:

• No free plan

• Only painkiller product

• Move on if no product-market fit

I built 8 startups in 8 months. 6 made money. 2 paid the bills. Ship fast, launch viral, repeat. In July 2023, I was making ~$3,000/month.

60% of my revenue came from MakeLanding, an AI landing page generator. I tried to grow it but failed. I didn’t use the product, and I didn’t care about the market. I just built the startup out of AI FOMO.

In August 2023, my whole family flew to South Korea, where my wife and I remarried. It was wonderful.

Product-market fit, finally

Holidays are magic. When I left for Korea in August 2023, my head was full of questions. When I came back, it was obvious: I must build a business for customers I care about. So I quit all my faceless AI projects and focused on products I’d use. 

I sold my AI landing page generator for $35,000 and my habit tracker for $10,000. It gave me time and clarity. I wrote about the process and the outcome.

On September 1st, I launched ShipFast, a NextJS boilerplate to ship startups fast. I packed 2 years of shipping knowledge in a GitHub repo.

I told my wife we’d be lucky if we made $100 with it. By the end of the month, ShipFast made $40,000. I was blown away. It’s hard to describe product-market fit, but when it hits, it’s clear.

I kept adding features while tweeting about it. I received tons of testimonials from customers who made their first $1 online thanks to the boilerplate. I was happy.

I also launched ByeDispute: A no-code tool to prevent Stripe chargebacks.

In November, my revenue hit $65,400/month at a 91% margin and 0 employees. By the end of 2023, ShipFast alone made almost $200,000 in total revenue.

It felt so good to be financially rewarded for my last 7 years of work.

Old Stripe screenshot taken on December 17th, 2023

Rat race

I started a YouTube channel in 2024.

The videos made ShipFast hit $133,000 in monthly revenue in April 2024. The YouTube channel quickly grew to 100K followers because I had a story and numbers to back it up.

This made me overconfident. I started to believe I was Alex Hormozi for developers, so I doubled down on content and info-products.

People kept asking how I learned to code under my videos, so I built CodeFast. It took 9 months working 6 hours a day. It made $100,000 in 2 days.

CodeFast’s launch video was my favorite part of building this product

My mood was negatively affected by the ups and downs in revenue. One month I could make $120K, the next $40K. I told myself it’s stupid to stress because I’m still making very good money, but it’s hard to ignore degrowth.

I wish I could tell you I was happy making $1.2M by the end of 2024, but realistically, it felt like a rat race where I had to work harder and harder to keep the numbers up.

First love

I launched DataFast in October 2024.

I connected Stripe with web analytics to find out my best marketing channels

It reached $300 MRR in 2 weeks.

The revenue was ridiculous compared to CodeFast, but it saved me. After spending 9 months making videos, I felt happiness finally building features people could use and touch. I know it sounds weird, but that’s my happy place.

I realized I had to go back to my first love: building apps out of curiosity, not revenue opportunity.

Builder mindset

When I started building in public, I had one goal in mind: 1 startup per month.

I drifted in 2024, but I was back in 2025. I built BioAge, SuperShrimp, and many other little projects that never really made money, and my overall revenue went down, but it didn’t matter. I was having fun again.

I also prioritized other aspects of life and worked less.

My wife and I travelled the world: New Zealand, South Korea, Bali, South Africa, Greece. And I started running and lifting weights.

10% rule

I launched TrustMRR on October 30th, 2025.

24 hours later, it was making $20,000/month in ad placements. I vibe-coded the platform in 6 hours.

The hype died the next month, so I started building verticals to keep the project afloat. After 10 failures, the startup marketplace took off in January 2026. Someone made an offer to acquire TrustMRR for $1M. I rejected the offer.

7 months later:

• 164 founders got acquired

• 200K people visit the site every month

• and I’ve made almost $400,000

I’ve documented TrustMRR’s journey here.

Meanwhile, I added features to DataFast, and it kept growing. As I’m writing this in September 2026, it’s now at $30,831 MRR and ~7% churn.

I launched Stalkr in August 2026 and got my first customers.

It’s doing $223 MRR, which is very tiny compared to my other products, but it doesn’t matter! I build tools for myself, and I’m having fun.

Stalkr is how I find testimonials, feature ideas, and bug reports for my products.

I see a recurring pattern: I have no idea what’s going to work.

ShipFast and TrustMRR blew up overnight. DataFast was slow and steady. My other 30 startups never really made money.

90% of my 36 startups failed. And it’s OK! My goal is to build stuff that makes me happy, even if it doesn’t make money.

Starting over

Back in 2016, when I started, I believed I would make it.

If I had known it would take 7 years of failure, I probably would never have started.

That's why I'm stupidly optimistic.

I don't think in years. I don't dream big.

I think in weeks. I build tiny projects fast. And I quit even faster.

That's how I wake up happy, enjoy the journey, and eventually build life-changing projects.

If you've been following the journey, thank you. You've given my posts a sense of purpose, which has kept me going, and I'm very grateful for this.

I root for you and your projects. ❤️

PS. Here’s my little portfolio of everything I built

Nine months ago, TrustMRR did not exist.

Today, it has made just over $300,000 in revenue, plus around $30,000 in acquisition fees. It gets about 200,000 visitors a month. And 154 founders have been acquired through it.

I spent the next nine months trying games, new pages, small tools, and a marketplace.

This is what happened between the first prompt and $330K.

Chapter 1 — The Launch

On October 28, 2025, Pieter Levels posted about fake MRR screenshots.

I woke up the next morning still thinking about it. I share my own revenue publicly, and I care about trust.

So I opened Cursor and asked it to build a place where founders could verify their revenue with a read-only Stripe key.

Six hours later, I had a leaderboard with two columns: total revenue and MRR.

I launched it on October 30. The post reached 2.9M views.

I had no plan to make money. I added a few ad spots on the side and priced them at $299/month. As the tweet grew, I increased the price to $699, $999, then $1,499 per month.

Within three days, every spot was sold. TrustMRR had made $20,378.

I had never built something this fast that made this much money.

Chapter 2 — Dying Hype

The launch traffic started falling a few days later.

Traffic fell from 146,810 visitors in November to 91,415 in December.

After checking the leaderboard, there was nothing else to do. So I tried around 10+ different ideas to keep it alive.

I made a game where people guessed which startup made more money. The post got 339,000 views. I added categories, founder pages, maps, charts, emails, new payment providers, and small tools like Tinder MRR.

I made the $1 vs $1M game four days after launching TrustMRR. Open the post →

Nobody really cared, and the traffic dropped by 38% in December.

Then a founder asked if he could list his startup for sale.

Chapter 3 — Winner Bet

On November 30, I added a small marketplace. At first, it was almost the same board, but buyers could now see a price and contact the founder.

Five days later, the first startup was acquired!

I posted it on December 5. I was happier than when I sold a sponsor spot. The money was not going to me. A founder had sold something because of a tiny button I had added five days before.

I kept going. I built an inbox, chat, file sharing, NDAs, letters of intent, purchase agreements, and Escrow inside the dashboard.

On January 15, I added a 3% finder fee.

Two weeks later, a startup sold for $85,000. The marketplace was 45 days old. I couldn’t believe it!

Listed for $100,000 on January 5. Sold for $85,000 on January 14.

Chapter 4 — The $1.2M Offer

Around the same time, someone offered to buy TrustMRR for $1M.

I asked for more. A few weeks later, the offer reached $1.2M.

The message that started the acquisition talks. Open the post →

I would have to stay for a few months. I had worked for myself for more than eight years. The idea of selling my own thing, then becoming an employee of it, felt strange.

At the time, about 30 startups were being listed each day, 10 times more than at launch. There was about one acquisition a day.

So I passed on the offer.

Then I went back to adding features.

Chapter 5 — Dying Hype (again)

I kept working on the marketplace, but TrustMRR still had bad months.

In March, TrustMRR made $31,834 and had 180,942 visitors. In April, traffic fell 35% to 118,300. By May, revenue was down to $23,695.

I spent the next months changing the startup pages. I added screenshots, tech stacks, channels, GitHub data, traffic, better revenue charts, embeds, and one-click revenue images.

I tried to make every feature clickbait. Useful and sexy, so users would use and share them. In the end, most traffic comes from word of mouth.

I built Stalkr.AI to find people mentioning TrustMRR

By February, Google had indexed more than 5,000 startup pages. By March, TrustMRR had reached 1M Google impressions.

In June, traffic was back to 178,270 visitors.

TrustMRR reached 1.01M Google impressions in its first six months. Open the post →

Chapter 6 — All-time High

July 2026 became the best month.

TrustMRR hit $44,000 for the month, with a 90% margin. 23 founders were acquired in those 31 days.

TrustMRR's July 2026 dashboard. Open the post →

Here are some stats so far:

• $301,198 in gross product revenue

• ~$30,000 in acquisition fees

• 154 founders acquired

• 56,174 registered buyers

The original board now has 9,645 active startup pages. 2,095 are listed for sale. Together, the database covers more than $1.55B in verified revenue across 54M transactions.

When I launched the MVP, I thought it would be yet another failed project.

Ship fast, ship often, and don’t quit!

— Marc Lou

PS. I built Stalkr.AI to get feature ideas for TrustMRR and just got my first customer!

Built-in-public update 🧑‍💻

Hey, it’s Marc Lou!

• I’m training for my first Hyrox

• My 𝕏 account reached 300K followers

• I launched SHIP OR DIE — a game where you have to ship a startup every 30 days

• I’m building a new SaaS called Stalkr to track what people say about my startups and build features they request (the landing page is pure AI slop, I only built the product so far)

Keep going!

1. A viral product does not have a free plan

Free users are leeches. They increase support, server costs, and make you build features your paying customers don’t want.

Less than 3% of free users ever convert. Remove your free plan.

2. A viral product has three colors

Every color fights for attention. The more colors you add, the less people notice what matters.

Black text. White background. One color for the Buy button.

3. A viral product uses numbers instead of adjectives

“Fast” is forgettable. “Save 4 hours every week” isn’t.

4. A viral product ends with a footer people want to share

97% of visitors won't buy, but they might share. People remember what they see last.

Finish strong.

5. A viral product treats the OG image as a YouTube thumbnail

“If they don’t click, they don’t watch”. Your OG image is often seen more than your actual website.

Design it like a YouTube thumbnail.

6. A viral product reveals one idea per screen

Don’t try to say everything at once. One screen should communicate one idea and nothing else.

One screen. One message. Just like the Instagram feed.

7. A viral product has a headline a fifth grader can understand

Complexity kills curiosity. Use simple words. Your mum should get it.

8. A viral product has a hard paywall

Signups don’t pay the bills. If nobody is willing to pull out their credit card, you don’t have validation.

Ask for payment before asking for data.

9. A viral product has copy only you could write

If a competitor could copy-paste your landing page onto their website, your copy is too generic.

Write from experience.

10. A viral product shows the product before it explains it

A demo communicates more than paragraphs of text.

Show. Don't tell.

11. A viral product does one thing

The more things you do, the less people remember. People don't remember Swiss Army knives. They remember the tool that solved their problem.

Be known for one thing.

12. A viral product uses Popcorn Pricing

Your visitors came to buy a product, not study a spreadsheet. Every pricing tier you add creates another decision and another reason to leave.

Keep it to three choices: Good. Better. Best.

13. A viral product rides a wave

Build around trends, technologies, and problems people are already discussing.

The wave does half the marketing for you.

14. A viral product steals its best copy from customers

Customers already describe your product better than you do.

Write like your customers talk.

15. A viral product has a founder people can see and hear

People buy from people. A screen recording from the founder beats a corporate promo video or a wall of features.

Show your face.

16. A viral product makes pricing impossible to miss

The pricing section is one of the first places visitors look. They use it to understand the product, not just the price.

Put “Pricing” in the header.

17. A viral product has a headline people remember the next day

Write five headlines. Show them to friends. Wait 24 hours and ask which one they remember.

Keep the one that sticks.

18. A viral product has an emotional headline

People don't remember features. They remember feelings. Your headline should make people laugh, say wow, or think what the fuck is this.

Write for humans.

19. A viral product does something people have never seen before

Nobody shares another clone. Surprise people.

20. A viral product can be sold from the hero section alone

80% of visitors won’t scroll past the hero. If they don’t understand the product and want it within a few seconds, you’ve already lost.

Fix the hero first.

21. A viral product shows empathy before it sells

Before people trust your solution, they need to believe you understand their problem.

Describe the problem better than they can.

22. A viral product has one call to action

Every extra button creates hesitation. When people have multiple paths, many choose none.

Give people one next step. Just one.

23. A viral product has a name people remember

Use words people already know. Avoid wordplay, made-up words, and names that require explanation.

24. A viral product sells a human desire, not a feature

People buy more money, more time, better health, more status, or less pain. Features are just vehicles to get there.

Sell the outcome, not the feature.

25. A viral product lets people try the product before buying it

Don’t hide your best features behind a paywall. Put them on the landing page.

Let people play before they pay.

26. A viral product does not use weak words

“most”, “many”, “rarely” weaken your message because nobody knows what they mean. Strong copy makes clear claims that people can picture, remember, and challenge.

Make statements, not estimates.

27. A viral product does not have a subscription

People already pay for enough subscriptions. Don't add another monthly charge unless you can’t ship without it.

One-time payments are 10x easier to sell.

28. A viral product has a call to action that says what happens next

"Get Started" means nothing. "Analyze My Website" tells people exactly what they're about to do.

Remove uncertainty.

29. A viral product does not launch without testimonials

A landing page without testimonials is asking strangers to trust you blindly. Get a few users, friends, or beta testers first and collect their feedback.

Collect proof before traffic.

30. A viral product can be described in under 10 words

If you can't explain your product in one sentence, your users won't either.

31. A viral product is more expensive than its competitors

Nobody talks about the second cheapest option.

Charge more.

This is what I’ve learned from 5 years of building 35 startups in public, watching hundreds of launches make $0, and a few reach millions of people.

These are not rules. They’re patterns. Use them as a compass, not a checklist.

And if you’ve found a 32nd principle, I’d love to hear it.

512 days ago, I set myself a very specific goal.

I wanted to build a software business worth $1 million. $20,000 in MRR. With a conservative 4× multiple, that’s a $1M business.

A few days ago, I crossed that number. Here are 3 lessons I wish I knew earlier.

In 2024, I was using Plausible for analytics and Stripe for payments. Which meant that every day I was opening two dashboards.

One to see how many visitors I had.
One to see how much money I made.

But the one thing I actually cared about didn’t exist anywhere: Which visitors made money.

I didn’t want to know that I had 3,000 visitors.
I wanted to know that Google brought $2,400, or that 𝕏 brought $700.

So the idea for DataFast was simple.

1. Take the traffic analytics

2. Connect it to the revenue

3. And make revenue attribution the main metric

I spent a few weeks building a very rough MVP. It started as a very simple analytics dashboard, similar to Plausible, but with Stripe revenue added on top.

When I launched it, there were exactly four users.

Me. And three friends.

The public launch on 𝕏 brought the first few dozen users and around $500 in MRR.

For the next few months, I basically worked on DataFast every day.

And progress felt painfully slow. It took four months to reach $1K MRR. I remember thinking many times that it probably wouldn’t go anywhere.

You work all day, ship features, answer users, improve things… and at the end of the month, the revenue barely moves.

Then something subtle started to happen.

Every month, MRR grew about 10%. Each month was slightly better than the previous one. And over time, that compounding started to add up.

Little by little, the product crossed $10K MRR, and not long after that, it reached $20K MRR.

10% monthly growth = 310% yearly growth

The biggest lesson for me was that the beginning is by far the hardest part.

Getting to the first few thousand dollars in recurring revenue is brutal. That’s where most people quit. But once a product crosses that point, things start compounding.

A few things really moved the needle along the way.

#1 Positioning

The analytics market is crowded. There are dozens of tools. If DataFast had just been “another analytics tool”, nobody would have cared.

Things started to click when I positioned it as a revenue attribution tool.

Your headline is 90% of your marketing

Instead of focusing on traffic metrics, the product focused on the one metric founders actually care about: where the money comes from.

That positioning came naturally because it was exactly the problem I had myself.

#2 Onboarding

I can’t stress this enough: get users to the aha moment as fast as possible.

For DataFast, it’s the moment when they suddenly see something like: “Google → $1,240 revenue”. When that appears on the dashboard, the product makes sense instantly.

So I kept removing steps → shorter onboarding → less friction → more dopamine → higher conversions.

I wrote about onboarding and positioning in detail when growing DataFast from 0 to $5K MRR

#3 Anti-marketing

I don’t enjoy traditional marketing. I don’t like ads, cold outreach, or spending my days trying to “do marketing.” So my strategy became very simple: build features people want to show.

I built a real-time visitor map that shows traffic around the world. It looks cool. So users take screenshots and share them. People ask what tool it is. They reply with DataFast.

Give users something worth sharing and you’ll never really have to do marketing again

More recently I opened a full DataFast API, which lets users access all their analytics data programmatically.

Then I spent four days building four apps on top of that API.

One turns real-time analytics into a Severance episode. Every page on your site is a department. /pricing is a department. /blog is a department.

Your visitors are innies now. They arrive through the elevator. When they navigate to another page, they walk through the corridor to the next department. When they bounce, they walk out.

This 6-hour side project drove hundreds of users to DataFast

I think this direction will matter more and more.

We’re entering a world where AI agents will use software directly. And AI doesn’t click buttons. It talks to APIs.

My guess is that in the future, many products will simply expose powerful APIs, and users will interact with them through whatever interface they prefer. Generative UI.

DataFast now sits at a little over $20K MRR. Which means the original goal is technically achieved. But reaching a goal has an interesting side effect: you immediately set another one.

The new target is $1 million in ARR. That’s about $83K in monthly recurring revenue. At $20K MRR, DataFast is roughly 25% of the way there.

So the journey continues.

DataMarket is part of the 4 apps in 4 days challenge, and my new favorite way to check web analytics in public (I pretend I’m a smart stock market guy)

If there’s one thing I’d leave you with, it’s this: The beginning always feels slower than it should.

You work every day and the numbers barely move. But once something finally starts working, growth compounds faster than expected.

Most people quit during the flat part of the curve. If you survive that part long enough, the curve eventually bends. And when it does, things start moving very quickly.

I root for you.

— Marc Lou

Hey, it’s Marc, and I wish you a Happy New Year!

I’m writing this newsletter from Crete, Greece. My wife and I are looking for a new place to live — more on that later.

Here’s a recap of 2025.

My 15 income streams

I earned 20% less in 2025 than in 2024, but I wouldn’t change anything. This year was more peaceful (better work/life balance), and my revenue is more diversified now.

Here’s a breakdown of my entire portfolio’s revenue:

ShipFast and CodeFast are still my primary income sources. They currently make around $20K/month each.

DataFast

My biggest achievement this year is DataFast. I spent about 200 days building features, and it paid off. The SaaS is now at $15.8K MRR, which makes it worth roughly $800K as an asset (4× multiple on ARR). DataFast is about to cross 1,000 paying customers, with around 7% churn.

It’s growing organically at 14% MoM. Users do the marketing by sharing screenshots of their analytics. All I have to do is build features they need and love — basically my dream product.

To be honest, I have no idea what’s next for DataFast. I listen to power users, build what they ask for, and trust the process. That’s how I broke through the valley of despair (it took 4 months to reach the first $1K MRR).

TrustMRR

The most unexpected income of the year is TrustMRR. I built this side project in 24 hours, and a few days later it was at $25K MRR.

After the launch craze died down, I tried 10 different verticals to keep the project alive. Nine failed. But when I launched the buy/sell startup marketplace in December, it took off. Within the first two weeks, a dozen startups were acquired.

I’m currently working on the marketplace and hope to replace ad monetization with an acquisition fee.

Investing

I also started investing $15,000 per week in January 2025. It has returned $147K so far. Cash sitting in the bank gets eaten by inflation, so I had to make it active.

I don’t really like investing (I prefer building startups), so I picked the simplest option: the S&P 500. I also recently started investing $5,000/week in ICHN, because I believe China will keep growing. And I made my first AI investment ($20K).

Misc

I launched 3 other startups:

• BioAge (failed)

• ClipMarc (failed)

• A secret project (didn’t have time to launch yet)

A good reminder that having an audience doesn’t guarantee a successful startup!

Meanwhile, I kept sharing everything on 𝕏. I gained 100K new followers and earned $14,339. Thanks, Elon!

Getting younger?

According to my WHOOP wearable, my body age is under 18 (I’m 32).

It might sound cliché, but it’s actually hard to reach this number. WHOOP looks at sleep data, VO₂ max, daily step count, zone 2 and zone 5 workouts, strength training, and more.

The biggest change this year is that I started lifting at the gym (it’s never too late!) As a result, I gained 4 kg of mostly muscle.

I trained for over 340 days this year (mostly surfing, gym, running).

I tested my VO₂ max for the first time and scored 57.4 ml/kg/min (top 5% of men my age). VO₂ max is one of the best longevity markers.

It’s a horrible exercise because you have to push until you pass out

Like in 2024, I drank 0 liters of alcohol and walked at least 10K steps every day (4.2M steps total).

Unlike 2024, I was less strict with my diet: I reintroduced carbs and allowed myself around 10% cheat meals.

7 countries, 10 books

My wife and I want to leave Bali, our home for the past 7 years.

The wake-up call came when we realized how polluted the food chain and air have become. It’s also hard to hit 10K daily steps there, and it’s far from our families (South Korea and France). So we started touring the world looking for a new nest.

In 2025, we visited 7 countries: New Zealand, India, South Africa, Spain, France, South Korea, and Greece.

New Zealand landscapes are mind-blowing

Despite security issues, South Africa surprised us: organic local food, kind people, awesome nature. But our favorite so far is Hossegor, France. And now we’re in Crete, Greece, which we also love.

One reason we traveled so much was to meet you! We organized meetups from Paris to Wanaka, and it was so nice!

Mumbai meetup

Along with my daily morning coffee, I read 10 books in 2025. My top three:

• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

• The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly

• Elon Musk (biography)

That’s it for 2025!

I hope 2026 unfolds in the same way. I like my current work/life balance, and I like working every day. I hope I’ll ship even more startups, that’s what I enjoy the most.

I wish you a Happy New Year and all the best for 2026.

Marc Lou

On October 28, I saw this tweet from Pieter Levels.

He said a lot of people share fake MRR screenshots to get attention.

The next morning, I woke up still thinking about it. Because I share my own revenue publicly, and I care about trust. So I had an idea…

What if there were a place where founders could verify their revenue by connecting a read-only Stripe API key?

I just opened Cursor and said, “build this.”

Within hours, the first version was ready. It had only one headline, two buttons (one for adding a startup, one for searching), and a leaderboard showing real revenue.

The leaderboard just featured my 8 profitable startups on launch day

I launched it the next day by quoting Pieter’s original tweet. The tweet got 3,000+ likes, 2M+ views.

When I launched TrustMRR, I had no monetization plan.

At the bottom of the page, I added my 𝕏 handle and a link to my boilerplate, the same codebase I used to build this app in 24 hours. I also embedded DataFast’s real-time visitor globe for people to discover my little SaaS.

If you visit TrustMRR, you should see yourself in there!

I also added a few ad slots on the sidebar. At first, they promoted my own product. Then, just for fun, I opened a few empty ones for others to buy.

I priced them at $299/month. Within hours, half were sold.

As the tweet gained traction, I kept increasing the price — $699, $999, $1,499.

Within 3 days, every ad slot was gone, and my side project made $20,378.

It became the third fastest-growing project I’ve ever built (I’ve built more than 30).

It took me months to grow some of them. This one took a weekend. Ha, entrepreneurship!

After launch, I kept building whatever users asked for.

I didn’t know what the perfect product looked like, so I just listened.

For fun, I even made a mini-game called $1 vs $1M Startup, where players guess which verified startup makes more.

Soon, big startups started verifying their revenue. Some were making millions a year.

And then Gumroad joined. It felt unreal.

Gumroad’s page on TrustMRR

And that’s it.

No grand plan. No strategy.

Just an idea that solved a tiny problem, built fast, launched fast, and fueled by luck, timing, and curiosity.

Takeaways

• Simplicity wins. The landing page had one headline and two buttons. Nothing else.

• Treat your OG image like a YouTube thumbnail. It’s your first impression.

• Context matters. This only worked because I built it in response to Pieter’s tweet; it gave people a story.

• Show up and build. You can’t control luck, but you can increase your odds by playing (shipping) more often.

— Marc Lou

Build in public update 🧑‍💻

DataFast prices double on October 31.

Over the last year, I’ve added tons of features and made it one of the most affordable analytics tools compared to similar products, with plenty more on the way.

But DataFast only exists because of its early users. So if you subscribe before October 31, you will be grandfathered into today’s price, for as long as you keep your subscription active.

Thank you to the 600+ customers who believed in this product early and shared feedback; it wouldn’t exist without you ❤️

I’ve been a loser most of my life.

As a kid, I fought with my mom because I hated school, and school hated me back.

As a teenager, I didn't grow up. I was 155cm and super skinny when all the other guys were 180cm. I became an easy target, and I had to stop playing sports.

As a uni student, I lost the remaining bits of self-confidence. I had no role model, no idea what to do. So I became the guy who drinks the most and plays World of Warcraft the hardest.

As an entrepreneur, the first four years were painful. I spent an entire year thinking I was the next Mark Zuckerberg, I lost my friends who followed the traditional path, and I felt completely misunderstood by everyone.

Nothing ever seemed to work.

And in 2021, I hit what felt like the natural conclusion of that losing streak — broke, 27, living with my wife in my parents’ house in Paris, still trying to prove I wasn’t a failure.

I thought I’d build something clever: The Golden Plumber. A $2 PDF to help men stop dribbling after peeing. Yes, really.

I even printed stickers with QR codes and stuck them in public toilets in Paris, hoping strangers would buy it. Nobody did. Another failure.

Every day felt like a parody of entrepreneurship. I was broke, embarrassed, living in my childhood room, and my parents still didn’t understand what I did for a living. One morning, I punched four holes in the wall. Then I cried in my wife’s arms.

That was rock bottom. But looking back, that’s where everything started to flip.

Failure strips away your ego. Once there’s nothing left to lose, all that’s left is the work.

I read books. I worked out. I learned Korean. I started coding again. And slowly, I realized something simple:

Success isn’t luck. It’s a law of physics. If you keep showing up, something will move.

In the past 4 years, I lived the same day 1,460 times. Workout. Code. Repeat. I built 30 startups. Most failed. But each one made me a little sharper. A little faster. A little closer.

Until one day, one of them hit. And that was enough to change everything.

If you’re in your loser era right now, the universe is testing how much you actually want it. Keep showing up. Keep losing forward. If you put in enough reps, something will move.

And one day, you’ll realize you were never really losing.

— Marc Lou

A year ago, I started DataFast.

The first months were rough. Churn was 33%. It took me 124 days to reach the first $1K MRR.

Today it’s a different story:

• $5,338 MRR growing 22% month-over-month

• 405 paying customers

• Churn at 8.99%

Here are 6 lessons I wish I knew earlier:

1. Pick one problem, and ignore the rest

Analytics is a crowded space. Big, VC-funded startups dominate it. And most people just use free tools like Google Analytics.

Instead of competing with everyone, I narrowed down.

I built DataFast only for entrepreneurs (because that’s who I care about).

And the #1 problem entrepreneurs face with analytics? Revenue attribution. Most tools are either painful to set up or only show vanity metrics like pageviews — which mean nothing without context.

So I positioned DataFast as the revenue-first analytics tool for entrepreneurs.

That simple focus made it easier to stand out, because I was speaking the language of entrepreneurs and solving their problems.

By the way, positioning feels natural when you’re scratching your own itch — which is exactly why I started DataFast.

2. Using info products is a cheat code

Selling SaaS is hard. Most people aren’t ready to commit to a monthly charge right away.

My first batch of DataFast customers came from my course CodeFast and my boilerplate ShipFast — where I upsold my analytics tool.

When people deploy a site built with ShipFast, I nudge them to try DataFast

One-time products are low-commitment, so they convert better. And once someone has already paid you and liked what they got, it’s much easier to upsell them to SaaS. Trust is already built.

3. Build viral features

I designed features to be shareable.

Because people only share what feels valuable and beautiful to them.

It’s a heuristic that forces me to aim for the best. If it isn’t good enough to screenshot, it isn’t good enough.

That’s how I built things like the real-time globe with avatars, customer journeys, and funnels.

By focusing on features worth sharing, it’s win-win: My customers have content to share, and I get free distribution.

4. Let customers decide the roadmap

In May 2025, I added a customer chat box on every page

Instantly, users started sharing what they wanted. Patterns emerged. I turned those into a feedback board where people could vote.

The roadmap became obvious. Instead of building features based on my assumptions, I built what users actually cared about.

5. Cut onboarding down to the AHA moment

Because I let customers decide the roadmap, I ended up building a feature I never thought I needed: Funnels

That’s how I discovered the biggest bottleneck in my SaaS: Onboarding. Only 6% of users who signed up ever started a free trial.

So I went back and stripped the onboarding flow down to the essentials. I removed everything that wasn’t directly helping users reach the “aha” moment (the #1 reason they signed up): Revenue attribution.

This shift had a huge influence on growth. I documented the full breakdown here.

6. Share your progress until people trust you

For a year, I shared daily progress on Twitter.

Most tweets went completely ignored. But every now and then, one post would click and bring in dozens of signups.

Twitter tweet

The real lesson wasn’t about writing the perfect tweet — it was that consistency beats quality. By showing up every day, I built trust. Even skeptics eventually came back when they saw me making progress.

It doesn’t matter which platform you use. The same approach works on YouTube, where one video turned into my biggest lead magnet. Just be genuine, concise, and consistent.

Final thought

If I had to sum it up:

• Focus on who you’re building for

• Make it easy for them to trust you

• Ship things worth sharing

• Keep talking to your users

• Show up every day

DataFast isn’t big yet. But at $5K MRR, it finally feels like the hard work compounds.

See you at $10K,

— Marc Lou

Everything that worked for me came from scratching my own itches.

I once made Naval25 — a tiny site where people voted on their favorite Naval Ravikant quotes. Sounds pointless, but it was something I cared about, so I built it.

And that “pointless” project made noise. It gave me feedback. It opened doors to the next thing, and the next, until eventually I built ShipFast, my boilerplate, born from the itch of rebuilding the same setup again and again. That one made $1.2M.

Solve your own problem → Ship an MVP → Discover new problems → Scratch again

It doesn’t need to be a big problem. My friend Jack wanted to stop doomscrolling TikTok. So he built an app for himself. That itch gave him his first revenue, which taught him how to do marketing, which led to his next SaaS at $15K MRR.

Scratching your own itch works because:

• You care enough to finish it.

• It’s authentic, so people feel it.

• Sometimes your itch is everyone else’s too.

Right now, I’m building BioAge — a health dashboard that connects my food intake, workouts, sleep data, and lab tests. Because everything in health is connected: food affects sleep, sleep affects performance, and performance affects food cravings. I wanted a way to see the whole picture of my body in one place.

It’s not really a business yet. Maybe it will be one day. But that’s not the point. The point is: I had an itch, so I scratched it.

Don’t start with a “business.” Start with yourself.

Curiosity is where startups start.

— Marc Lou

It’s Sunday, 8:01 am in South Korea.

I’m in an empty coffee shop with a latte, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Spoiler: it doesn’t.

So instead, I’ll just write about what I’ve actually been working on.

200K followers

I started sharing my thoughts on Twitter in November 2021.

Growing an audience was never the goal (and never will be), but I thought:

"If I can get a few people watching my work, I won't have to start from 0 when I launch new startups."

Launch like nobody’s watching, because nobody’s watching yet

It took 8 months to get 1,000 followers. It was very slow, but I didn't care because my north star metric was the number of shipped startups.

I was having fun, and I was committed. I think early followers felt it.

My audience grew faster after shipping 10+ startups. And much faster after the financial success of ShipFast.

In July 2024, my Twitter account crossed 100K followers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKR8_4rqJ3I

And here we are, August 2025, with 200K followers, a number I never thought possible for a little guy writing JavaScript and surfing.

I'm deeply grateful to every single one of you who has been following the journey. You make me feel less weird and make my life more meaningful.

So thank you 200,000 times ❤️

$5,000 MRR

A year ago, I launched a new SaaS, DataFast.

The growth was very slow at the beginning. I thought I had made a big mistake and wanted to give up.

But I’m stubborn, so I kept improving the product, polishing the onboarding, and building features users requested. This is what the MRR growth looks like:

• $1K MRR → 4 months

• $2K MRR → 3 months

• $3K MRR → 2 months

• $4K MRR → 1 month

• $5K MRR → soon?

I wrote about how I increased the revenue trajectory with better onboarding.

5.6% body fat

You didn’t expect this in a tech newsletter, did you?

Well, it’s not about fitness, but about psychology, productivity, and work.

When I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2016, I neglected physical activity because I perceived it as time wasted. This is partially why I burned out in 2020.

Since 2021, I’ve put my health as my #1 priority. These are my non-negotiables:

• 10K daily steps

• 1 hour of workout

• 8 hours of good sleep

• 95% healthy food (my diet)

2021 | 2025

These habits create a positive reinforcement loop that impacts every aspect of my life positively:

→ Finishing them gives me an instant hit of “I did it,” which boosts my mood and focus
→ Repeating them compounds into real results (more startups shipped, better shape)
→ Results reinforce my identity, so sticking to the habits becomes effortless

In fact, I enjoy my routine so much, I repeat it 365 days a year.

New project

My Twitter feed is full of 20-year-old founders crushing it with short-form content marketing on TikTok.

I’m a boomer, but I want to give it a try too.

So I’ve created ClipMarc.com — a content reward program to clip my YouTube channel. Clippers get paid $3 per 1k views (well above market average). It’s limited to 30 people, and it has a first-come, first-served policy.

My latte is cold. And I’m late for my swimming class.

That’s it for today. See you next week!

— Marc Lou

Build in public update 🧑‍💻

I just shipped Funnels inside DataFa.st to find bottlenecks in my startups.

First thing I learned: around 50% of visitors don’t even scroll. They look at the headline and leave.

That hurts, but it’s also the best reminder that most of marketing isn’t adding more features or getting more traffic, but writing a kickass headline 😎

This is ShipFast's scroll depth funnel, and it’s not pretty

I’ve met hundreds of people with great ideas who never made it.

But I’ve never met anyone who launched 10 startups and failed.

That’s the difference between the people you see crushing it online and the people who don’t: a bias for action.

Thinking feels productive, but it’s not. It’s like reading 100 books on swimming but never getting in the water. You’ll drown the moment you try.

For me, execution didn’t come naturally. I had to force it with routine. For the past 6 years, I’ve lived the same day 2,000 times: Workout, coffee, code. Boring, but it works. I avoid overthinking by holding onto one north star metric: build 100 tiny startups.

Each day starts with a fork: dream it, or ship it.

Success is nothing more than repeating the right choice.

— Marc Lou

P.S. If you’re launching soon, this could help.

A couple of days ago, I saw a tweet from Adam.

He’s making about ~$1K/month from his projects, but feels empty, unworthy, and unsure if it’s even worth continuing.

It hit me hard.
Because that was me for 5+ years.
And it’s the story of most entrepreneurs.

Here’s what I’ve realized:
Everyone has an idea.
But 90% never act on it.
Out of the few who do, 90% quit before anything happens.

If you’ve built a little internet business, if you own a domain and it’s live, if it’s making any money, even $100/month, you’re already in the top 0.1%.

And if you’re reading this newsletter on a Saturday morning instead of scrolling cheap dopamine content, you’re way ahead of the crowd.

The trap

Social media only shows the top 0.1% of the top 0.1%.

The 19-year-old founder making $300K/month.
The multi-millionaire who bought Bitcoin in 2009.
The fitness guy whose abs look like they were carved in 3D.

You almost never see the ones grinding without results, even though they make up the vast majority.

“I’m useless.”

For my first 4 years, I didn’t even know what “startup Twitter” was.

I was surrounded by friends and family who didn’t understand.
I felt lonely every day.

It took 2 years to make my first $1 online.
2 years of complete void.
No support from anyone, no traction, nothing but the same feeling crippling every day.
I’m useless.

Even after my first startup made enough money to pay the bills, I felt behind.
I was the one working the hardest, yet my friends with jobs made more money and had more free time.

By the way, here’s something I didn’t know back then:
A startup making $1K/month is a $36K asset if you sell it (MRR × 36 months is a common rule of thumb).
That’s a year’s salary for many people.

But I didn’t see it that way.
I saw failure.

At one point, I fell into depression.
I quit entrepreneurship and got a job.
6 months later, I was fired, so I came back to building.

And for two more years…
Nothing.

By year five, I was making $500/month, living off my wife’s support, feeling like a complete failure.

Then, out of nowhere, one of my projects took off.
And everything flipped.

Looking back

I wouldn’t erase a single failure.

The void is what makes the flip moment feel so good.
The pain gave me a story worth telling.

Without it, I’d just be “some guy who got lucky,” and you wouldn’t read my newsletter.

If you’re building, you’re already amazing.
If you’re making a little money, it’s just a matter of time.
The struggles, the emptiness, the crippling self-doubt, they’re the foundation.
They’re part of the process.

Don’t give up.
It’s all worth it in the end.

I root for you.

— Marc lou

My little SaaS, DataFast, is now growing 4x faster than a year ago.

In my quest to improve MRR, I noticed something: 95% of people who signed up never became customers, ouch.

So I spent weeks maniacally polishing the onboarding flow.

DataFast's average revenue per visitor grew from $0.04 at launch to $0.30 in the last 30 days. Here are 4 lessons I’ve learned.

1. Show the promise first

The biggest win came from stripping the onboarding down to one goal: Get users to the “aha” moment as fast as possible.

For DataFast, that moment is the little orange revenue bar next to the traffic bar. It shows users exactly where their money is coming from.

So I redesigned everything around getting them to that chart. First, I put all features into 2 buckets:

1. Core Flow: Features that are required to reach the aha moment (install the tracking script, integrate with a payment provider)

2. Side Quests: They can help, but they don’t deliver the core promise upfront (invite team members, track custom goals)

Then I removed every feature that doesn’t fall into the Core Flow bucket. New users who sign up experience the following flow:

1 page = 1 step. Everything else is invisible. Complexity kills momentum. Treat attention like a limited resource.

Some of my users don’t want to integrate with payment providers yet, so I made this onboarding step skippable and added a popup to the main analytics dashboard.

All paths should lead to the aha moment.

2. Turn questions into documentation

On May 26th, 2025, I added a customer chat plugin and noticed users reach out whenever they’re stuck on the onboarding. This is gold.

Every time someone asked a question, I wrote a guide. Then I linked it inside the product, right where people usually get stuck.

Some of those guides now rank on Google, and AI assistants surface them too.

Users can self-debug themselves, and onboarding-related requests have dropped dramatically.

I polish the documentation as much as I polish the product. I deeply care about the UI/UX and make it very easy for my users to find what they need.

Your support inbox is the best roadmap for your docs.

3. Show the finished product early

Some parts of onboarding can’t be sped up. For DataFast, it takes time to collect enough data to show revenue insights.

So I made a video.

As soon as a user finishes the onboarding, they see a 60-second clip of a real DataFast dashboard — with revenue mapped to real traffic. It shows them what’s coming and gives them a reason to come back.

4. Test onboarding like a first-time user

Every time I update the onboarding, I opened an incognito tab and signed up again. I did the whole flow from scratch — no assumptions.

If anything confused me, I rewrote it. If any step felt unnecessary, I cut it.

Eventually, I saw tweets saying “DataFast’s onboarding is smooth.” That’s when I knew it was working.

You’re not done until even your grandma could do it.

Your best growth channel might be right under your nose: The people who already signed up — but never made it past step one.

Let them see the juice, fast.

— Marc Lou

PS #1. I used to polish onboarding too early. Don’t optimize for retention until you have signs of demand (your guts will tell you).

PS #2. If you signed up for DataFast, but didn’t subscribe—why?

Even after launching 30+ startups, there’s still one feeling I can’t get over:

Launching a new product… and nothing happens. It sucks.

But here’s the good part: You can relaunch the same product 100 times without changing it. Nobody keeps track. Here are 3 ways to relaunch until it takes off:

Solopreneur update

I moved to South Korea for a month 🇰🇷

My SaaS DataFast reached $4,000 MRR after almost 1 year of focus, and I’m working on a little secret project (coming soon).

Gym, healthy food, JavaScript. That’s the plan for the next 30 days!

1. Rebrand

Same product. New name. New domain. New color theme. New hero section.

The last one is the most important. 80% of people don’t scroll past the headline. In most cases, it’s where the bottleneck is. Make sure you radically change your offer.

I rebranded my AI website builder from LandingAI (#1) to MakeLanding (#2).
Sold the SaaS in 2023 for $35,000.

Design matters. People judge a book by its cover, and your landing page by its hero section. Here’s how to not screw your headline design and how to choose colors without confusing visitors.

Relaunch everywhere with a different offer, until one clicks.

2. Reposition

Same product. New angle.

Change your landing page copy to speak to a new customer segment. Refine your words until they’re ultra-specific for your ideal customer and nonsense for the others. It works best when you niche down.

Here’s the conversion rate of my startup, DataFast:

• 0.22% when I launched a year ago as an analytics tool

• 1.45% after repositioning to a revenue attribution tool (niche)

Change your landing page copy to speak to customers with a different pain point, different level of expertise, or simply a different culture. Here are 5 copywriting mistakes to avoid.

Then relaunch everywhere. Small changes in words = big changes in conversions.

3. Repurpose

Same product. Same landing page. New vertical.

Turn one feature into a free tool. Extract something useful from your product. Give it away with no signup. Use it as a funnel. I wrote a dedicated issue about free tool marketing (if you like building, you’ll love this).

This free logo maker brought $20,000 in revenue (and counting)

People love free tools. And they share them. Launch your free tool everywhere and repeat without moderation.

Rebrand + Reposition + Repurpose = a whole new launch.

Mix everything until your product takes off. Each relaunch teaches you more about what people want. You become a better marketer, a better builder, a better founder.

Launch without moderation.

— Marc Lou

Lovable, the AI website builder, just raised $200M. The CEO, Anton, built it in a weekend. On Monday, 500K people saw the demo and 35K starred the repo on GitHub.

That’s how a lot of successful startups begin: a dead-simple MVP that goes viral overnight.

I spent 3 years building in the dark. It ended up with a severe burnout.

I wish I had removed my ego and convictions from the equation and instead treated each startup as a small bet (as I do now). Out of my 26 startups, only two took off. The day I launched them, I knew instantly they would work. Product–market fit feels different.

Focusing too early turned into emotional attachment. I fell in love with the idea, not the data. I kept going, not because it was working, but because I was afraid to let go. It’s like staying in a broken relationship. You already know how it ends.

The market doesn’t care how long you’ve worked on something. It rewards momentum, not effort. In a full year, you could build one perfect app. Or twenty imperfect ones. That’s twenty dice rolls. That’s twenty times more chance to hit.

To get lucky faster, let the market tell you when it’s time to focus.

Until then, roll the dice again.

— Marc Lou

PS. You can launch your idea 100 times. I’ll show you how next week. Until then, here’s how to get your first customers.

Let’s be honest.

Most entrepreneurs obsess over getting more traffic: SEO, social media, product launches. But if your landing page doesn’t convert, none of it matters.

Most fail not because the product is bad, but because the promise is weak or the page is a mess.

After writing over 30 landing pages and watching thousands of startup launches, I noticed a framework that works. I call it: The Clickbait Landing Page.

Step 1: Make a promise that sounds too good to be true

The first job of your landing page is to stop people from closing the tab. That’s your headline (H1). Your hero section. It needs to make people say: “Wait… what?”

This is where most founders play it too safe. They write “clean” or “honest” copy that nobody remembers.

The best headlines sound too good to be true, slightly clickbait, bold enough to spark curiosity. That’s the job of the promise: To open a loop in the reader’s brain. To make them scroll.

Here’s a simple way to brainstorm it: If TechCrunch wrote an article about your product, what would the headline be?

Step 2: Prove it’s not clickbait

If the promise does its job, the next question is always the same:

“Yeah, but… how?”

This is where your landing page earns trust. Each question your promise raises should be answered in its own section: testimonials, pricing, how it works, etc.

• How does it work? → Show steps 1, 2, 3.

• Why this product? Why now? → Agitate the pain

• Can I trust this? → Add testimonials

• Can I afford it? → Show pricing

• Do I need this now? → Show urgency

The promise was more appealing in 2023 before AI code editors.

Think of your landing page as a sales conversation. Anticipate every doubt and answer it in the right order. That’s how you move someone from “This sounds too good to be true” → “Okay, I’m in.”

And cut anything that doesn’t help make the promise feel real. Extra words kill conversions.

Make it sound scammy. Then prove it isn’t.

Why this works

Let’s say your landing page converts 1% of your 1,000 monthly visitors. That’s 10 sales.

Improve that to 2%, and you’ve doubled your revenue without changing the product, the price, or the traffic.

→ To double your traffic would take ads, SEO, influencer deals (and money).
→ To double your conversion rate takes 3 hours and a blank doc.

($100 product)

This is why landing pages matter. They’re the bridge from attention to money.

Your move this week

1. Rewrite your headline, make it sound too good to be true. (I have a lot more to say about headlines, should I send a full issue on this?)

2. Back it up, answer every question your promise raises (why? what? how?).

3. Cut the fluff, remove anything that doesn’t support the promise.

4. (optional) Send me your before/after: Take a screenshot of your current hero section, then update your headline. Reply with both. I’d love to see. (I’ll feature a few in a future issue)

Don’t expect to nail it first try. Great landing pages are built through iteration and repetition (just like shipping fast).

— Marc Lou

I used to hate marketing.

As a developer, it felt cringe, scammy, or just… unnecessary. So I avoided it. I built stuff quietly. And I made $0 online for two years.

Today, I’ve made over $2 million. Marketing changed everything.

But not through books or courses. I learned by doing something most people skip:

I watched ads.

Solopreneur update

I’ve tried a bunch of marketing experiments for DataFast.

Most failed. But I found 2 that are now driving +20% MoM growth. I’ll break them down in an upcoming issue.

AI made building easy, marketing is the hard part

Let’s be real. Launching a product in 2021 was hard because you had to code everything.

Today, you can ship with AI and a boilerplate in 24 hours.

So now the hard part is… getting people to care. And if you’re building solo, marketing is not optional. It’s survival.

My favorite hack: YouTube Ads

Most people use YouTube to procrastinate. I do too.

But I don’t use YouTube Premium. Because when I get distracted by an ad, I often watch it instead of the video I came for. I close YouTube and go tweak my landing page.

Why? Those ads are tiny masterpieces in marketing.

And YouTube only shows the top-performing ones — the ones making real money. So instead of skipping them, I study them.

I copied a French Instagram ad and made $10K+

One night, my friend Nico sent me a French Instagram ad for a Chinese restaurant.

It was simple and fun. So I rewrote the exact ad and just plugged my course CodeFast.

View on Instagram

It took me 30 minutes. Cost $0.

That ad went on to generate over $10,000, with a 4:1 return on ad spend.

Watch more ads. Steal the structure. Make it yours.

How to templatize an ad (without overthinking it)

Most great ads follow a simple 4-step rhythm:

1. Hook: Say something unexpected in the first 2 seconds to stop the scroll

2. Problem: Call out the pain they feel right now, be specific.

3. Solution: Introduce your product as a fix, keep it simple

4. Proof: Show it works. Use testimonials, a demo, or hard numbers.

5. CTA: Give one clear next step.

It’s not just a blueprint for ads… It works for everything:

• Landing pages

• Tweets

• Cold emails

Different tools. Same structure.

Your move this week:

1. Watch 10 ads — don’t skip, note what made you stop scrolling.

2. Pick your favorite — the simplest one.

3. Break it down — hook, problem, solution, proof, CTA.

4. Remix it — plug in your product and rewrite it. Could be a tweet, a landing page, or a video script.

Don’t skip ads.

They’re trying to sell you something, and that’s exactly what you need to learn.

Until next Saturday, keep shipping.

— Marc Lou

Nobody cares until you win

But here’s how to actually win

A lot of people ask me how to grow an audience.

They think there’s some secret strategy. Be the reply guy. Post 50 times a day. Share memes. Study the algorithm.

That might get you attention for a few minutes. But it won’t build long-term followers. And it definitely won’t build trust.

Because here’s the truth nobody tells you: You don’t grow an audience by being visible. You grow an audience by being different.

The real reason no one’s paying attention

Every week, I see the same thing:

Someone sees a successful product or post and copies it. They build a clone. AI profile picture generator, social media scheduler, the list goes on.

They show up as the 10th, 20th, 100th version of something that already worked. And then they wonder why nobody cares.

What’s missing is novelty.

If you’re not first, you better be different. Because if it’s not new, the algorithm ignores it — and so does everyone else.

That’s why no content strategy works if you’re not doing interesting things.

In 2021, I had 0 followers. After one full year of posting, I reached just 1,000. Nobody followed me when I just posted thoughts.

Boring, I know.

It only started to grow when I started winning — even in small ways:

• Weird launch videos with Joe Rogan

• Viral posts on ProductHunt, Reddit, Hacker News

• Screenshots of the first $1 for a new startup

• Stats like “I built 5 startups in 5 months”

Each win gave me stories worth sharing.

And those stories gave people a reason to follow.

Five steps to actually grow

1. Make small bets

Each project you launch is a dice roll.

The more you roll, the more likely you are to hit something.

2. Be different

Don’t clone what worked. Twist it. Weirdify it. Make it yours.

No one cares about the 78th “startup idea generator.”

3. Ship consistently

Each thing you finish gives you a new reason to post.

Finish more. Share more.

4. Post your wins

Got 300 visitors from Reddit? Made $19 this week?

That’s content. That’s how you grow.

5. Don’t quit

I’ve launched over 30 startups. Only 2 made real money.

But luck is math — if you keep playing, you eventually win.

Your move next week:

• Build something, even small (how to find startup ideas)

• Launch it everywhere (how to get your 1st customer)

• Post what happened.

• Do it again next week.

Each small win = a story = a reason to follow you.

That’s how audience growth really works.

I root for you.

— Marc Lou

WARNING:

❌ This is NOT for people who want to get a 9-5 as a software engineer.
✅ This is for people who want to learn to code fast, build a business, and quit their 9-5.

What I did wrong:

I learned to code in 2016 to build my dream startup (I believed I was the next Mark Zuckerberg).

So I bought Udemy courses. My cart looked like this:

• React: 64 hours

• JavaScript: 52 hours

• Node.js: 41 hours

Locked in for 7 hours of JavaScript Basics

150 hours of content and 2 years later, I still couldn’t create an online business (payments, user login, dashboard, emails — nothing fancy).

I felt defeated. I thought coding wasn’t for me. I almost gave up…

In 2018, I met Andrey in South Korea and he told me: Sell your SaaS before you make it. I was broke, so I tried, and after sending 20 cold emails… I got my first customer!

When the money landed on PayPal, I had no other choice: Build the product ASAP. 

I spent the next 7 days learning and coding only what was necessary to deliver the MVP. It was scrappy and slow because most of what I had learned previously was useless.

The MVP was a Facebook Messenger Bot (no UI, no dashboard, just an API)

Once I delivered the product, the customer was happy.

They used it for 4 years, spending over $4,000 ($99/month for 48 months).

That’s how my first online business started: VirallyBot — A SaaS that made over $75,000 in revenue, let me move to Bali, and most importantly, made me fall in love with coding (which I hated just 2 years ago)

Here’s the red pill: Coding courses are made for people who want a 9-5.

• Employment is a zero-sum game—If you get the job, someone else won’t. You increase the odds of winning (getting hired) with a degree and advanced skills.

• Entrepreneurship is a different beast—The pie is infinite, and customers don’t care about your JavaScript expertise. They want their problems to be solved.

So here’s exactly what I’d do (in 3 steps) if I were to learn to code in 2025.

Solopreneur update

I just launched CodeFast — Learn to code in weeks, not months 🧑‍💻

It’s the course I wish I had when I started. It follows the 3-step blueprint we’ll talk about below.

653 students joined already, some already launched their businesses! There’s a Cyber Monday deal right now (50% off).

Launch tweet got 1,300+ likes, thanks Neo! 🤩

3 steps to learn to code like an entrepreneur:

1/ Learn the Fundamentals 

AI is making a lot of tools and jobs obsolete at warp speed.

But chances are, in 20 years you’ll still receive HTML files over HTTP to read Twitter or see your friends’ posts on Instagram. Infrastructures evolve much more slowly. The internet is likely to work in the same fashion years from now.

Learn how it works using ChatGPT. Ask about what you do on the internet:

• What happens when you click the like button on YouTube?

• What happens when you type “google.com” in Google Chrome?

What happens when I search “YouTube” in Chrome? — From CodeFast 

When you discover a new term, ask the AI to go deeper. You’ll discover the foundations that power the internet. Here are some core concepts I think are crucial:

• HTML/CSS/JS webpage

• Internet browser 

• IP address

• HTTP protocol

• DNS and domain name

• “Backend VS. Frontend”

• API endpoint

Don’t spend more than a few days on this. Stop when you have an overview of how the internet works.

What is a URL? — From CodeFast 

I have 2 projects for you:

1. Go to your favorite site, open the developer console, and inspect the code.

2. Build your first webpage using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It could be the sales page for your business idea or just a portfolio page. Create the HTML file and send it over to a friend. You’ll be surprised how simple it is.

Important: Don’t skip this step. Coding apps without knowing how the internet works is like buying a Ferrari without knowing how to drive.

2/ Pick a tech stack, and stick to it.

When you run an online business, you need tools. For instance:

• Your server sends HTML files to your users

• Your database saves your user’s information 

• Your payment processor charges your customers’ credit cards 

The tech stack is a set of tools used to build and run your web application. There are millions of combinations. Here’s mine:

• Frontend:

  • React (components)

  • NextJS (pages)

  • TailwindCSS + daisyUI (styling)

• Backend:

  • NextJS (API)

  • MongoDB (database)

  • Vercel (hosting)

• Additional tools:

  • Stripe (payments)

  • Resend (emails)

  • AWS (image hosting)

• Programming language: JavaScript

The SaaS we build in CodeFa.st uses the same tech stack

I built 30+ websites with this tech stack. Millions of people visited my sites, DataFast has 10M+ database records, and HabitsGarden has 17,000+ users tracking their habits. 

Here’s the red pill: Tech stacks don’t matter. You can do everything you need as an entrepreneur with any tech stack. 

Pick one. Never change it.

3/ Build, ship, learn (in this order)

A. Build

You’ve got the map and the tools, now we’re entering the fun part: Coding.

Build the smallest version of your idea. Whatever product you have in mind, start building the landing page to “present” your product. Use the tech stack you just picked.

Learn just what you need to build the static page. With my tech stack, you need to know:

• 10% of NextJS

• 10% of React 

• 10% of TailwindCSS

Here’s another red pill: You don’t need to know everything. For instance, React has 15 hooks, I use only 2 in all my 30+ projects. You can ditch 85% of the tech stack features because you’ll likely never use them.

Learning gives us a feeling of being productive but it’s an illusion. You want to get users/customers/testers ASAP.

Add a Call-To-Action (CTA) to your static page. For instance, a Stripe payment link (no-code) or a Google Form to collect beta testers’ emails. It will take you a few days or weeks at max.

B. Ship

You might think it’s early but it’s not: Launch your site.

• First, you’ll have to buy a domain name (I use NameCheap or Netim)

• Then, deploy your site on the internet (I use Vercel)

• And put your offer online: Send cold emails, ask friends, make a post on Reddit

How domain names work — From CodeFast

Your goal is to get 1 customer or 1 beta tester—This is key because these are the next steps:

1. You’ll get instant motivation to build the product (I’ll never forget my first customer, the feeling is insane). Coding will suddenly become fun, you will naturally want to spend more time learning/coding.

2. You won’t overthink about what to learn. Pick just what you need to deliver the product.

3. You will get real feedback. The #1 mistake in entrepreneurship is building a product people don’t need. If nobody is interested in your idea, at least you saved yourself 6 months of coding and a nasty burnout.

C. Learn

Once you get a person on board, your goal is to build the smallest version of your product.

You might have to learn about user authentication, API, and databases on the way. Once again, learn just enough to make something and show it to your customers/users. Ask AI when you’re stuck and make sure you understand “why” you do something.

Stripe subscription flow — From CodeFast

Do things that don’t scale. For instance, you don’t have to set up an entire Stripe subscription flow. You can turn on/off subscriptions manually at first, and automate them later.

D. Repeat

You will build a learning flywheel: Build, ship, learn, repeat.

Once you’re comfortable with the tech stack, start using AI to code for you. Now, I barely code anymore (and yet, I ship more code than ever). I write in English and review the AI-generated code. 

⚠️ Important: Resist the temptation of using AI too early. V0, Bolt, etc… are great tools, but using them without understanding the code is like buying a Ferrari without knowing… Yep, you got it.

And remember, you don’t need a brilliant idea to start. Mine was a free movie recommendation app (Mood2Movie).

Final thoughts on the future of coding

150,000+ tech employees have been laid off in 2024.

Meanwhile, my Twitter feed is filled with entrepreneurs making a living with their apps.

More people want the freedom to work on their own projects, according to their own terms. Coding enables that. It’s not too late to learn. And it’s easier than ever because:

• You just need to know the minimum to build your idea

• You have a superintelligence at your fingertip

You got this, friend!

The most popular advice for entrepreneurs is to charge subscriptions. Passive income and predictable revenue, yes sir!

This is terrible advice.

Here’s why recurring payments are killing your business.

Solopreneur update

I spent the last 3 months building a new SaaS… 🥁

Introducing DataFast — the actionable analytics tool for founders who want to grow their startups with data.

If you try it, I’d love your feedback!

The Subscription Fatigue Era

I killed 3 startups because of recurring payments:

1. IndiePage

   • ✅ It makes $4,000/month on autopilot ($45 for lifetime access).

   • ❌ It made $0/month when I priced it at $15/year.

2. MakeLanding

   • ✅ It made $100/day when I launched ($19 per landing page generated).

   • ❌ It made $0 with a $5/month subscription.

3. HabitsGarden

   • ✅ 100% of users chose the $47 lifetime deal.

   • ❌ Nobody buys the $5/month plan.

10x the monthly price, but 100% of the sales

Netflix, Spotify, wifi... I spend a few thousand dollars a year on these services. When I see $19/month, it’s not just $19. It’s $228 a year, on top of everything else.

Business owners love subscriptions. Customers hate them.

Here’s the invisible cost of charging recurring payments:

• Conversion rate drop: People are reluctant to commit to another subscription, which triggers objections and hesitation.

• Fighting churn: People lose interest soon after signing up. Instead of a steady income, you’re constantly replacing customers who cancel.

$10/month VS. $100

Selling a $10/month monthly subscription is as hard as selling a $100 one-time payment.

Let’s assume you built an excellent SaaS (10% churn = 10% of your customers cancel at the end of the month).

Imagine you get 100 customers today:

• You’ll earn $7,176 with subscriptions, after 365 days.

• You earn $10,000 with one-time payments, right now.

Subscription doesn’t mean recurring revenue. If you’re working solo, in 99% of cases you’re better off financially with one-time payments.

One-time payments alternative

Sometimes, your business has recurring costs, and you can’t afford one-time payments. I’m not talking about bandwidth (that’s negligible) but things like AI credits or database costs.

Then try credits-based pricing:

• Let your customers pay upfront for what they’ll use. Generate 10 AI photos for $5.

• Then, add a Good-Better-Best package. 100 AI photos for $20 ($.2/photo looks cheap now)

This removes the subscription friction (which boosts your conversion rate) and helps you avoid constantly fighting churn.

When subscriptions make sense

• B2B: If you’re selling to businesses, subscriptions make sense because the end goal of any business is to make money.

• Complex credits: When tracking credits is too complex or it’s hard to quantify what your customers use.

Subscriptions serve a specific purpose. Recurring payment = Recurring value according to my friend Dan.

Just because competitors charge recurring payments doesn’t mean you should. Remember, people are tired of subscriptions, and purchase behavior is changing. Not charging a subscription can be a competitive edge.

Oh, and entrepreneurs flex on each other with MRR charts. It’s a status game, don’t fall for it. In the end, the customer is king.