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53 Comments

The story behind launching an MVP in 48 hours and $65 000 exit in 3 months

Hey Indie Hackers!

Every week, I send a marketing Case Study from a profitable Solopreneur. Today I want to share with you the recent issue 👀

  1. Explain your product to an 11-year-old

Hey! I’m Nico, maker of Galeby.com and previous MakeLogo.ai (sold for $65K).​

Galeby is an app that helps makers waste less time doing customer service thanks to AI.

  1. Who’s your ideal customer, and how do you acquire them?

For Galeby, the app is in the very early stages. But I would say that ideal customers are makers who spend +1h per day doing customer service.

For MakeLogo.ai, the main persona is makers who don’t have the time and budget for a designer. But they still want a unique logo and not like every free vector icon website. They usually find the app on Twitter or by recommendations.

The secondary persona is people who are curious about AI. They aren’t looking for anything in particular. But they are curious about AI in general, so they’ll be open to trying it. They usually find the app from startup directories.

  1. Share your core metrics

I managed MakeLogo.ai from December to early March. At this time:
• $26 000 of sales
• 1700 customers

The huge spikes came from the launch on Product Hunt and featuring in viral tweets. Logos aren’t something you do every day, so in this case, a one-time purchase fits better. That’s why there is no MRR/recurring revenues, only one-timers.

  1. How did you get your first 10 customers?

I made a little challenge on Twitter, making a MVP in 48 hours, with a manual version of the product. I used the AI models manually and then sent an email with the logos.

The post got some attention, and I got around 10 sales from there. I only had around 500 followers back then.

  1. What’s your Best marketing decision and why?

Making everything public. For innovative products, just showing the possibilities can be enough to get some traction. So, I was posting everything I did. Visual content like videos and screenshots worked well to get attention.

It only works for “new” and unique products tho. If you’re making a Twitter analytic tool, no one will care because they've seen it hundreds of times already.

I also added the app to every startup directory I found, which ended up being one of my main sources of traffic. Some of them:

​uneed.best​
​• betalist.com​
​• 10words.io​
​• alternativeto.net​
​• theresanaiforthat.com​
​• futuretools.io​
​• saasaitools.com​

  1. What’s your unpopular marketing opinion and why?

You don’t need a good product, and you don’t need a finished product.

When launching something, the ONLY concern anyone should have NEED to be validating the idea. It doesn’t matter if your app’s code is garbage. If it allows you to validate an idea, it’s a good MVP. Do just enough, so people want to pay for it.

I launched MakeLogo.ai with a plain HTML page linked to a Typeform to collect payments.

  1. If you could do 1 thing differently, what would it be?

Learning to code earlier, probably. I spent lots of time doing eCommerce & Dropshipping. Making your own products is amazing, but it’s incredibly hard and costly. It has 0 barriers to entry and is a race to the bottom.

To give an idea, I scaled a store to $500,000 in sales in a year but made almost no profit, everything was eaten by product costs and ads.

  1. What top-2 marketing challenges do you have, and how do you plan to solve them?

• For Galeby, my main challenge is to validate the idea, since it’s a brand-new project. I’m starting from 0 again. The “value” of the app is when people use it, so I can’t just make a landing page and a Typeform like last time. I have to invest more time upfront. I will start with a Chrome extension instead of a full app to avoid wasting too much time.

• I got a nice amount from the sale of MakeLogo, but I now have 0 revenue. I’m going to focus on products that can have subscriptions or have high recurring usage.

  1. Where can we learn more about you?

I post everything on my Twitter and my blog.
The beta of Galeby is available on Galeby.com

posted to Icon for group Growth
Growth
on April 4, 2023
  1. 7

    Nice, I am so happy for Nico. Is Nico around on indie hackers?

  2. 5

    Marketing Bay is one of my favourite newsletters nowadays. Read the 2 issues, they are amazing 🔥

    1. 1

      Thank you, Karthik ❤️

  3. 3

    That value proposition at the top of the Galeby website is perfect. Best of luck with it.

  4. 3

    Thank you for sharing your experience and insights Nico! It's inspiring to hear about your journey from creating MakeLogo.ai to starting a new project, Galeby. Your approach to making everything public and showcasing the possibilities of your innovative products is a great way to get traction.

    Your perspective on launching with an MVP and validating the idea first is valuable. It's a reminder that a product doesn't have to be perfect to start generating revenue and feedback from customers. The challenge of validating a brand-new project like Galeby is understandable, and it's a good idea to start with a Chrome extension to save time and resources.

    Overall, your experience and advice are helpful for other solopreneurs who are starting out. I appreciate your willingness to share your journey and insights. I'll definitely check out your blog and follow your progress on Galeby.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!! Really hope it can be helpful 😃

  5. 2

    Truly inspirational. I finally decided to pull myself together and begin building out this idea I've had in my mind for a while now. Hearing about how you managed to pull these impressive numbers together in 48 hours changed my perspective and attitude toward what I'm building.

    I've been working on it for nearly a week now, ensuring every pixel is perfect and drafting out additional features before even finishing the ones I am currently building. Your story made me realize I just need to build a crappy MVP, launch it, and receive feedback. It's all about iterations.

  6. 2

    Great story! I'll definitely need to focus more on submitting my projects to startup directories.

  7. 2

    Thanks for sharing this, it's a really cool story. I love the approach of validating an idea by shipping an MVP. Probably doesn't work in all cases, but for small products it seems like a great way to get real customer feedback!

  8. 1

    Thank you sharing
    marketing Strategy

  9. 1

    Thanks for sharing valuable techniques for marketing.

  10. 1

    Thanks for sharing this!

  11. 1

    Thank you! It was really interesting and helpful.
    I built a one-day wordpress plugin and I think I'm afraid of sharing & marketing it. You can take a look at it at https://out.doganaydin.org/wpdoni

  12. 1

    Thank you for your sharing, Wish you good luck.

  13. 1

    Thank you for sharing, it was indeed interesting to read a real life story.

  14. 1

    This is such a great and inspiring story. When I first discovered AI art I thought about creating a similar product for logos, good to see someone made it happen in an awesome way!

  15. 1

    Are you an AI engineer?

  16. 1

    I really love your previous product and tested it no doubt you have done excellent work!

    You best of luck with your new product.

  17. 1

    That is really incredible! Especially the list of directorys!

  18. 1

    Great stuff man. How did you come up with the product ?

  19. 1

    This was so insightful. I love the speed and scrappiness to get something launched quickly! What's the next product you have in mind?

  20. 1

    dayum...love the marketing strategy you just shared...can you please tell have you tried smm?

  21. 1

    Thanks for sharing this! Building ideas out, validating it, and selling for large profits is a very exciting idea. Validating is key.

  22. 1

    inspiring story. I think he uses only 3 languages to build his tools (Javascript, CSS, HTML).

    nicely written success summary!

  23. 1

    Thanks for this. I liked the tip on the marketing strategy, such as adding visual contents to it to make it aesthetically-pleasing.

  24. 1

    I want to know your journey of learning to code. Can you?

  25. 1

    i have same the problem
    best regarded https://fifamobileapk.com/

  26. 1

    Thanks for the post. This is inspiring. We have launched our company last month https://deepengin.com and our generating a revenue of around $150/month. I am looking for a marketing founder to join my team. Nico would you be interested in joining the team?

  27. 1

    very inspiring story for us.

  28. 1

    Hi there!

    Thanks for sharing your recent marketing case study. It was really interesting to learn about your experience with Galeby.com and MakeLogo.ai.

    From what I understand, Galeby is an app that uses AI to help makers save time on customer service. Your ideal customer is someone who spends at least one hour per day on customer service. On the other hand, MakeLogo.ai is an app that helps makers create unique logos without hiring a designer. Your target audience is people who don't have the time and budget for a designer and want a unique logo. Your primary acquisition channels are Twitter and recommendations for MakeLogo.ai, and you're still in the early stages of acquiring customers for Galeby.

    You mentioned that your best marketing decision was making everything public and showcasing the possibilities of your innovative products. You found that visual content like videos and screenshots worked well to attract attention. However, you also mentioned that this approach only works for new and unique products.

    Your unpopular marketing opinion is that you don't need a good or finished product to validate an idea. You believe that the only concern when launching something should be validating the idea, and you launched MakeLogo.ai with a plain HTML page linked to a Typeform to collect payments.

    Your top two marketing challenges are to validate the idea for Galeby and to focus on products that can have subscriptions or high recurring usage. To solve these challenges, you plan to invest more time upfront for Galeby and focus on subscription-based or high-usage products for future projects.

    Overall, it was really insightful to learn about your experiences and insights in the world of marketing and entrepreneurship. I'll be sure to check out your Twitter and blog to learn more about your projects.

    You can also get a help from here => https://sukagaming.fun/

  29. 1

    Very interesting story, really great work building a career around building SaaS and launching quickly, if Galeby can integrate with Gmail directly as an app (avoid copy/paste) it would be even more useful

  30. 1

    Thanks for featuring me Sveta! 😎

    1. 1

      Thank you for sharing these brilliant insights!

  31. 1

    That's crazy! Thank you for sharing this with us, especially the startup directory. What channels do you mostly use to gain genuine feedback about MakeLogo.ai?

  32. 1

    Really loved the experience and a success you made on your first product. Your track by creating MVP was the best validation to do.
    a question if you do not mind to answer them. can you enlighten us what AI APIs have you used for first product?
    Any other technologies used to generate logos and photos?

  33. 1

    Thanks for sharing!

  34. 1

    Congrats on the launch!
    Also we are launching today :)

    Please check us out at: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/transferchain-send

  35. 1

    Really inspiring! It's cool to see your post about selling the ai logo maker recently. I'm a casual lurker on this website, even more amazing to see your next product.

    I was really blown away by your new website design, extremely sleek... I am also trying to find the balance between product innovation and marketing with a small budget. its a small AI product as well.

    My biggest takeaway was how you made 500k in a year but made little to no money. Its something i think about a lot when i see products with large teams that move slow.

  36. 1

    This is an impressive and insightful case study by Nico, the maker of Galeby.com and previous MakeLogo.ai. It's inspiring to see how he managed to create successful products by identifying and solving problems for his ideal customers. The way he explained his products to an 11-year-old was an excellent way to simplify complex ideas.

    His approach to making everything public and sharing his progress on social media is commendable, and it's fascinating to see how he leveraged startup directories to get traction.

    The idea of launching an MVP to validate an idea is spot on. Nico's approach of focusing on validating the idea before worrying about the product's quality or completeness is an excellent strategy for launching a new product.

    Overall, Nico's experience and insights are valuable for anyone looking to launch a new product or business. His transparency and willingness to share his knowledge are admirable, and his dedication to creating unique and useful products is inspiring. I look forward to following his progress and seeing what he creates next.

  37. 1

    Congrats, it's not for everyone. Your approach to MakeLogo.ai received the desired engagement with a single tweet. Probably, that tweet was the best marketing you could have done. In fact, I think that was the crux of it. Somehow you made your journey a challenge (like gamification does).

  38. 1

    This is a very interesting approach! In terms of validating an idea, the approach of not even having a product is quite interesting.

    We did something similar with Evoke as well

  39. 1

    This is inspiring. I've been slowly building for so long without launching. Thanks for the push. I can def bang out the rest of my mvp build in a weekend.

  40. 1

    Thanks for the post!

    You said you don't need a good product, do you think you don't even need an MVP? Do you agree with the "sell before you build" idea?

  41. 1

    It's amazing to see how just from a simple idea, and hard work you can succeed.

    We also struggled with the idea validation, but as soon as you get it, you have a lot of chances to make something big from it.

    And from reading this, we will focus more on startup directories😅😄

  42. 1

    how you find ideas for your projects and confirm that there will be a demand for it

  43. 1

    Wow, your journey with MakeLogo.ai and now Galeby is truly inspiring! It's amazing how you managed to launch an MVP in 48 hours and achieve such great results. Your dedication to learning and iterating quickly is a fantastic example for other Indie Hackers. Keep pushing the boundaries, and I'm sure you'll find success with Galeby as well.

    Thanks for sharing your story and valuable insights! 🚀

    A few questions:

    What would you say were the most important factors that contributed to the quick success and exit of MakeLogo.ai?
    Do you have any advice for other indie hackers looking to achieve similar results with their projects?

  44. 0

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