Getting acquired for $200k within 11 months by leveraging Facebook ads

Nicolas Jeanne sold TalkNotes for $200k after working on it part-time for 11 months — and he'd only learned how to code a year before he started building it.

How? He says tech doesn't matter; marketing does. And he's a wiz with ads.

I caught up with him to get the details. He shared how he did it. 👇

Searching for financial freedom

I became a founder for the freedom. The only job I ever had was at a bank, and I quit after three days.

It was so bad. I just hated it. I can't have someone telling me what to do.

So, I was like, "Okay, f*** it, never again." That's when I got into e-commerce. Ecommerce got me into advertising. And advertising got me into coding and indie hacking.

For me, the only way to get real freedom is to get a lot of money. And the best way to do that is through entrepreneurship.

From ad wiz to coder

A lot of indie hackers come from a technical background and learn marketing. For me, it was the opposite.

I was trying to build an e-commerce business and Facebook ads were the go-to method for growth. I had a bit of success, which was enough to get some freelance gigs in advertising — probably because this was back when Facebook Ads were pretty new.

Soon, I was managing over $1M in adspend. That isn't much compared to what the big brands spend, but it gave me a lot of good experience that most indie hackers don't have. It ended up being a big advantage for me.

Then, at this time two years ago, I locked myself in a hotel room and learned how to code. Here are the courses I took:

• CS50, intro to code

• Web development course

• Python course (only useful if you want to start slow or do your own AI models, I don't use Python anymore)

• Nuxt 3 course (I took it a year after starting to code, it's not necessary, but using a framework makes things easier)

• Machine Learning (only if you want to go deep and technical into AI)

In the beginning, building products was a nightmare. I just couldn't do the things I wanted to do, so I'd spend hours googling how to do this or that. But I'm getting better now.

Building and selling products

I have three products. It used to be four, but I just sold one.

I keep one secret. I just don't think it would be smart to share it with the world right now. There are too many copycats. I have a small moat since I'm working with someone in the industry, but isn't enough. It's only making about $100 MRR, but I plan to put more time into it soon.

Then there's Sales Popup, which displays recent sales notifications to increase conversion rates. It's doing about $300/mo, but that isn't recurring revenue — it's a yearly pass. By that, I mean a one-time payment for one year of access. It's much, much, much easier to sell a one-time payment than it is to sell a subscription. But it needs that time limit. Otherwise, it would be a lifetime deal, which is a bad deal if you have variable costs like AI.

I have Maker Ads Guide, which is a guide about Facebook advertising for technical founders. That one brings in more — between $200 and $500 per day in one-time sales.

And the one I just sold — my most successful product — was TalkNotes. It's an AI voice note-taking app, and it was one of the first to market. I think that's why it really took off. It makes money from monthly subscriptions.

Other than those, I have some inactive projects and one that I'm planning to start soon, but nothing generating revenue.

Validating with directories

I came up with TalkNotes when I was trying to transcribe audio using the Google Docs transcription tool for a post — because I'm lazy. And it was just really bad.

At the time, I was giving myself a hard time limit of one week for most projects. These days, I can afford to take two weeks, but I'll never spend a month building a project if I don't have proof that people want it.

So I built a basic version in one week, published it, and then kept building.

When I started, it was actually all running under Node and Vanya, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. It was a bit messy because there's a lot of interactivity on the frontend, so I needed to use a framework. And Nuxt is the absolute best. Now, the stack is Nuxt and Node, with Express for the backend.

I validated by posting on online directories. I just spent a few hours looking for directories using Ahrefs — I looked for backlinks to find out where similar startups were listed.

I think I made $700 in a week and that was my validation. But the directory traffic only lasted for a few days and then it completely stopped because other tools got posted and mine went down in the list.

Getting acquired

I started TalkNotes in August, 2023 and sold it in this month, so it only took 11 months. And I wasn't working on it full time.

It had about $7k MRR when I sold it, and I got $200k for it, so that's a multiple of 2.4x. I was thinking about listing it for $300k, but I wanted it to get sold within a few weeks — for cash — so I kept the price low.

All I did was list it on Acquire.com, go through the sales process, and I sold it a couple of weeks later.

It's not my first time getting acquired. I sold MakeLogo last year for $65k. Same process.

SEO and Product Hunt

As far as growth, it started with the online directories. I also did a bit of SEO via free products. It took a few months to rank on Google, but now it's the main driver of traffic to TalkNotes.

The problem it's low-quality traffic. It doesn't convert. I really want to get better at SEO because it's a free channel, but I'm not there yet.

Otherwise, I launched on Product Hunt. And when I had enough cash, I started reinvesting it into Facebook ads. That's where it really started to take off. Ads really scaled.

Growing via ads

I deliberately build products that can be scaled with ads. The only exception being if a product is perfect for my audience, in which case, I don't need ads.

You need over 10,000 impressions to get any kind of results with an ad — otherwise you could get false positives and false negatives. The amount adspend to get 10,000 impressions varies according to the audience you target and goal — leads in India are way cheaper than purchases in the US.

But for me, personally, I usually start with like $20 to $30 per day. And I start to get good results in terms of volume after about $50 per day.

As far as my cost per customer, I think the minimum I had with TalkNotes was $20 and the maximum was $60. That might seem like a lot, but you have to remember this was for a subscription. So, for me, I know that I have a very low churn, which means I can pay money up front to get a customer. If I pay $60 and my subscription is like $10 per month, I'll be profitable after seven months. It's an investment.

It doesn't work for all projects. It depends a lot on cash flow, so it's actually best for yearly subscriptions. But for me, it makes sense.

How to optimize ads

So I spent a lot of time optimizing my ads for conversions.

I did lots of video ads. With video ads, it's super important to catch people's attention in the first half second. Otherwise, they will just keep scrolling.

So, that's a priority: the hook.

But I also had a lot of success with static-image ads, and it's the same for them. It's all about standing out in the newsfeed. If your ad is boring, if it's generic, even if the colors are not really popping, then you are wasting money.

People scroll through thousands of posts every day, so you have to stand out.

And there's one other important thing: You have to know your customers. In your onboarding, have an open text field — not a pre-populated dropdown — that asks for details about them. Most people do a pre-populated field, but that assumes that you know the possible answers. You might not.

Copywriting is the #1 skill

Thanks to my ad experience and following, I'm a decent marketer. And that's all you need to make money online.

You don't have to be great at tech. No one gives a shit about tech. Sorry for the language. But it's true. Your customers aren't going to ask about your tech stack. They just want a solution to their problem.

So it's all about marketing. And copywriting, in particular. That is really the number one skill to have.

Read Influence by Robert Ciadini. And analyze landing pages and ads.

I spent hours and hours analyzing prominent landing pages, trying to understand what makes a good landing page.

Learn copywriting. That's the best tip I can give, I think.

Audience is overrated

I don't purposefully grow my following, but it's at 35k+. I just share good stories and valuable information.

The thing about an audience is that once you've built it, you're stuck with it. My audience is perfect for selling Sales Popup and Maker Ads Guide. But it's terrible for my other products.

And then there's the platform risk. I have an audience now, but if Twitter decides to do something crazy tomorrow, I'm left with nothing.

I'm not a big fan. I want to learn the art of selling anything anywhere.

Choose your target carefully

Here's my advice. Don't make products for indie hackers.

Most of us are broke. It's really hard to try to sell something for even five bucks a month. We are rats. We don't spend money.

Selling to indie hackers is great if you want to get familiar with shipping apps. But if you want to make money, don't do it. You're going to waste your time.

But I don't follow that advice. My Twitter following is made up of indie hackers, so I'll keep building products for them, scaling, and selling for big cash outs.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You can follow me on X, or check out Sales Popup and Maker Ads Guide