I built a $14K/month SaaS using Discord

0:00I built my first SAS around six, seven months ago. And last month, I did over $40,000 in revenue. This is Sam, a university student who built a SAS with zero coding [music] background. But here's the even crazier part. He validated this idea in a way I've never seen before. Discord. [music] I would mute my mic and literally just share my screen. He found a tiny community, started showing off his product, and [music] just 6 months later, he's at $14,000 a month with over 10,000 users. I got my first 400 users

0:32all on Discord. This is such a crazy simple strategy that I had to get Sam to come on the channel and break it all down. And that's exactly what he did. And in this video, we'll dive into how he shipped a broken MVP that didn't even work and why that didn't matter. how [music] he went from zero to 10,000 users in just 6 months and how Discord might be the untapped channel to find your first 100 customers. All right, this one you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls and this is

1:01Starter Story. All right, Sam, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story. My name is Sam. I v coded my first SAS six months ago called Algrow and I've gained over 10,000 users and made over $14,000 in revenue in the last 30 days. And the way that I did this is something that I don't see many founders doing and it's tapping into Discord communities and growing your SAS through there and I'm excited to share that playbook with

1:29you today. Awesome. Sam, before we get all into Discord, which I think is amazing. I don't even know a whole lot about Discord, which I'm really excited to learn from you. But first, what is the app that you built? You built a SAS. Can you explain what it does? So, there are two core features of our product. We help creators research and also replicate viral formats. We have three different pricing plans at the moment. There is a 25 a month plan, a 45

1:53a month plan, and an $80 a month plan. So, as you can see here, we analyze the subscriber counts, the average views per video, and you are given a list of trending formats that are working in real time. And when you find a channel you like, you can have a save and algor if you want to take it a step forward. you can go and create the videos themselves. So if you find a channel for example that was trending with soru, you can plug it into the AI video generator and then generate it inside of algorith download it and then optimize it for whatever platform you post on and then

2:22you can post it. Okay. Super cool business that you launched. Before we get into the whole Discord strategy and all that, I'd love if you just showed me a little bit more of the metrics behind the business and pulled up some of your Stripe dashboard and just showed us a little bit more about how the business is doing

2:36financially. All right, no worries. Here is the last four weeks on Algrow and as you can see it's made over £10,000 in revenue and when you convert that into dollars it's around 13 to 14,000. In terms of customers we have exactly 480 new customers this month. So initially when I launched Algrow I launched it as a tool for faceless YouTubers. However in the recent months Algro has grown to influencers using it. I see drop shippers using it. So it has many

3:04different use cases now. Okay cool. Thank you for sharing your metrics, pulling up your Stripe dashboards and being transparent with all that. I want to understand a little bit more about your background. How do you even get into the idea of building a SAS? All right, so I've been around the internet for the past like 3 years looking for different ways to make money. The first way I started was affiliate marketing. Me and my two best friends from home, we worked with a company called Resap and we posted faceless texting stories about different like fake scenarios to help promote their app. and we did over $10,000 in

3:36revenue with that company. However, it wasn't sustainable. But I took that money from RZAB and I thought, okay, let me try a different business model. So, I went to something called YouTube automation where you post videos online and make money from ad revenue. And I had a close friend called Mason who first introduced me into the idea of [music] why doesn't someone build a way for us to find more shorts channels to run cuz the more channels you have to run, the more opportunities to make

4:01money. And I was like, you know what? I'll try the idea. So, I opened up a notepad and I blurted out on the chat [music] voice mode my whole idea. So, I was given a bunch of code and I was just copying it back and forth into notepad. And then I Googled and I saw something called Visual Studio [music] Code and I still didn't know what to do. So, all I would do is just still copy back and forth, but instead of notepad, I did it on VS Code. And that's how I coded my first ever MVP. However, I showed that to my friend Mason and he was like, "So,

4:31raw dogging it in VS Code is dumb when cursor exist and I didn't know what cursor I thought he was talking about a mouse cursor at the time." So, I downloaded it and ever since then I've just been with cursor. You basically have no technical experience. How did you teach yourself this? Did you build the whole MVP? How long did it take you to do this with AI coding tools with zero technical

4:51experience? All right. So the initial MVP that you see it was coded in about a week and that is the version I did on notepad. When I first shipped my product I hosted it on a site called Heroku and the first person I gave it to they got an application error but they still managed to use some of the core features and were able to still use the app. Yes, there were bugs. Yes, there were issues but the main idea of the app was working. So as long as what you're trying to solve works I think you can

5:20ship anything. Okay, cool. You can build anything nowadays. This isn't news. I want to understand about the marketing. How did you get your first customers? And then how did you build this to something that makes over $10,000 a month? So, the way I did it is I hopped on a site called discboard.org. Type in any keyword or any niche and it will find you Discord communities with people in that niche. And what I did is at the time there was a server called moneymind. I went to search bar and I typed in the word niches. But the major result that I found was people were searching how do I find a niche or how

5:52can I replicate this niche. When I saw that people were repeating how do I find a niche I was like okay that is the demand I see the demand. So I thought let me get a bit more validation. So what I used to do is I would go in that server and I would join a discord voice chat and I would share my screen not talking nothing just me using my tool and I was seeing Sam what are you using at Sam what is this? And I would respond

6:14to him being, "Oh, it's a tool I built." And I did this for about like a week straight. It even attracted the eyes of the Discord server owner to the point that he created a YouTube long form promotional video on the tool. I didn't ask him. I didn't pay for it. I didn't do anything. And then after weeks of just sitting in the Discord server and screen sharing, I thought, how can I get

6:34these people to convert to my product? And I saw the typical thing was for a SAS to release a weight list. And I was able to send that weight list to those Discord servers. So I would put in the Discord server in the chat just the wait list and be like if you want to try the tool just sign up here and once it's released we'll get an email something

6:51like that and that's how Algro started. Man I just love hearing how Sam went out and found his customers through this platform called Discord. It's really something that I haven't seen or heard of that much. I mean I hear a lot about Reddit and Facebook groups but not Discord. And if you stick around to the end you're going to hear him break down his entire process. But it got me thinking about all the niche communities that are out there where you can go find customers. I get a lot of DMs from you guys about where is the best place to post my product and get my first

7:18customer. But the truth is there are a million places to do it and it's different for every type of business and customer that you're trying to reach. Honestly, it's easy to get lost or confused and potentially even pick the wrong distribution channel. And I know a lot of you guys watching might not know exactly where to start. So, I decided to put something together for you for free where you can find your perfect distribution channel. Again, this is all free. I put together the ultimate playbook of how to find customers through niche communities, not only Discord, but Reddit, Facebook groups, and all sorts of places where you can

7:49find customers for free. And this is all based on real data and real examples from successful founders that I talked to through this YouTube channel and also through Starter Story. This is important because it's what is actually working and you can download the whole thing for free right now. Just click the link in the description to get it, but it won't be free forever. All right, let's get back to the interview. Discord is this untapped market almost, but I assume

8:12that Discord has a huge spam problem. Why didn't you get banned? Why did people love your stuff so much they were willing to self-promote it? What did you do, right? What would be your advice for other people who want to nail Discord distribution? Most Discord communities that you join have server rules, and in the rules, it always says no self-promo or else you'll be banned. And most people see that and what they'll do still is go in the server and be like, "Hi, I've got this tool. Please use it." But you just look like spam. You look like an annoying person. And I think the main thing you

8:44have to do first is build maybe a bit of rapport in the community. A person would give me like a type of channel they were looking for and I would use my tool to help them find that channel. So I wasn't directly selling it to them cuz at the end of the day, those people would tell their friends. Word of mouth was so big for me at the beginning. just because it solves a painoint that is so big, people will end up telling other people. I

9:05asked them, "Where did you come from?" They'd be like, "Oh, my friend told me." Okay, cool. This is amazing. Could you give me the playbook on how you would get customers from niche communities or specifically Discord if you had to start over today? So, [music] the first step that I would have for you is to find where your ICP lives. Attempt to find [music] if there

9:22is a Discord community for your niche. Let's say we're going to build a SAS that creates 3D assets or something. So, what I would do is I would go on Discord and have a look at the Blender servers, their outputs, and I would join every single one of them and do the same thing for Cinema 4D. And then for step two, I would say you need to listen before [music] you build anything. One cool thing about Discord is you can scroll through and copy and paste days and days worth of chat history. Copy and paste it into Chatbutt and give it a prompt saying, "List me all of the pain points

9:56[music] that these people have talked about over the last couple days." You want to be looking for recurring pain points because those are the ones that would have more demand. So the more struggle there is, the more likely the product is [music] going to do to do better in my opinion. Step three, now you want to validate your ideas by

10:09having real conversations with people. So once you DM these people, you need to have a goal in mind. Drop them a screen recording of or whatever, like a quick loom that's sped up of your tool. [music] And if you see them like give great feedback like on my days, this is something I've been looking for. something like that. That is a strong indicator that you're building the correct thing. However, I say at least try and find five, six different people

10:32[music] in different servers as well. Step four, I would say you should build in public with the community. I don't mean the whole Twitter build in public where you document the process of you building your SAS. I genuinely think that's a whole bunch of rubbish, but that's my personal opinion on it. I think that you should build your product with your users. So, if you think you can collect enough users, then just build a weight list and get the emails ready. But another really cool thing you can do beyond a wait list is make your own Discord server for your future [music] product. So, instead of being

11:07scared of getting banned for self-promo in the big communities, you can start growing your own private Discord community and then you're funneling in your ideal customers. And I'm all for emails. I think emails are great, but Discord is 10 times better in terms of building a relationship with your users. I think young people will go on Discord more than they check their emails. So, for step five, another thing you want to do is turn all of your early users into

11:34potential advocates for your product. So, one thing I did is I gave all of my early users to help me validate my idea. I gave them all free access. So, the early access user would have free access, then his friend would have to pay, but his friend might be a bit skeptical on how the tool works. But the really cool thing is the early access user can just show him because he has free access and that is how our group grew as quick as it did cuz I post it in these communities and these people would tell their friends and that is how it

12:00initially blew up. Okay, cool. Want to change topics on a second. I know that you vibe coded this without technical background. What's your tech stack? How did you build this and what tools do you use? So I've upgraded from the $20 a month cursor plan to the $200 a month cursor plan and then I have an AI image

12:15generation feature inside of our growth. of that is based off Nano Banana where I'm paying around I'd say $100 a month. There's also AI video generation which uses models like Sora 2 and I'll say I'm paying around $200 a month. Hosting now cost me about $100 a month. I'm still on Heroku. And then in terms of email marketing, I use a site called Mailorite and it costs around $80 a month. And in terms of like different AI compute now other cost of Gemini, I say it goes to

12:44around $300 to $500 per month. Cool. Last question that we ask every founder who comes onto the channel. If you could go back in time, what would be your advice to young Sam or for anyone watching this who wants to build a 10K plus per month business? My main advice for people would be build your tool to accommodate for scale. You need to initially bet on yourself. Think that, okay, cool. I'm going to have 100,000 users building my tool. And you

13:10want to have the frameworks behind that. and you might not know them, but when you tell cursor to think that way, it will change its mindset in the way it prompts you to do things, it will prompt you in a way that will accommodate for those 100,000 users instead of [music] just that one user being you, cuz then it saves you so much time and money down

13:26the line. Well, that's great advice for anyone watching this. Vibe coding, building stuff, believe in yourself. Thanks, Sam, for coming on to the channel. Amazing strategy Discord. I love it. So, thanks for coming on and sharing everything so transparently. Thanks for having me on. All right. Thank you to Sam for coming on to the channel and sharing all that. I'll bring Gus, our producer, on. What

13:45do you think of this one, Gus? Yeah, that was pretty awesome. My big takeaway is like there's a million places to find customers, but Discord is just not something I've ever thought about. Maybe maybe I'm just old. Like I don't use Discord, so that's probably part of the problem. Yeah, he did sort of mention this a couple times is like he said, "My users are younger and they're on Discord. They don't check their email." I think that's really important. And if you're going to build this business and then you're going to go promote it on LinkedIn, that that's not going to work, right? Yeah. Just crazy to think like

14:13there's these tiny places or pockets on the internet. It's pretty cool. A million different places to go find people. You just got to like understand a certain niche really well [music] to know where to go look. And what I thought was cool in the early days, he didn't even have the ability to build any software, but he just built something super niche. I think that's super cool and it's what I would recommend for anyone to do who wants to get started today, who wants to build stuff, go to small community, solve a really, really niche problem for a really, really niche customer. Uh, you could probably vibe code something

14:42really quickly and just start getting interest and validation. So, if you're looking to do that and you want to build something quickly, I definitely check out Starter Story Build. It is our platform. We will teach you how to build and vibe code products to production in just a couple weeks. You'll come up with your idea, you'll build it, and you'll launch it to real users who might be on Discord just like Sam did. I'll put a link in the description for that. Our next cohorts are starting this week. If you're looking to start and build and get off the sidelines and build

15:09something, definitely check it out. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.