"Success sucks. All the fun happens along the way."

Alexander Isora grew his first product to $18k MRR in four years. And after turning down multiple acquisition offers, he accepted one with unusual terms — for $800k.

I caught up with him to learn how he did it. He shared his thoughts on niching down, growth, acquisitions, creativity, and why AI is a fad. 👇

Good ol' niching down

James: What's your background?

Alexander: I’m a self-taught web developer who decided to make his own website builder (what a cliché!) in 2018.

In 2022 I sold it for $800,000 to the peer-owned company, MarsX. Now I work at MarsX and help it with the mission.

James: How does it feel to be so successful with your first product?

Alexander: It sucks. All the fun happens along the way, not in the end.

That's not philosophy. It's just how the dopamine system works in our brains.

James: Fair enough. You chose a pretty crowded market, no?

Alexander: Yep. Surprisingly, I was able to outcompete the big players and grow my bootstrapped startup to $18,000 MRR in under 4 years.

James: How did you manage to outcompete them?

Alexander: Good old niching down did the job. I made my website builder for a small audience — busy SaaS founders. It's terrible for coffee shops or hospitals, but great for SaaS.

The big guys like Wix are okay for all audiences, but not great for any.

Get acquired by building in public

James: How did you find a buyer?

Alexander: Being fully transparent and open in public helped me to attract the attention of lots of potential buyers.

James: How so?

Alexander: I have a habit of sharing my thoughts, vision, and approaches. It makes people from the outside fully familiar with my business. When you are familiar with a project you will be more willing to start a negotiation.

That's why I was getting an offer each week or so. Most of them were nonsense, but some were good.

James: Any tips?

Alexander: Start sharing public metrics as soon as possible!

Cash out vs pay out vs investment

James: You're still working on Unicorn Platform.

Alexander: It is common for founders to get forced to work in their own company after it is acquired. Tumblr and WhatsApp are good examples.

Or sometimes, founders get the cash and go, like Josh Pigford of Baremetrics. But, as a result, the clients of Baremetrics weren't treated very well.

I didn't want to take either path. Working for another four years as an employee would have driven me crazy. But selling the company and the thousands of users to a greedy company was not an option either.

James: So what did you do?

Alexander: The reason I accepted John's offer so fast was that MarsX is neither of these things — it is a third option. A brand new concept.

James: How's that?

Alexander: MarsX is a network of founders. People here work on their own projects and we use the power of the network to help each other.

For example, Ann may be good at coding, whereas Bob is good at UX design. Ann helps Bob with the code, Bob helps Ann with the UX. Both get better products. And since both own shares of MarsX, and MarsX owns a piece of each project, Ann and Bob actually own a part of each others' projects. Therefore they have direct motivation to help each other.

James: So they paid you out in shares?

Alexander: I got $400k in cash and I own $400k worth of shares of MarsX. It's valued at 20M valuation, so I own 2%.

James: And you're happy with that?

Alexander: I am. Because by owning stocks of MarsX, I own dozens of SaaS, which is good diversification. And by working inside the MarsX network, I work on dozens of products at the same time which is so much fun.

So I'm not an employee. I’m a co-founder of numerous projects now. And Unicorn Platform is one of them.

Unconventional growth

James: How did you grow Unicorn Platform to $18k MRR?

Alexander: We are very creative in the ways we grow our SaaS. We never rely on old-fashioned methods like backlink building, paid ads. etc.; we invent unconventional ways to grow our SaaS.

James: What's your most successful example?

Alexander: Side-project marketing all the way! uigenerator.org brought us roughly $20k in sales.

James: Are any conventional tactics helping?

Alexander: We experimented with programmatic SEO this year. We made an internal tool that scans a website, searches low-competition keywords for it, and generates 500 interlinked articles.

So far, this tool brought us 2M impressions from Google and 3 sales per month. And it's only been 4 months. We're eager to see how huge this campaign will become in a year.

This internal tool is now a public SaaS called SEObotAI.

Surfing the AI wave

James: I remember you wrote about how you pivoted Unicorn Platform from website builder to AI website builder.

Alexander: It's still early days. The OpenAI API is unstable. Sometimes it brings amazing results, and sometimes it brings bad results.

Also, we spent a lot of time making an API manager that quickly switches between GPT3.5-turbo and GPT4, but then GPT4-turbo was released. We need to re-configure the system again.

James: A lot of indie hackers have found exponential growth with AI products. Did your pivot increase revenue?

Alexander: Not noticeably. We use AI because it perfectly aligns with our product vision; not because we want to grow fast.

People say you have to grow exponentially or die. I've grown linearly since the first day and I have zero problems with that.

James: Is it worthwhile for indie hackers to try to surf the AI wave?

Alexander: AI is just a trend. It will step out of the spotlight just like crypto did. In a few years it will just be a common thing.

Use it accordingly: As a temporary trend.

James: How?

Alexander: The way I would use it is by making an AI product and then quickly selling it. The competition will kill most new projects.

For example, PDF.AI was getting a lot of hype and bringing gold to the maker, but it was replaced with a single ChatGPT feature overnight.

James: And for those who already have a product? Should they integrate AI?

Alexander: Every app will eventually implement GPT. Otherwise, their users will go and buy this heroine from another vendor. So yes, you should adapt, no matter the cost.

Understand your customer (by being one)

James: You're a fan of eating your own dog food.

Alexander: Talking to customers is a waste of time. I already know what they want because I’m one of them. I use my website builder every single day.

It's my unfair advantage. I have a deep understanding of the audience. I’m an indie SaaS founder myself. I know what product they need and I know how to sell it.

James: So you never spoke to your customers while building?

Alexander: I communicated with the users by text a lot, but they did not influence the core product. I did it mostly to support them or learn about bugs.

I tried to interview some, but it didn't help. 90% of the features they suggested were already on my to-do list.

I already had my vision for the product and it was validated by the MVP. So doing more would have been a waste of time and money.

Building increases creativity

James: What is your core expertise?

Alexander: Creativity. I’m lucky to have an idea generator embedded in my brain. I come up with ideas for new side-projects 10 times faster than I build them.

James: That's handy.

Alexander: It's a double-edged sword. Having too many ideas floating inside your head can be very distracting. Especially if you have ADD. 🙄

James: Does it come naturally to you?

Alexander: No, it was achieved over the course of years by working with different projects within the same niche — web design and development.

James: So the more you build, the more ideas you have?

Alexander: Yes, the more you work on something, the better your brain understands the problem, and the better you get at producing ideas.

James: Any other tips for people who hard up on ideas?

Alexander: If you are struggling to find an idea just steal it. Find a product you like and make the same thing. Many people copy existing products subconsciously (myself included). So why not do it openly?

James: When you've got so many ideas, how do you decide what to work on?

Alexander: I talk to fellow cofounders in the MarsX network who help me to manage the ideas. We talk a lot. It helps me to prioritize things and get rid of any biases.

James: Are you working on other ideas right now?

Alexander: Yes! I work on 14 projects simultaneously.

Hugs = grit and consistency

James: What was your biggest "aha" moment while building Unicorn Platform?

Alexander: No single moment exists. Progress is made up of countless small steps. There's no sudden revelation.

The only ‘aha’ moment I had was when I realized that pursuing the 'aha' moment is futile. 🤷

Consider consistency and grit as a lifestyle and you'll achieve everything you want.

James: How do you stay consistent?

Alexander: I can only work if I follow a perfect lifestyle. Zero smoking, zero alcohol. 8 hours sleep + day nap. Much love, many hugs. Gym. Running. Etc.

If I slip out of this framework I instantly turn into unproductive slime and watch YouTube/play Dark Souls all day.

Disregard the "ugly MVP" advice

James: What business advice are you ignoring?

Alexander: I ignore all the business advice that I'm told by so-called experts.

Not because I’m special or the advice is useless. My case just proves that anything is possible. Things that work for others may not work for you and vice versa.

James: What's an example?

Alexander: “Make an ugly MVP”. My MVP was a fully working product which passively brought me over $4K in sales.

James: And you were okay with it taking longer to launch and validate?

Alexander: It only took me 160 hours to build it. Not much time!

James: How did your MVP passively bring in $4k?

Alexander: I only launched it on Product Hunt. It turned out to be so good that people were ready to pay for using it. That not only gave me the motivation to go on, but it also brought in cash.

James: Anything else that you're disregarding?

Alexander: “CAC/LTV > 1”. WTF is CAC and how is it calculated? Still have zero idea.

James: LOL, okay where can people find you?

Alexander: I share every detail of our growth experiments on X. Or check out Unicorn Platform.

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