| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ks2s4mky0n7smej5arytq |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2ks2s4mky0n7smej5arytq |
| Date | 2026-04-12 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq3-qH-CpYQ
95% of you do not realize that this isan industry.>> This is Jordan and he’s made over $1.5million from a single app, but I canguarantee you’ve never heard of it.
My product doesn’t have a userinterface. There’s no mobile app. Youcannot download it on your phone.>> Here’s the thing. Jordan didn’t justbuild another trending idea. He found acustomer that almost nobody is buildingfor. Then he went all in and it worked.
I built my MVP. I released it and then Ihad 200 paying users and I wasprofitable from within the first month.
So, I brought Jordan onto the channel totell the whole story. And in thisepisode, we’ll dive into how he foundthis hidden market that nobody’sbuilding for, the secret to how he gothis first 200 paying users, and thebusiness idea you’ve never heard of thatis absolutely crushing it. I’m not goingto spoil it, you just have to watch.Let’s dive in. I’m Pat Walls and this isStarter Story.
Jordan, welcome to the channel. Tell meabout who you are, what you built, andwhat’s your story.>> Hey, my name is Jordan, and I’ve solobootstrapped two businesses that haveeach made over a million in totalrevenue. The first one is pretty boring,mainstream, normal. You know, working onself-driving cars, drones for famouscompanies, but you probably wouldn’tguess the second one. It’s in a category95% of people don’t even think of as anindustry. That’s what I’m uh happy totalk about.
Okay. Well, I’m excited to get into it.When you told me about what your appdoes, I got super excited because Ithink it’s really, really cool. We’regoing to talk all about it, but beforewe do, let’s talk about how you get intobuilding apps. What’s your background?>> So, when I was a kid, I wanted to belike a scientist or an engineer or anastronaut. And I went to grad school. IGot a master’s of science. I worked on amoon rover and some other robotic stuffin grad school. When I graduated, I gota corporate job as a researcher, a bigAmerican company, a Fortune 100.
And I thought the corporate world was a littleboring. So I taught myself how to codeand when I went to San Francisco andfrom there I got more intoentrepreneurship.
Okay, cool. So you get into corporateAmerica, you realize it’s not exactlyfor you. It reminds me a little bit ofmy story. I went to college, went to thecorporate world and realized I want tobuild stuff. I want to learn how tocode. So let’s talk about that. This appthat we’re talking about today, how didyou learn to build it?>> By the time I started this project, Ialready had probably about a decade ofexperience writing software. So I wasn’tcompletely clueless. And so it took me amonth to build the prototype, which iswhat I used to validate the idea. AndThen another month to build the payment system. So from the second month, it was profitable. So it took about one month to get the first 200 users on the platform and it’s just kind of grown.
What I love about Jordan’s story is that he found this hyper niche problem that nobody was paying attention to. And then he turned this hidden idea into a $300,000 per year SAS business.I think the best business ideas, ones like these, solve a real problem for a very niche type of customer.But how do you actually go about finding these ideas?
Well, in partnership with HubSpot, we built a free database of over 190 proven micro SaaS ideas that are already making money right now.This database includes real revenue numbers, traffic, cost to start, pricing models, growth tactics, all of it.
So, if you want to find your next idea, just head to the first link in the description to grab the database for free.All right, let’s get back to the episode. Okay, cool. Well, you got200 users. It wasn’t a million users,but 200. That’s when you know you hadsomething. Let’s talk about the techstack. Can you walk me through that?
Sure. I built it in Typescript because Ibuilt almost everything in Typescript. Imean, nowadays you do everything in AI.So, again, this was made in the stoneage back when we would write codemanually. But at this point, I haven’topened my code editor in 3 to 6 months.I have the AI system writing all thecode for me. AI is the new text stack, ismy point. But specifically on myproject, what I used is TypeScript, likeI said, React for the front end,Postgres as the database, Reddus as thein-memory database, which I use with thequeuing system, Offzero because no onewants to write their own login system.So you use something that someone elsewrote, Prisma, which helps it makesit easier to make calls to yourdatabase. Although nowadays, I guesstechnically the AI does it for you. SoPerhaps these things aren’t as useful.
And Zod, which is a way to make sure thatinformation coming in from externalservers can be validated to a certainschema, and also a lot of Dockercontainers. One question I get a lot is,“I got a brilliant business idea. Whatlanguage should I use?” And the answeris, “It doesn’t really matter. Do whatyou think works. Do what you think isinteresting. The tech stack is not thatimportant as sheer speed.”>> Love that. There’s one more skill that Ithink is still very, very valuable. Isto have good ideas. Let’s talk aboutthat. How’d you come up with the ideafor this eventual app that makes over$300,000 a year?
So, I had been working in San Franciscoas a freelance software engineer, and Ihad a guy I was working with. I wasproducing a mobile app for him, and wewere having a meeting to finish up theproject. It was near completion, and I goon to the Zoom call, and I get there andHis girlfriend, who I wasn’t expecting,was there, and she was really upset,and she just told me he got sent to prison,and that kind of just sort of shocked me a lot.
One day he’s here, and you’re talking,and you’re working with him,and the next day he’s gone.So I kept in touch with him for a couple of years,you know, paper letters, very high-tech.
Eventually, he told me how a lot of these services in prison are just a massive scam.It offers not very good quality services at a very high price.So, I figured I could do something better,and lots of people who use my product get value.
Okay. I mean, that’s a crazy story.Usually, people just find ideas from,you know, some AI thing that they want to help do.But you built something in the prison industry, which is just wild.So, you come up with this idea to improve the lives of people that are in prison.How did you validate this idea?
In this situation, it’s a bit different.
Prison is a closed ecosystem. And so,you can’t easily send them a link to,you know, your web page, and they cancheck out your idea, and you collectemail addresses. It’s not going to work.
So, in this step, validating the ideaand building the MVP were the samething. I had to build the MVP, get it infront of them in order to validate it.So, I talked to my contacts in theprison. I said, “Hey, here’s this tool Iwant to build. I’ve heard you guys arecurrently using older technology.It doesn’t work very well. It’soverpriced.” So, here’s what I envisioncould be a better product for you. Andso, you get a lot of feedback. Peoplewere super responsive for this. Peoplewere telling other people about it. Andlike I said, within a month, I had 200users, and that was enough for me tovalidate it.
Okay, cool. So, you kind of mentioned alittle bit earlier that you’re the typeof person that has lots and lots ofBusiness ideas. I think a lot of peoplewatching this channel also feel thesame. They want to build lots and lotsof things. So, what would be your advicefor someone watching this who wants tobuild something and make sure it’svalidated? The specifics about how tovalidate aren’t as important as the factthat you must validate. And what I meanby that is a lot of entrepreneurs, theyfall in love with their idea. You’veprobably heard lots of people, they say,“Oh, I’ve got this idea for an app.” Andthey spend 12 months creating theperfect mobile app. They haven’t shown
it to anyone. They have no feedback fromactual customers. Validation is notnecessarily a specific strategy. It’s doyou want to validate? Because as soon asyou validate, your idea goes from alittle thing in your head that you loveand is so protected to the world. andthe world is probably going to spit onit and they’re going to hate it andthey’re going to think it’s boring. YouCan look up in five minutes on theinternet how to validate any specificthing. The point is most people don’twant to validate because if you validateit means you might invalidate your idea,and most people, it’s an emotional thing.
They don’t want to. They’re tooemotionally invested in the idea ofbeing an entrepreneur. Except that youmust validate, and you must be willing tolet your idea die.
That’s a great piece of advice orinsight is that validation isn’t aspecific framework or strategy. So, ifyou’re coming on here watching thisthinking, “Okay, I’ll follow this andI’ll validate.” Like you said, just doit. So, validate fast, validate often,validate early, that’s what I see fromthe hundreds of people that we’vebrought onto this YouTube channel. Let’stalk about growth. How’d you get peopleto use your thing and eventually turn itinto a 300K per year app?
So, Prison is a closed ecosystem. It isVery difficult if you’re on the outside to communicate and vice versa. So I hada few people on the inside who I wastalking about with my project, and theyjust showed it to other people, and thenthose people showed it to other people,because if you create a good product andit resonates with people, people will beyour zealots, right? They’ll be yourcultists. Like I have heard thisexpression: Apple doesn’t havecustomers; they have cult members. Andthat’s kind of an exaggeration, but it’strue. Lots of people who like theseproducts want to talk about it. So it’sall word of mouth. Honestly, I know
people want like a cooler answer, butno, it’s just all word of mouth. I didbuild an internal recruitment system,where if one of our customers wouldrecruit another customer, and the otherperson signed up and started paying forthe product, the first person would getlike a month or so of free credits. So,that helped. The way you want to thinkAbout growth and entrepreneurship is asa scientist. So, just be willing toexperiment, be willing to fail, come upwith a strategy. It’s probably terrible,but you will get data back and then youwill be able to reiterate on that.
Okay. I 100% agree with that. I want tochange topics and actually talk aboutthis app. Can you explain what is theactual app that you built that makes$300,000 a year?
Parakeet Chat is an AI learningcommunication app for incarceratedpeople. It helps them talk to ChatGPTand other AI services so they can learnwhatever they want. Mostly, they use itto learn about their own legal rights.
And also, there’s a communication aspectwhere people can use it to talk to theirfamily. We’ve had a lot of messages fromour users saying, "Oh, thank you. Thanksfor your assistant. I was able to talkto my daughter. I haven’t been able totalk to her in years, and she sent me ahello message, and it means the world toMe. From the perspective of the users,it’s the internal prison email system.
They just email a specific email addressand our bot processes that information,and then sends them a reply. And so, ourapp is essentially a chat bot thatpeople on the inside can use to talk toand it will look up things on ChatGPT.It’ll look up sports statistics. That isit. There is no app in the sense thatyou can go on the Play Store anddownload it.>> This is so cool. Well, I don’t know thatmuch about the email system that theyuse, but you built around theselimitations. I’m curious, and what a lotof people might be wondering is, like, how doesan app like this make money or how doprisoners even pay for this, since I’massuming that’s a little bit morecomplicated.
That’s a good question. In mostbusinesses, customers and the users arethe same people. In this, it’sdifferent. So, the users are theIncarcerated people on the inside. Thecustomers are their families on theoutside. And it’s just a monthly SAS.
The customers just pay for it. It’s 15or 20 bucks a month depending on theplan you want. There’s a discount if youget yearly. Last year, 2025, ParakeetChat made a little over 300K in revenueand, in total, over the lifetime, it hasmade 1.5 million American dollars. And in thelast month, you can check that live ifyou want on Trust MR if you don’t trustme. The total number of people who’ve evertried it is around 30,000 people, andthat’s 20% of the entire federal prisonpopulation in the United States. So ifyou know someone who’s in federal prisonor has been there, there’s a pretty good chancethat they’ve used it. That means you knowsomeone on the inside talking to theirfamily. So almost 100,000 familyconnections that wouldn’t exist if thisproduct didn’t happen. And we’ve sentout like 9 million messages since then.
When people use Parakeet Chat, most ofThem, it’s studying case law and legalresearch. I would assume it’s probablyabout their own legal case,understanding their rights. They havevery limited resources. So that’s thebiggest use case. We actually get a lotof entrepreneurial questions through theplatform, and a lot of them I would sayare probably smarter than the averageones I get on the outside. That’sawesome, man. I mean, I think that’sawesome that there’s a lot ofentrepreneurial questions because I knowthat when you get out of prison, it canbe tough to get back into the workforce.
So, starting a business may be a greatoption for people who have been recentlyincarcerated. Last question that we askall founders who come on to StarterStory. If you could go back in time andstand on Jordan’s shoulders before yougot started, even maybe before youstarted building stuff in Silicon Valley,and learned to code and all that, whatwould be your advice for anyone watching?
This who wants to build stuff like youdid? If I had to go back in time andgive young Jordan advice, I would tellhim everything you think about businessis wrong. This is not just anentrepreneur thing. This is in general.Most people’s ideas about mostthings are not grounded in anything. Ifyou’ve not done business or any specificsubject, everything you believe isprobably wrong. I didn’t do everythingperfectly with Parakeet. You always makemistakes. But on the whole, I hadpreviously made enough mistakes that Ididn’t make them later on. And thereason things worked out pretty well inthis project is not because I’m abrilliant, I’m a genius, is I’ve madethese mistakes 10 years ago. So, it tookme 10 years to get to this point. Peoplesay an overnight success, no such thing.
It doesn’t exist. Reality is if you wantto be a successful entrepreneur, youneed to start up right now. Youneed to go and come up with a stupidIdea, an idiotic idea that everyonetells you will not work, and just do itright now. Even if you know it’s goingto fail, good. Even better if you knowif it’s going to fail because then youhave no illusions that it will succeed.
Just do it in a way that doesn’tcompletely you, and lose all yourmoney and get you arrested, right? Butdo it in a controlled way, and you willlearn more from that mess-up than youwill from reading 20 books. That’s thebest advice I’ve heard all week. Lovethat. Thanks for coming on the show,Jordan. Awesome business, awesome story,awesome insights. Thanks for coming on.>> I’m glad. Thanks for having me, Pat.
All right, Gus, producer of StarterStory. What do you think? First thoughtis super unique business. I had neverheard of that. That’s one of the reasonsI was like interested in having him onthe channel, and that stood out to me.It’s like, wow, there is really abusiness everywhere. I personally loveThe business. Incarcerated people orprisoners are getting access to AI toolsthat can help them with things like caselaw and stuff like that. So, you’resitting there in prison wanting tolearn, wanting to better your situation,wanting to help you fight your case. Andlike we talked about in the last videowe just filmed, building niche apps for
small communities is maybe the future ofAI and building businesses. A lot of thetimes we’ll interview people that areyoung, 22 years old, 23 years old, theyhave this successful app and then youkind of feel bad when you see thatbecause you’re older than them and maybeit feels like they just started out andthen figured out right away. But everytime you look at those stories, yourealize that there’s still like 6, 7, 10years behind. They just got startedearlier and they made all thosemistakes. And as he mentioned, there isno such thing as an overnight success.
So, if you’re watching this and thinking,I want to get started. I want toinvalidate some ideas. Check out thatlink I put down there in the descriptionwhere you can find micro SAS ideas, somethat might be similar to this that serveniche communities that do one thing,they do one thing well. I’ll put thatlink in the description. It’s free. Youcan download it. Hope you enjoyed thisepisode. We’ll see you in the next one.
Peace.