# He hacked my site... so I paid him $300

Channel: Marc Lou
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmgcaz-kuVE
Duration: 14 min
Language: English
Words: 2544
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Qmgcaz-kuVE

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[0:00] so a random guy hacked my site and he let me know by email I sent him $300 to thank him but not a good looking day today well so we missed the flight it's [Music] real I don't even know where to

[0:25] starts happy birthday to you happy I have all the the zinc on my face oh man this is the most Bell F French belly gift you could ever make Blow the candle and make a wishes what is your wish I think I just wish us good health and peacefulness I'm a you like a lion after eating laa

[1:02] it's a voice like happy birthday to

[1:27] you Surfer surfing h

[1:37] I am so excited because my portfolio of software is about to reach $10,000 per month so that include all the little startups here except chipas which is not a software and I'm so happy because uh I I'm doing it breaking the two fundamental rules of Entrepreneurship the first one is about Focus you can hear everywhere that entrepreneurship is about focus focus focus it just doesn't work like this for me in my brain I like to jump between different kinds of projects startup a on Monday startup B on Tuesday that just something that I really like and the good part about it is that I don't I cannot I cannot be a

[2:10] perfectionist I cannot focus on tiny little details I have to go straight to the essential because my time is limited and that forces me to build only what matters for customers which I think is a great framework for being productive and at the same time I'm also very happy because um this portfolio is about to make $10,000 and 90% is coming from one time pay payments except data fast which is brand new and also habit Garden which is my first startup the rest is coming from onetime payment so 90% of the 10K per month is coming from onetime payments one of the most common advice you hear out there is to have a

[2:44] subscription for your software I wrote and news later explaining why onetime payment is much better especially when you're getting started um you will see that you can actually make more money with one time payment because it's easier to sell uh it's free it's on internet if you want add a link in into the description I really recommend you to have a look and if you want to dive deeper into pricing because pricing is marketing and pricing is very important I made a video recently about five pricing mistakes I made it's on my YouTube check it out it's not a good looking day today why uh I think I got um so I'm getting

[3:22] at the moment I'm getting roasted on Twitter and look at that those are all all people trying credit card on my sites so they can screw whatever they can screw and for another business of mine just people just vote the app and then they start to dispute the payments it has 0.3% dispute activity there was like since this account exists there's been no dispute for a

[3:49] year she I don't even know where to starts so um haven't been working much on the product recently because um there hundreds of people thousands of people trying to attack my site my emails are full of spam my phone is full of messages from my good friends that ask if I'm okay I don't even know if I'm fuing okay and I just I just want to make startups on the internet God damn it okay so just a little bit of context two years ago I had Zer so I just focused on shipping really fast making apps really fast so I can get results fast I was

[4:25] just literally focusing on not being broke and then um that's that's that's how I ended up making all those websites here in the past two or 3 years and that's also how one of my startups took off so this here this thing here um is how I made more money than I thought I would ever make and at the same time I started to grow a following on Twitter and my audience went from zero followers 3 years ago to uh whatever this is now as well as growing a little following on YouTube and in my head I was still thinking like the same Mark I was 2

[4:54] years ago where I was in stress mode and I had to ship really fast and so I did not change my behavior I kept shipping the same way I used to and then someday I saw this post on Twitter from Matt where he says that we should write test for our Co we should build uh secure apps and um he found a way to bypass the pay wall on one of my startup the post was made in the building public Community which which is a community of um this is the community I grew up with like a three years ago um some people there became my friends like real

[5:25] friends we see in real life and it's it's a beautiful Community because entrepreneur is really hard and this is a place where we help each other and usually when one of us makes a mistake we would send a DM privately to each other and try to fix it and when I saw this was made um it was nicely made it was ethical M did Mt did not disclose anything here but the fact that it was public I didn't know how to react because I thought just a DM could have done the same work without the harm so at this moment I just did not reply and

[5:53] then a couple days weeks later um Matt found another bug in one of my products and at the same time I I received this email from a student called Jonas and he found the exact same bug but the difference is that Jonas sent me this bug report through a private email and to thank him for uh the time he took to write the email I sent him $300 and I I wanted to show that uh there might be another way to report bugs and if it's done privately I'm even happy to pay the people who report the bugs so I made a tweet taking about the story so he

[6:27] hacked my site and I paid him $300 and then I talk about the story of you know everything that that happened and I think um I try to have like a little nudge in the end to praise in public and criticize in private uh these tweets went pretty viral and I think that was the the start of uh something bigger it really created a movement where on one side you would have people who have the same mindset as me that think bug should be reporting in private and on the other side um there were developers who think um apps should be shipped with more secure infrastructure and since the

[7:00] Twitter algorithm is always made for a good drama they started to be like a flood of post of people who disagreed on which what is the right way to do things and very soon I would see lots of post on my Newsfeed like dozens of post a day of people trying to find vulnerabilities on my site and posting uh ethically again uh what they found without disclosing how to reproduce but they would post publicly what happened in that Community those spot was usually got viral and I would get I would see like in in a very quick way I would see like hundreds of post in a similar fashion

[7:34] and since it became big like I I would receive like hundreds of of people trying to hack my site to find something to share on Twitter um then my server will go down or we'll just find lots of bug like robots I think it spreaded outside of our community and some people with bad intention from outside the community started to join this and try to hack my site but like in a in a in a filthy way and it would go as far as paying for app and instantly charging back pretending they didn't pay in order for uh well me to lose money and I think

[8:05] to prove a point and at this moment I was I was honest I felt attacked I really felt attacked um so I made a post which I think put it more oil on the fire and I also posted this uh this line here which I'm mindly proud of uh but I I got emotional so I started to block people on Twitter um I've never blocked anyone in 3 years I'm usually the labrador type of personality uh but I felt like it was too much for me to handle and I wanted to just close the computer and and not see that anymore but this didn't help in any way

[8:39] and he just added more oil on the fire so it would be more people trying to hike my site more people posting vulnerabilities on Twitter and and it was not easing the thing so I decided to cool down um turn off my brain and of course this did not make things better attacks keep going stronger and stronger and so at some point as I just made a video to explain the situation and apologize for my emotional reaction so this was an intense week but also a full of learnings and knowledge so there are two things I learned the first one is that shipping fast is important but

[9:10] shipping fast does not mean shipping irresponsibly especially now that I have the following so my my uh apps get way more users and more awareness in security is important leaking data or critical bugs are just not okay and I'm very grateful for all the people who reported these bugs so I taken all the tweets and I went through the code base of all of my startups to make sure that this never happens again and I also hired someone to help me secure all my ads and my second learning is more about communication where I could have avoided the situation if when I saw the first tweet I would have just replied

[9:47] neutrally to it I should have never reacted emotionally I should have never blocked people I should have used the feedback in order to improve my product I should have opened the conversation and I'm very grateful for the burg reports good morning we just woke up and three more people to go wow it's such a big deal it's crazy how do you feel you honestly it feels unreal because I've never intended to grow an audience on YouTube it's mostly just me sharing what I do M and honestly he really feels unreal so if you have someone who just start YouTube what would be the advice for someone who just

[10:24] start to find the identity and I think in the end is about trying to try to make try to make stuff not for YouTube but try to make stuff that inspire people just stuff that if it's not YouTube if it's not Twitter if it's not Instagram you could show that to someone in the street you'll be like well that's cool and because I have all my eight businesses to run Twitter and and a bunch of other stuff I cannot spend much time on YouTube literally I spend maximum one day per week on YouTube so how did limitation help you actually it's because I was limited that I I got

[10:59] here it's like it forced me in 24 hours to do something like this this little constraint like you have a 24 hours window do whatever but you have to show something in the end so the the the audio quality was bad the video quality was bad like everything was bad but I built the habit and then nothing happened for 3 months literally nothing and then I remember I made one of those video that took off like YouTube decided to push it and some of my previous videos were pushed as well like I think two or three of my other previous videos were pushed as well and within a month I

[11:26] would go from a TH or like I don't know yeah a th000 or maybe 5,000 to like 15,000 like it would like triple or or 10x or something I don't remember exactly but like boom one more person I think one thing that really helped see the outcome of your work as a collection of something not as the result don't see don't don't look at the number of followers don't look at the money just look at how many you've done if you make 30 videos and no one watched them you've made 30 videos this is 30 videos like I made 24 25 27 maybe now websites maybe they're on only

[11:59] eight that makes money maybe only one really makes money but still I made 27 websites it's me it's like it's my little collection right I'm so proud this will never go away it's like it's new identity it's now it's deep in my DNA it will never run away oh Noone subcribe oh no this this is literally What It Takes I skipped the surf session this morning because I want to see this and I cannot start a day without surfing so this is extremely extremely important this is a gift from my sister and her boyfriend it says 100K followers like this one it happened it's real it's real

[12:44] yes I guess it's time to thank you for watching my videos I I you know you never I'm talking to a camera at the moment it doesn't feel like it's a person but there's hundred thousands of you who enjoyed at some point my videos and Beyond grateful so well thank you thank you so much I hope I don't even know what to say I just thank you that's all I want I want to say thank you for

[13:16] these I do a I do 15 push-ups in whatever know pullup push-up yeah 15 pull-ups and 15 chinups and then a couple of maybe 60 push-ups then I go to the beach [Music] it's my favorite [Music] song We're supposed to go to Australia but after this crazy week just to take some time off we realized we need a visa and we didn't have one so we missed a flight we applied for a new Visa we're still waiting you're stay waiting looking at flights and and it's crazy because we're supposed to meet someone in Australia a person that changed my life completely and I don't even know if

[14:07] we could get there a [Music]

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