# Zero to $25K/Month With One Marketing Channel

Channel: Florian Darroman
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFmmGoO3sZE
Duration: 1 hr
Language: English
Words: 11008
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/cFmmGoO3sZE

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[0:00] We were like, not doing well. Like, we can say we were very broke. We literally didn't have the money to buy the tickets back home. After multiple attempts to build a SaaS, they were totally broke. So, they had two options, going back home or go all in and take a last shot. So, we were like, all right, this is the last shot. [music] If this doesn't work,

[0:18] we completely change. Six months later, they eat $25,000 a month with Sleek. In this episode, you will learn why you should stop building for everyone, the template they used to go systematically viral on X, and why they turned down an offer from a huge company. I think we can say now, yeah. The name?

[0:36] Yeah. Can we? We got an acquisition offer by

[0:45] Before we start, I'm Florian and I'm growing my SaaS District to 100K MRR. To help me reach that goal, I interview founders already made it right here on this channel. So, you and I can steal their playbook to make it. I'm also documenting the whole journey on my vlog, and on the last episode, I shared the backstage of my interview with Sleek's founders in Bali. So, if you like this episode, please subscribe and make sure to click on the link on the

[1:08] first comment to watch the backstage. So guys, 0 to 10K MRR in 4 weeks, 0 to 25K MRR in about 6 months. That's the beautiful overnight success story. I want to know the real story. Did you struggle before that? I wish it was overnight. [laughter] Yeah, it it was quite a a um a journey,

[1:30] I'd say. Um where we can start because we had literally really a lot of ups and down during during this. Now, we are on Sleek. Our main product is Sleek, the one you mentioned that got us the that success. But, it wasn't it hasn't been like this for all of the time. We started more than, I guess, a year and a half ago, a little bit more

[1:55] maybe. With what it was called the Reweb, our first product. Actually, they started because I joined them like a couple of months after the everything started. But When I convinced him to quit his job. Yeah, come on. Join us. It's fun. [laughter] Yeah, that's another story. But we have been working through this this Reweb. It It was basically visual editor software for Next.js. Like kind of a vertical software for a specific problem. And it was even the

[2:33] going quite good at beginning, I'd say. And we got some initial traction, but it started to become very difficult to grow with. Like Yeah, just to add, this was before AI tools started to really pop off. This is like before Lovable, before Vizzero, where like no one had even launched actually. Yeah, it was probably at the same time.

[2:55] Around, yeah, a month before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We We got very unlucky with the timeline. Because I'm sure that like 2 years before or 3 years before it could have been a successful product. But the the the market and the timing made it it it it wasn't the right moment. So you were fighting kind of Lovable

[3:13] like with Reweb. Yeah, for with the first version of Reweb cuz we'll get into how it changed a lot, but yeah, as soon as these AI tools started to came around, we didn't have any AI features at the time. So that was like, "We need to make a change." But that change that we made at the time didn't work out very well, and we can, you know, you can keep going with the story of

[3:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, as he is saying, we on this product it started without AI. It was completely a visual editing thing too, like Framer, you can imagine. And uh we we I'd say we We also following a nice playbook. Like we were listening to user feedbacks and so on. We were actually targeting what were the main pain for the users. And we were actually focusing on fixing those things and shipping new

[4:04] features about the stuff. But I think at the time we were missing the big picture because we were focusing on these like minimal things that were actually If you're following the playbook of how would you grow a startup, it's what you have to do. It's still what you have to do because you have to listen your your

[4:24] customer base. But the world in the time it's still now has been like evolving at a speed that it's it's unimaginable and yeah, I think we we we missed the big picture that people started to use AI. They wanted to use only AI because we were like focusing on shipping new editing features, new

[4:50] stuff like those like that. But it was quite simple at the time. We should have focused only on AI and we will go there. So what you mean is that you built three web and you wanted to make this product really really good. So you were like going into the precise thing to change, listening to your customer while there was something way bigger going to

[5:11] actually be a bigger struggle for you. And what was that? It was AI and all these other tool coming? Yeah, I think so for us like well, we obviously added AI at some point, but it was more like the nice to have feature and like the still the big product was our visual editing software that we had built and we were very proud of. We're like, okay, we want to make it the best visual editor

[5:35] for, you know, websites. But and AI was kind of a nice thing to have on top, but then slowly we started to see that it was the other way around. The other tools like Lavable and Vizier, they started doing purely AI generation and they had no visual editing features at all. So, for every single thing you had to prompt, like change the button from red to blue, that was a prompt. And

[5:58] that's where we thought we shined. But I think we went too strong on this angle. And later on, those tools started to introduce visual edits as like the secondary feature that fixed their problems and at that point we're like, "Okay, we have no game." And it doesn't make sense what we're doing. So, yeah, then we did like a a force pivot where the we called it like Reweb 2.0 or like

[6:25] version two, whatever. And yeah, that was that's that was the way more focused on AI, so it was now it was like the chat was the main interface, not anymore the the editing tool. Um but yeah, then then with that pivot we did many mistakes, not being able to find the ICP right, so So, there was Reweb 1, Reweb 2.0 with AI and everything, but you still still didn't have like the ICP. I didn't really know what user you were actually target. So, how many times did you

[7:02] actually pivoted Reweb 1.0? Well, um yeah, exactly. I would say like Reweb 1 was great, but our ICP was developers. And if you if your ICP is developers when Cursor or Cloud Code, Lovabol, they all came out, it's it's not an easy game. Um cuz people want to go fast and that's what the AI gives. It allows them to go fast. Um so that that's that was a bit of a blocker for us. Like people didn't want to write code anymore. They they just

[7:31] had it ready for them. And um from then we from there we started thinking, "Okay, like um this is kind of cool. We we saw that developers were wanting something different and we said, "Okay, why don't we target um a different audience? So, let's perhaps like uh stop with um developers for now and let's go to people who want to build a beautiful landing page and they need it very quickly. Uh and that is not necessarily developers. So, okay, let's create something in between maybe like a an advanced uh template builder for landing pages, which we saw because uh that's at the end of the day what people were more

[8:12] interested in uh in Reweb was landing pages. Um so, we tried that for a bit uh built a bunch before validating uh didn't go too well. Um and after that, yeah, that it kind of evolved into Reweb 2.0 and Reweb 2.0 had a different audience. We wanted to go after uh designers. But, designers is a very tough word. You're competing against Figma. A funny thing is that that product that um it was a very short like people that are like experiment after the version one of Reweb. It was actually already called sleek.design at the time. That's where we originally

[8:50] bought the domain. And uh but it was a a different product, but then we ended up reusing the domain because we we think it was cool. And so, yeah, that was like um a short experiment where we we probably spent more on the domain [laughter] than actually what we made. And cuz at the time we were launching it, we were like, "No, no, no, no, no, this is this is not

[9:14] this is not it." So, you know, we tried. At least we we we always, you know, we the the thing I I I liked is that we were never too fixed on on something. We're like, "All right, we need to we need to change." Like when we saw it was obvious we needed to change,

[9:30] we were like, "All right, let's change. Let's not stick too much on it." And before we come to sleek, uh if you had to do all this process again, what would be like the 80/20 that you would do to actually like make sure that from the beginning you actually target the good person. Yeah, um

[9:48] I think it's probably content. You're right. I think Yeah, either like trying to test the market with, you know, just with like putting some content out there and see what resonates the most with people. But mostly I think our problem was just not being not having a very clear ICP in mind before starting to build. Like with the with the re-web version two, we moved a bit from developers to designers, but still because of our audience and the people who we reached, we still have developers coming in and use the product. We have even like some product managers. So So we had kind of different people that were using our

[10:26] product. And the mistake I think we made is that we listened to all of them. We were, all right, let's make this feature for the devs and this feature's for the designers and this feature for non-technical people and we were we built a lot of stuff. The product, you know, was it was cool in some ways, but it wasn't made for anyone specifically. So no one was like loving it. I think some people were

[10:54] liking it. Decent amount of people were liking it, but no one was like truly truly loving it. I had this conversation with Dmytro, one of my first podcast, and we had this conversation about the fact that it's actually really scary to target only one person because you feel like you're missing out of all the potential other

[11:13] customers. What was the difference when you started to actually target one person compared to everyone? Yeah, it was I mean, the numbers showed us. With Sleek, we kind of took it the other way around. So before starting it, we were like, all right, let's sit down a moment. Let's figure out who we want to build this for. And well, the way we went about it was well, first we had too many too many features in the product. We wanted to make something more simple,

[11:47] easier to think about, easier to test. So, uh the previous product, Reweb, at this point it was Reweb 2.0. I feel like we talked about so many products. And just just to recap, this was basically a general design tool. You could say the next Figma, whatever. Um The kill cell of Uber was Cursor meets Figma. Exactly. That was the year of the Cursor app. We were the the Cursor app design. I think I think a Twitter a tweet went viral

[12:18] Yeah. with Cursor meets Figma. Yeah. Tweet No, um Cursor and Figma had a baby. Had a baby. That was our launch. And Yeah. So, it got very viral, but like we weren't converting that much. That like we I remember we were in Mallorca like at this hacker house, and we we launched this Reweb 2.0, and it was the biggest viral tweet and we we we ever had. But we we we were getting traffic, but not

[12:49] that much conversion. And that's where we started to think, okay, maybe there is really something wrong. We are we are really missing something so clear, so so so so easy to to miss. And what was wrong? Still still the ICP. I think that's really the core, the root of everything, cuz people weren't just like getting it, or like they weren't feeling

[13:11] like it was made specifically for them. And we also had I think uh we were trying new partners. It wasn't something like it was like a new concept that was starting to get a, you know, in the market of having these vibe design tools cuz at the, you know, only like a year ago vibe like vibe coding was, you know, already established but this like or like at least pretty pretty pretty established but this vibe design concept of like doing having interfaces that are more for design like a canvas where you use AI in this canvas that was not very popular. So, it was like just getting started. So, it was,

[13:52] you know, something to be to be tested and like we tested it kind of I guess we Yeah, like I said before like building too many features without like the product was cool. It was like, all right, this is cool. It's a canvas where you can play with AI and create designs for mobile apps, web apps, websites but it wasn't very specific and we didn't know who exactly was going to use it. It was more like, all right,

[14:15] let's build this and figure this out. But that didn't that didn't work out for us. So, that we sleek we took a step back and we're like, okay, who are we building this for? Let's make the product a lot more simple cuz I think the simpler the product the easier is to think about it. The easier is to test things and to it's better to start with like few features and then go broad and like build a lot of stuff and then like figure out where to niche down in our opinion. So, uh yeah, the first big change was that we went from being a general design

[14:46] tool. So, from being able to generate web apps, websites, mobile to only mobile. And the with a few signals about this first we were getting interested into building mobile apps cuz it was, you know, getting very friendly. Somehow all our friends at some point were building mobile apps. They were like, oh, this is cool. Mobile apps are are new to us. We want to explore it. And the market is is

[15:12] growing. Um like it was like the number of apps deployed on the App Store were, you know, going going crazy. So, we're like, okay, it seems like a lot of people want to build mobile apps and everyone is building general design tools. Like, almost no one was doing uh design tools specifically for mobile." So, we're like, "Okay, maybe there is uh there is something here." And we chatted a bit with uh some users, with some designers, and or some people like in the space and understood what was the you know, what was the sentiment about this. And we're like, "Okay, mobile apps uh could be a force to wait

[15:51] to niche down." And then we were like, "Okay, we still need uh a very clear type of customer though, cuz non-technical people can build mobile apps or technical people can build mobile apps, designers can do mobile app designs." And we ended up choosing to target non-technical uh people cuz we felt like with live coding and everything, a lot of like new uh founders, a lot of like a lot of new people were becoming founders to build their first mobile app with, you know, with the new live coding

[16:20] tools. And they all looked very bad because uh live coding tools were good at building your back end and your the functionality, but none of them was good at design. So, we're like, "Okay, if we can make something that for a new founder that doesn't have a big design big budget for like a designer or design team or whatever, is just getting started pre and like MVP stage, we can help you get a better

[16:46] design." And uh yeah, that's basically how we niche down to this. How did you actually keep going because like you're here, you guys launched WeWeb 1, then WeWeb 2, then WeWeb 11. [laughter] How did you guys like three brand decide to actually keep doing design and not be like, "Okay, this is not a good market. Let's do something else." Or let's build a mobile app or whatever. What made you

[17:13] like keep going? I I think it was a number of things and um I mean I would say first of all because like we had been working in the space already for a year and a half. So, we had some knowledge that other people didn't have. And you know, even how to build a good design. Like now, of course, our LLMs are getting better, but if you wanted to build a cool design with the LLMs we had 1 year ago, then there was a lot of engineering involved. Like it wasn't nearly as easy. So, we had that knowledge. Um you know, how to inject knowledge about uh I don't know,

[17:45] typography, layout, uh color palettes, and and whatever. So, we had an edge in that regard. And of course, design is uh a huge market. So, um you know, we decided to keep on going at it. And I'd be lying if I said that if Sleek had failed, we would still be in the space. No, we actually said like Sleek was kind of our last shot at this industry. We were like, all right. Cuz we were

[18:12] actually in Bali a few months ago. Um when we started this, and we were like not doing well. Like [laughter] we can say we were very broke. And so, we were like uh All right, this is the last shot. If this doesn't work, we completely change. We like we just go for something totally different. We kind of start from

[18:32] zero. We also made a post about this on Hacker News and read it like we'd actually written this is our last shot. We we are trying Sleek Design, this mobile app design tool. But this is the the last shot. We give us until the the the end of the year, and that's it. We We we were promising to us because we we were also aware that we were keeping doing that also maybe for sunk fallacy cost because we have been doing that for more than a year and a half. And so, it it was we would have been very difficult to like leave everything behind and

[19:04] start again. But we said, "Okay, but we have to do. If it If it's not working, we have to do." But But luckily, we we got a nice shot, I'd say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We literally didn't have the money to buy the tickets back home. So, [laughter] we were ready for anything, man. I think we had I think we had I think we had like a few thousand left, and we're like, "All right, we'll just go in all in paying creators, and like, let's see what happens." We ended up like going viral with the launch, so we you know, we we're we started actually

[19:34] making money before spending those. So, that was good. But, yeah, that was it. It was like, "All right, let's put this on paying some creators in the in the space. Let's see what happens. Like, if it goes wrong, I guess we're staying in Bali and figure out." Yeah, also one thing was one thing that really helped was a mindset mindset shift. Cuz like Okay, we we all come from like STEM background. So, we are all engineers in some sort of way. And that is actually really good if you're doing

[20:04] software. I guess a little bit less now cuz everyone can, but nonetheless, it wires your brain in a certain way. Um and when you're an entrepreneur, then you don't really have to think as an engineer. I mean, also for the product part, that's great, but for the rest, you kind of have to shift into a um distribution mindset, which we had, but still we had to force ourselves into

[20:27] that. So, we said, "Okay, we launched. You know what? We spent a month building. Um let's just do nothing else but uh distribution now." And we did that for like 2 or 3 months after that. Well, let's talk about distribution, but first, I want one of you to give me what Sleek does and who is your ICP. The

[20:48] shortest way possible. Yeah, so Sleek helps non-technical founders and founders without a design background or knowledge to get beautiful designs for a mobile app. So, if you're if I'm you have a mobile app idea, probably you're you're still building your So, you haven't launched yet. You need the a design that looks good and professional to, you know, get to the

[21:14] App Store. You don't have a big budget for it. So, they come to do it with a few prompts. So, you can just chat with AI and you get screens generated for you. You can either bring them to your favorite web coding tool or if you're like more advanced, you can even bring them to Figma and

[21:33] keep working on them in Figma. And this long sentence is what changed everything, basically. You know, it's actually who you're targeting. So, you're ready for distribution, but you already know who you're targeting and I'm sure it gave you also a lot of idea of what kind of content you wanted to do. So, how did the launch go? And what platform did you choose and what did you

[21:53] do actually? Yeah, so like like I said, our plan initially was uh let's just like pay some creators. Let's see what happens. But then we're like, all right, you know, let's launch it on X cuz uh you know, we had been getting some traction on X for you episode. We're like, okay, let's launch this new

[22:09] thing that we're doing. And the strategy we've been using usually is uh getting to getting some hype there by just having people comment a lot because on X uh replies are very important. So, when people comment and you get some you start some engagement, the algorithm loves it. So, we had done this before. So, we're like, all right, let's try it again. And we we did this thing where basically the product was the product was ready. We wanted to launch it to the public, but we said, okay, let's let's pretend there is like some sort of waitlist or beta or whatever where you need to comment to get access. The the

[22:47] domain was live and it was, you know, our bio. It was uh it was publicly like accessible, but we said, all right, you got to comment link to to access and we send you the link, whatever. So, that worked. Like, uh people were, you know, we Of course, we had like these uh catchy um catchy hook with like, "Hey, we built the fastest way to vibe design mobile apps." And like, vibe design was kind of

[23:17] trendy term, so we kind of ride on that. So, and the great demo, the video demo. Yeah, the nice demo and everything. And yeah, like it sweet it started to go very well. People were replying or I want access says I want access I want access. So, at some point we're like, "All right, he's actually alive." And then [laughter]

[23:34] the beta was just a joke. You guys can try it here. And um yeah, that's kind of what got us started. I think we made like 1 2 K MRR on launch. Something like that. We also We also like our paywall at some point because we were getting like a big spike of AI cost on our side. So, we said, "Okay, this is huge. We We don't even have money to pay right now." So,

[24:00] let's try a hard paywall. It wasn't working that much because of course, you convert less. And then at that point, we decided, "Okay, let's put again a soft paywall with a free trial but with less credits for the users. Going viral on X won't but if you want customer on autopilot every single day with free organic traffic, you should focus on SEO and AI SEO. The problem is doing SEO takes months and most founders don't have the time for it. That's why we built this trip.io. We automate your SEO and AI visibility so you can focus on your project while we get you customer from free organic traffic. You

[24:35] can get your free trial by clicking on the link in the description. Now, back to the episode. Yeah, it's important to say that because now you have a really strict um free trial. It's like only once. You can only try once and you can't even modify. Yeah. So, that's something that you did after the launch because you saw that you were

[24:53] paying way too much with credit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, at the we were spending a lot. Like, I mean, we weren't expecting like to be that strong immediately. And like, we were literally looking at our AI be like, go down in real time. I was like, refresh it. Refresh and it's like, this is actually going down, guys. So, [laughter]

[25:12] uh what do we do? Yeah, you had a few thousand on the bank account and it was going negative. Yeah. Oh, we we spent so much money, man. But it was very coherent with the philosophy, you know. Uh we knew it wasn't optimized, but We we also So, we wanted to ship first and validate and then fix later. So, that helped a

[25:29] lot. Mhm. Yeah, but so then we ended up like reducing the free tier. And I think luckily that that worked for us cuz it's a I think like these kind of like very hard people products can work if you still get like some wow effect very fast. And I think we had it cuz uh you just like type your idea and then we had this cool thing where your design is generated like in real time. So, you would like see it like piece by piece come out. And at the time, like uh uh yeah, I think like uh we were basically like the the tools that would

[26:01] get you the best designs. The people would say that to us. That's the and like, so it was surprising for people. Oh, wow, this is actually like a good AI design. And so, yeah, I am I'm hooked. We have We had this thing where you we show you like three screens. Or or we show you two screens and other two screens were locked. So, they were like, they were actually already generated behind the scenes cuz you could just open the inspector and like, deblur them. But we were like, all right, maybe that creates some curiosity. So, I think the combination of like wow effect, oh wow, this is

[26:34] nice. I want to keep going. And the curiosity of, oh, what are the other screens? Uh helped us to convert even if it was like a very very very small free trial. And to give a perspective, this first launch uh tweet is the one pinned. Now it's at 881,000 exactly impression. How much did it uh get on the launch approximately? Because I'm guessing that now it's more because

[26:59] it's been It was like what, 500k, 600? Yeah, I think maybe 600. 600k brought you let's say 2k MRR. Yeah, something like Yeah, probably even a bit more, yeah. Yeah, probably even a bit more. It's like maybe 2k was like in the first maybe like 48 hours, I guess, but you know, that that kind of get the wheel

[27:22] started. And the fourth next week, you got to 10k MRR. What did you do in between this like viral shot? Like what did you do after that? Did you double down? Did you try something new? What did you do? Well, one cool thing when you go viral is that things just start to happen. It's like

[27:38] It's not only like what happens on X. It's also who sees your product and like what you do about it. So, we actually had a few creators that just like without even like asking for money, they just went straight on Instagram and made some posts, some reels about Sleek cuz it was a In the AI space, this is This is common cuz everyone is like always looking for the next tool. What is the new trendy launch, new trendy thing that just launched? So, yeah, we had some videos going viral on Instagram that we didn't even pay for. And that helped us like get more get more

[28:20] reach. Uh So, and then of course we also double down. We double down on X. We were like, "Okay, this was like the validation that we needed." That's fine. Let's keep Let's keep going aggressive on like what worked. So, for the from zero to 10k MRR, I think like just X and word of mouth were like 80% of it. And then we started, of course, to like

[28:43] get into into more things. Yeah, but it wasn't like this is the validation we wanted to have. That's fine. It was like, "Oh my god, finally!" [laughter] Finally, we get it. How did How did you react when it happened? Like the day when it goes viral, when you see, okay, you lose money, but you also make money. How did you react? Like We were Sorry. We were very excited, but I think we we didn't realize what happened really because it was so far it was happening so quickly that this still today as today we are not realizing what happened to us like it it's amazing when when it happens to

[29:17] you because even more if you have been grinding for all the time and you the things weren't working before. And yeah, it it it was probably the the the time we had the the biggest hit of dopamine in our life. It was also very stressful. Yeah. But it was like, you know, that weird sensation where you're so excited and stressed and like at the same time like you just don't you just go and you don't think about, oh wow, this is this is cool that it's happening. It's just like, "All right, what do we What do we need to do now? What do we need to do

[29:52] now?" Cuz you know, the eye bills, the pricing, you had to experiment a bit. So we were like, always things on our mind. And then a few days after like, "Wow, like what happened was like really really freaking cool." Yeah. That's cool. Can you just walk me through the different template that you use on Twitter because I think that's pretty cool. Like you have the one you say hook, a demo video, and comment this to get that. And I think you also have another template that is like also hook, a design, and then I don't know if on this one you do comment, but this one

[30:27] are mainly quote retweet. And you take like an example. Like do you have any other templates that you use? We tried a bunch, but I think the Well, the main things are Well, first like we don't you know, sometimes we do like product launches, feature launches, whatever, but like 80-90% of the the posts are just like helpful content. It's like it's not we're not spamming Sleek directly. It's more like you know Here's like content about design and

[30:57] apps. And somehow we either plug Sleek in the comments in the first comment or we mention it briefly. So Yeah, there's a few few few templates we tried. One is just literally like hey, comment your mobile app idea, we'll make a design for you for free. So people will reply with their idea, we will send it to Sleek. It was all manual, so it was not very scalable, but still

[31:25] then we will send the project to them. So it's like okay, here's the project in Sleek. If you want to keep designing your app that's it. You have it there. And that reduced a lot of friction for maybe someone who had an idea instead of having to go to Sleek, type the prompt uh see what was the best way to craft the prompt and whatever, we would just do it and like give it give

[31:47] you the project in your hands. So and and yeah, we also try always like you said to always trigger comments cuz that what helps the algorithm to you know, to boost your post most times. And yeah, then we we did different templates. Hard to remember all of them. One One that worked pretty well is the one where you you post like a design with the prompt in the comment. I guess that that works because people are also bookmarking this because they say they think okay, this may become useful later and so they're bookmarking. And the other one that maybe it's the one that worked the most

[32:24] in terms of virality is the one where we like compare design with different models like ChatGPT, uh, Gemini and so on. And we did we do this kind of post whenever a new model goes out. So, we it gets the virality of the of the launch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want the story now because you shared that at the

[32:48] beginning. So, it's amazing like that's that's probably it's crazy nice cuz like you do that and a new model comes out and of course like there's always a new model coming out. So, there's always a new tweet. And then you go like, "Oh, like this is this thing against this thing this design. Uh, what do you think?" And then people in the comments just go, "Oh, no, I think this is better because we also had I think for a while we had a really good one which was like AI versus designer. And people were like, "Oh, no, this button is more like

[33:17] AI because it's shifted to the right." Whatever. We would basically have two designs side by side and the hook was one of these made by AI, one is made by a real human designer. Guess which one is it? How do you get these ideas? Like is that you just like talking to each other and having that or like do you copy of the framework or No, pretty much is a Also talking with the CMO, CTO. There is

[33:41] Claude. Claude. [laughter] Yeah, I know that is yeah, I work with him. I work with him. Oh, nice. And Yeah, it's like pretty much our brains and Claude's brain. And I feel like you had I think you told me that at the at the dinner that you had an indirect retweet from one of the

[33:58] the biggest guy on Twitter, no? Elon Musk, yeah. Yeah, what happened like actually? Yeah, I think it was I think it was one of those posts like, "Hey, like we have these model against these model." Yeah, because Grok went out. Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't we didn't put the post about like the post wasn't about Grok. It was about like I think Gemini versus whatever. And then another guy just reposted that and Elon Musk still reposted it again and he went like, "Oh, but like you should try with Grok or something." But Grok wasn't there and Yeah, the yeah, the original post was like I forgot what model it was. A guy

[34:31] quoted it. He was like, "Hey, this is the same prompt cuz we always put the prompt. This is some prompt with Grok." And Elon Musk, of course, like likes Grok. He was like, "Okay, Grok is good." And then that this double quote chain got I think this our original post, too. I think this was more than 1.5 mil.

[34:51] Yeah, almost 2 million. But that was the the the thing that converted the worst ever. Because of course you are targeting whatever people when Elon Musk is retweeting you. So, of course you are not targeting your ICP. And that we saw that. But there is conversion and virality. And like virality also helps you get access to something. For example, you did this uh Status Story Build uh interview. Is it because of all this virality on X that

[35:18] you got access to that? Yeah, I think definitely. Like just that's the thing. Like being around there and like just posting wherever, showing what you do. And also being like a little bit personal about it cuz we also like I shared our milestones. So, it was not just like marketing content. We said, "Okay,

[35:36] let's share a bit about the journey." And I think that helps to just like unlock a lot of opportunities. Like uh the biggest one so far for sure was when the Status Story they reached out to us. And they were like, "The school like what you guys are doing is very cool. Like your story. We're starting this new channel." At the time they had the second channel was maybe had like four

[35:58] or five videos. Uh this channel was is dedicated to more like tutorials on how to build and code and design apps or any business. And um So, yeah, they invited us to do this video. And it went very well. I think now it's like a 120k views or something like that. And it was like very big for us. It was honestly like this was like you know, it was like very good luck that they reached out to us but this kind of video that we did was exactly what we had planned to do. We were like if we cuz we were looking at YouTube and we were like um

[36:39] what is the best way to like convince someone to use Sleek and we thought that it was basically not just making videos about Sleek cuz most influencers will tell you yeah I showcase your product for 10 minutes talk about all the cool features how cool it is and whatever. But we thought I don't know I think when we like when someone like that doesn't know anything about what tools are available um is looking for

[37:08] something they look for full workflows. It's like how do I go from nothing to my full app. It's not that I think about design a step then coding a step then marketing like I want like kind of the full thing. Or so we were like we kind of want to more getting to people that show the full workflow of how to build an app

[37:29] from zero to the app. And that was perfect cuz that's exactly what we did with with them. It wasn't like a shameless plug like here use Sleek. It was like hey here's how to go from your idea to a full mobile app and for the design part we use Sleek. And I think for someone that comes to that video that has no idea what it what is available they're like wow like Sleek is the go-to tool for this apparently cuz this guy is showing me how to do everything and this part of

[37:55] the workflow. That's beautiful because yeah the angle of this video was a perfect video sales letter like to actually sell your product. How much did you make with this video because 120k on YouTube is huge and what was the result? Yeah. So it's very hard to like know exact numbers cuz you know we didn't have like a tracked link for you know because Starter Story you know just doesn't do it and um yeah, I mean, on YouTube you never know if people go directly to your website, but an estimated thing is got us probably, I think a a pessimistic

[38:33] estimate is 100 150 customers. So, yeah, that's like 4 5K MRR, I think. Um but, you know, hard to tell the exact number, but it was it was huge because we ask people in our onboarding where they come from. And a lot of people were coming from YouTube and that's basically one of the few readers that we had, so. Distribution-wise, is there something that we forgot? Like we talked about X, everything you did on X, we talked about the uh indirect video on Reels and TikTok that you did and even pay, and then there is the Starter Story Bill interviews. Is there

[39:10] anything else? I think yeah, yeah, there's something else. Uh for example, um we've been doing Reddit since the start. I think Reddit um it it's good for distribution. Uh I think it gets you a lot of views if you do things well and you don't get banned. That's a challenge. Um but, i- if you kind of learn that, then it it's good on two sides. First of all, because like it brings views and second of all, because it it really helps with um AI search optimization. Like you're going to show up in posts. So, um we've been trying a lot of things like also directories. Uh we also built um a

[39:45] skill for the agent, which is on skills.tech from Vercel. That's also uh went pretty well. Uh it it's like we have many different sources, but it's really hard to track them. So, it it's hard to pinpoint um this outcome to that source. But, we we we just have hope that just, you know, doing stuff and and being omnipresent, something is going to pick

[40:06] up. If you had to guess, what is for you like the biggest thing that worked and like the thing that you would maybe double down now uh if you had to choose one distribution channel? Well, so far I think X is like the one that worked the most and like cuz that also triggers most of the word of mouth, but it's not where I would double down cuz it has a ceiling. And the second one is that we did is like we're like mentioning Reddit and SEO and Geo. So like Atlanta's recommendations that kind of we see them all as a single thing to be honest. So

[40:44] this is thing where we still kind of scratching the surface. We we think and we hope that this is what can take us to the next level and we're now exactly making a plan on how to double down on this. And cuz yeah, we already we already seen some good traffic from from Google just from, you know, common blog pages like alternatives or guides on building mobile apps and we're even starting to get like some people that come from ChatGPT where they where they ask uh what is the tool for mobile app design and we starting to show up there. So that's cool. And yeah, all the

[41:22] foundations that we built like a blog and Reddit become everywhere on Reddit in our niche that this is helping and we want to see if we can What did you do for that except Reddit? What did you do to actually get cited by or recommended by ChatGPT? Did you do anything else? We actually did some Yeah, for now we didn't really target that

[41:44] much. As Matias said we we are just scratching the surface. We didn't like did targeted work on that. I guess we the thing is that we are very very vertical product. And being that also on SEO you are Google is going to favorite you if of course if people are searching the best tool to design mobile apps. If there are generic tool uh that it's a tool to design and there is you that uh are um the tool to design mobile apps, of course Google is going to to favor you. Um This helped a lot of us. We are we are positioned very well in SEO even without

[42:27] doing that the putting that much effort. Like if you're going to search mobile app designer AI, those kind of keywords, we sometimes show up second, first, third, it depends. So, yeah. Um in terms of Reddit, we are starting right now to target more toward this goal of being cited by AI. And we're still experimenting, so we we don't have we don't have insight or clue right now, but uh what can work is to actually made posts

[43:00] that try to answer a specific question. Mhm. Like uh in 2026, what is the best way to design things like that? And you have to show up in the in the answers. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, we do Yeah, we do both like posts and the comments. So, posts like, you know, you can choose like kind of the answer the question and answer and the problem you want to target or post as

[43:24] comments. Just wherever people uh ask about something that is related to us, we kind of try to uh to be there. And for LLMs, you can kind of even reverse engineer and it's like, okay, let's you go on ChatGPT or Perplexity. Perplexity uh tells you very obviously the sources that it looks at looks at when So, you ask for mobile app design tool, you can literally see what sources it's looking at. And if you manage to get there in a way that feels genuine and like uh legit to the LLM, then it's you know, maybe it's not necessarily going to tell your name immediately, but when people maybe click that link,

[44:06] they're going to find you. So, I got the Tanya Van Gastel like two video ago and she was she's actually doing that for SAS like SEO and SEO and that's exactly the technique she gave. She said like the first thing the first quick win you can do is actually find a keyword that you want to target on LLM, go on each LLM, check the source that they use and then try to contact the source and ask them, "How can I be there? Like do I have to pay? Do I have

[44:34] to give you a big commission?" Yeah. Uh do I have to do whatever I have to do to be there? But that's for the quick win because that's you already go to the source and as you say it's like reverse engineering. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we did this so far we like uh Reddit where you can like just plug

[44:49] yourself in there. Like but then we plan to do it for whatever shows up. Is it like maybe it's a designer magazine that talks about design. So, it's like yeah, you can just go and pay them and say, "Hey, how much you want to for us to be there?" And you're going to be there whenever people

[45:06] come from the LLM, yeah. So, you said that there is a ceiling on the X for the marketing distribution. Is there a ceiling for you with Sleek or do you know already how much money you can make with that and is there like a precise trajectory that you want to go to to actually make that money? You You mean with Sleek in general or in

[45:26] X or for X? In in general. Okay. Yeah, well, there is definitely like I think a ceiling because it's still like a very niche tool as uh only mobile mostly foreign so niche and down is is very good I think. It's obviously like going to like uh put a cap on your market but that's fine. Uh I think like to I think where you can take it for sure to like 50 60 K MRR but maybe to go like 10X we probably need to

[45:56] change the product or like expand it. Uh maybe We don't know yet what is the direction where we want to go, whether it's, you know, like we could like I don't know, expand to web or things like that, but then we kind of lose our communication like uh strength. Or we could think about yeah, making more um like a a design tool for more exploration. So, right now is very focused on you get use

[46:26] you send a prompt you get your output. It's like the fastest way to like get your design. Okay, prompt, this is your design. You either rate on it, uh that's it. We could try things like, "Hey, uh we give you infinite ideas for your design." And uh this is like another space that some people are building in. So, yeah, I think it has a it has a ceiling if we don't make, you know, big changes to the product, but like the

[46:50] market in general of design is very big. So, as long as we can adjust things. We saw that like we changed the we know that we have to change at some point to get to the next level. So, I'm sure there is ways to do it. Yeah, and also in terms of distribution as we we say we didn't we we probably have a lot more of to explore like even short content on TikTok acts whatever double down on SEO. So, there is still quite some room to to

[47:20] grow. Yeah, cuz we we haven't tried many things yet. We haven't spent like a single dollar like on ads or or anything like that. We did a few partnerships with creators where we like paid them for YouTube videos, but I think like solid 80-90% of our revenue came from organic. So, that's that's cool, I think. Yeah. So, you're three co-founders. You travel together. You live together. It sounds

[47:46] like a dream. But tell me the the the dark side of being three co-founders. What is the bad thing about it? Like honestly, I don't want to pick up a fight now. Maybe just I I would think like I It's good and bad. Like there's not like every downside has its positive side. Like it it's hard to separate the two. But like when you're three people for example, like we we noticed for example it was two of us initially and then after a couple of months Aster joined. And then like the less people you are the the more smooth everything is cuz like you take decisions like snapping your

[48:18] fingers. The but at the same time is that good or bad cuz like you get less opinions. So there there's like more thought to like it's more thoughtful when you're three people. For example, yeah, this is this is one definitely I would say like taking decision takes a bit longer in general. But then you make

[48:34] possibly the better decisions. Mhm. Yeah, or even like managing like who does what cuz still like when we started was like three people and at that point we had like a when we started Sleepy we were like kind of starting from zero again and like three people is uh it's not that much but it's still like a lot. It's like when you're solo you're like just doing everything. When you're three, you need to figure out who does what and like uh uh we don't we have kind of similar backgrounds. So we're we all like knew how to code and like we all like did somehow software

[49:10] um in the past. So we had to figure out how what who does what. And to be honest like we ended up with a very interesting way to handle it cuz we are all I don't know if this is good or bad today day to be honest. But we are like generally like we all have more fun when we do different things. So we tried and talked about it but we decided to to not do it like okay, you only code, I do only marketing and you do only product or whatever. But

[49:40] rather we go more task-based. And uh we still have a kind of areas that we pick and someone you know is dedicated to them but we like just being able to try different things and like to never get bored basically. So, it's kind of it's a bit like go with the flow kind of

[49:59] organization. But so far, I mean, it's it's working for us. I think mainly because we have more fun doing it this way and no matter, you know, how much you optimize things, if you don't have fun, you're not motivated to do things. So, you know. I feel like you all have the same background, but you're also three

[50:19] totally different profile. Yeah, I think And what do you think is the thing that makes you work together? Like because like what is your profile, your profile, and your profile, you think? I think that's a very important. Like if you have like people that are too similar, um it's going to be harder to make things

[50:40] work out, I think. Uh cuz like yeah, let's say you put two overthinkers together. I'm an overthinker, for example. I'm getting better at it, I think, but I I used to be way very overthinker. And if you put two overthinkers together, it's just like overthink forever. It's like you don't you don't move. And so, I think I appreciate this about them. I think they're like less overthinkers than me. So, every part puts different um um you know, every profile gives something else to the decision. So, maybe I think more about things. I can reason them well and I end up finding something how like be structured properly, but then

[51:23] they say, "Okay, yeah, there's not thinking too much. Let's just do it." And you find a way in between that that works well. So, different profiles are I think a must for co-founders. If you like find someone that matches you in skills and in the way you think about it, you just don't compound anything, I

[51:41] guess. Yeah, yeah, I can think of like so many times. I I like I'm it's hard to think about specific examples, but so many times that us thought, "Oh my god, thank god there is there." Because otherwise we'd be Yeah. What do you think about it? Actually, I think what you said is completely uh on point because even if not going that much specific, in general, I think we we came from different background of life. Like we different kind of social life before, different kind of point of view about the world itself. And so, it helps a lot. It helps a lot because sometimes sometimes it it it it's easy

[52:21] to just to be like uh how you say to have a parocchi? Ah. [laughter] It's going to be too difficult way to translate, but We reached the point where we had to use Italian finally. [laughter] Let's cut. So, but by the way, it's uh Yeah, blind her. Like Yeah, yeah, you're blind kind of looking Ah, it's true. They all say I don't even know the name in English, but this thing

[52:45] that they have. I see. And yeah, it's it's really nice to have other people that can tell, "Okay, but that's how you think that the world works, but it's not that it doesn't work like that objectively. It's it's your point of view. We can explore like really different hundred thousand way different ways. And that's that's really one of the most important thing of being more

[53:11] than one. Yeah, I'd say. Yeah, a great example of that is that um I mean, we we are aware of the bias now, but for long all we read and where we got the news was Twitter. And according to Twitter, like if you're not like super AI powered whatever, then you don't live and breathe it, then you're like I don't know, like you live a century ago. But that's not how life works. And then I think that that was a bias we had for a long time that Twitter is not the world, for example. But in that case, we all suffer

[53:41] for it, but eventually got out. And do you guys like just like a personal thing, like did you travel together for a long time now? And like how does it work? Like is there one of you sometimes take a break when the two other are working? Or is there anything like that? Are you always like all

[53:58] locked in together? Yeah, so well, we started traveling a bit we started traveling a while ago. We've been kind of nomads for 3 years at this point at least. And uh yeah, we were we tried when since we started to get working together we tried to be together most of the time. It doesn't happen all the time. But we're trying to do it more and more and more. So and then when he joined we

[54:22] were like all right. He was like busy in Milan. You so I've I've been more stable life than us, but we managed to bring him on to the journey. Yeah. [laughter] And we did this. Before of them I just did like 1 month in Fuerteventura for example, 1 month in London, but not not that much. But the other the other thing is that I'm I'm also I also give

[54:44] girlfriend while they don't. So why do you need to say this to us? [laughter] Now now we are bringing also her with the with our travels, but yeah, we we actually move off Milan in March three less than three years three months ago. It was like stressful stress stressful time, but I'm not regretting like for now it's it's amazing like traveling and seeing those part of the world. And yeah, so I think I we will keep doing that for for for some other time, but I we will need some break. At least me and my girlfriend because [laughter] We never saw. We never saw, but we tried

[55:23] to be together like most of the time cuz we can see the difference. When we were together things happen a lot faster and it's way more productive. Do you think that when there was Is there when you were struggling You didn't You didn't really work with Reweb 10.0. Like, if you were alone, do you think you would have given up? And like being the three of you helped a

[55:46] lot with that? For me, yes, I think. Like I'm Yeah, I I I used to work alone for a while. And I would like just change things like very often. Like cuz uh Yeah, it's It's more like a emotional runway than like money to be honest is when you Yeah, when you're alone, you're you're kind of serving everything yourself. All the struggles or the punches in your face. That's it. You're just the only

[56:14] one taking them. And uh Yeah, it's like a lot harder to follow things. So uh I I I will never like give up on doing like businesses cuz I know that's the thing, but I can see myself kind of changing a lot more often maybe if I was alone, yeah. All right. So, you're saying you would

[56:35] have given up? Um I I don't think Like in the long long in the long run, never. But there was a time cuz like I I I also had another company before this and it went on for like a year and a half. Uh actually two companies. So uh Uh yeah, and none of them went well. And I was like um That's tough. Like I had two failures in a row. Uh you know, of course, you're still young. You go back to your parents' house. And then you feel even more bad cuz like you went to your parents' house. And you're like,

[57:04] "What the am I doing with my life?" And uh I think those are the hard times. Um and then I still remember like uh we met like four or five years ago for the first time. We worked on a project together. And then uh through our friend we had in common. Um we were doing our own things in the world. And then um I don't know how, but uh this friend and him ended up in Madrid. I was living in Madrid at my place uh for like a week. And then we just got into fun projects and and all of that and we were kind of both uh lost

[57:35] in life. I It was back in the day I was broke again. I was going to go back to my parents' house. Um and then I was at the airport and he called me and he was like, um "Hey, this week was fun. Um like we're both lost. Want to start something together?" And I was [laughter] like, uh yeah, why

[57:53] not? And I turned down the the I I applied to a couple of jobs and I I went to the final stage. But like, it's always that case when you when you arrive to to the final interview and you're like, "I made it. Like they really want me. Do I really care?" And it's like, "Nah, I don't care." So I I I think it was uh some some big tech company and and I I left them and we started Rework for the first time. So it's it's always like uh tough times, but it helps a lot when we're together to face those tough

[58:24] times. And you're you were the last piece of the puzzle that they needed to succeed actually. He is the brain here. [laughter] No, not really. But I think one one one thing that it's cool to mention, I think we can mention right now. 1 year ago with Rework, we got an acquisition offer. We we we didn't went so far. I

[58:45] think we can say now, yeah. The name? Yeah. Can we? Well, at least it will remove it it will blur. See you later. Yeah, we got an acquisition offer by Versel. Uh when we were in Rework, but it was like after three or four months, so it wasn't like uh a really in a big product at that that time. And we were actually wondering, should we go working there? Because of course in when they do those kind of acquisition, it's not like they are not

[59:15] acquiring the product. Yeah. They are giving maybe tons of money, but they want to acquire the the team, the people. And so we were there, "Okay, this is this is interesting because we were we are going to SF. We are going to it it's going to be an amazing experience. But do we really want to be working for a company because in the end it it would would have been that and in the end we both of three we we were

[59:42] quite sure that no okay. We we will keep doing this and we we are going to a point where we are going to get this right and here we are. I love that. Now you're in the biggest TV show of the planet. [laughter] All right, thank you guys for your time. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It was very fun.

[1:00:01] Yeah.

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