| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ksrr7dn6rfwx3qtdvk26d |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2ksrr7dn6rfwx3qtdvk26d |
| Date | 2025-12-07 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUhKuJbeWQ
This is everything I know about buildinga successful SaaS. This is Tibo, a dudefrom France I’ve been following for awhile who’s launched dozens of productsonline. But recently, I noticed thathe’s been on an absolute tear.Over the last four years, I’ve builtfour apps that passed over 100,000 MRR each, which is unheard of.
So, I gave him a call and asked him howthis is even possible, and he sharedeverything.I failed for 5 years because I didn’tknow this.In this video, Tibo and I walk throughhis specific playbook he uses over andover again to launch successful SaaScompanies, including [music] the numberone thing builders get wrong aboutvalidating their ideas, why he’sbuilding six different apps versus justone, and his exact 12-step playbook heuses for all of his apps. This is avideo you cannot miss. So, let’s divein. I’m Bat Walls, and this is StarterStory.
All right, Tibo, the legend is in thehouse. Tell me about who you are, Tibo,What you built and what’s your story?
I’m Tibo. Some people know me because Ibuilt and exceeded [music] the TweetHunter and Tapio. It was an 10 million in annual revenue.I’ve built many apps, so I’m going to betalking about my playbook, the one thatI’m using every day, and which gotme to have four apps above $100K permonth.
Okay. I mean, insane. Five differentproducts doing 400K per month andstill growing 10% month over month,which is quite crazy to me. The secondone is called Outrank. It might be thefastest growing of all my products.It just passed $200K per month. Itstarted just as a blog post generator.
And right now it’s slowly becoming anall-in-one SEO SaaS to just grow yourorganic traffic. The next one is SuperX. It just passed 13K per month. It’s anall-in-one SaaS to grow an audience onX. The next one is Postyncer. It’s thesmallest of all my products. It’s making1.5K per month. It’s also a social mediatool. I love this space. But this one ismore made for people who want to beeverywhere. You can post on 10 platforms.And the last one is the one that I spendthe most money on. It’s called Feather.It’s a blogging tool making about 10Kper month. I acquired this for 250K. Ittakes your Notion pages andNotion content and puts that as a blogon the web. So all that together, I thinkit’s generating something like 700K permonth. 50K paying customers. Thetotal amount of monthly revenue isgrowing about 20% per month consistentlyfor over 6 months right now. There’sjust no sign that it’s stopping.
This is crazy. You’ve built over foursuccessful apps, have done it all veryrecently in the last couple of years. Italked to a lot of people who want tobuild SaaS, and they struggle. Theystruggle to even make a dollar. Yet, youI have done this four times in the lastcouple of years and have had insane success. Iwanted to bring on the channel to sharethat playbook. You have this whole12-step playbook that I’m really excitedfor you to go over. But before we getinto that, I want to understand what isthe meta here. What are you doingdifferently in terms of buildingproducts, building SaaS, building thingsonline that nobody else is doing? Whatare you, Tibo, doing differently thaneverybody else online?
I think there’s basically one big thingand hundreds of very small and tinythings. And I think the one bigthing is that everyone is just creating newstuff, adding features because theythink that it’s going to be the thingthat people are expecting. But whatthey do not do is what’s hard for them,which is talking to people. People rightnow in the market, who are able to buildsoftware, are also the most shy people.
I think I’m part of those; like Ijust— I’m a developer; I want to stayin my cave. This entire framework thatwe’re going to talk about, I think it’sjust about that. It’s just about you needto do the hard things that feelIt’s uncomfortable talking to peopleevery day and trying to understand theirtrue pain. The story is awesome, and hisportfolio of multiple $100,000 per monthprojects is very impressive. WhatI’m even more impressed with is the fact thathe’s been able to do this over and overagain. But here’s the thing: Tibo isn’tjust guessing. [music]He’s following a specific playbook thatwe’re talking about today, and he’sgrowing his apps at an [music] insanerate. I know a lot of you watching wantto figure out how to crack growth justlike Tibo. That’s why I’m excited toshare a free resource from HubSpot forstartups that I think you’re going toreally find valuable. It’s called the
Hypergrowth Startup Index, and it givesyou a clear look at what the topstartups are doing differently right nowto grow. Things like how they’re usingAI to streamline operations, rethinktheir go-to-market strategies, and scalewith small focused teams. It also coverstrends like why strategic partnerships[music] are replacing the need fortraditional VC funding, and howsuccessful exits have changed from 5years ago. I personally found the caseStudies in there from Clay, G2, andGoldcast are especially valuable. They sharethe exact moves that help thosecompanies scale fast. So, if you’retired of guessing and want the databehind what actually works, check outthe Hyperrowth Startup Index at thefirst link in the description. I put itright down in there for you to downloadfor free. Thank you again to HubSpot forStartups for sponsoring this video.
Let’s get back to the story. What I’mreally excited to have you come on andshare. Tibo is your playbook forstarting a SaaS. If you were to startover today, you have this awesome 12-stepplaybook on how to think about buildingSaaS online. I would love if you could gothrough this whole playbook for me andfor everyone watching right now.
The first step that I need you to do isfind a way to build your MVP in days orweeks. What I mean by that is takeshortcuts and you can find like multipleshortcuts today. It can involve using nocode. I built some MVPs using bubble.io,using boilerplates. You can definitelyskip many things when you code, and mostof the experts will not compromiseon those things, but I think you should.
You will have a 90% failure rate. It’sthe same for me. It’s the same for a lotof people that I know. It’s very hard toknow for sure that you have somethingthat people want. And so if you want totake a year and fail 90% of the time, itmight take like 9 years to get somethingthat’s worked out. If you find a way tocompress that in weeks and you’re ableto ship a new product every week, you’regoing to reach success much, muchfaster.
Step two, you have this MVP.What I want you to do is find the fiveto 10 people that are very relevant tothis product — they are your coretarget audience — and you find a way toreach out to them. It can be throughtweets, subreddits, or it can bethrough email. Why is this important? Ifyour mom is testing your idea and if shefinds it relevant or not, [music] thereis absolutely no real knowledge that youcan gain from that. If the person is notrelevant, there is absolutely nopoint in listening to this feedback,either positive or negative.
Step three, you started reaching out to people. Whatyou need to do from there is build atrue relationship with each one of thepeople you’re reaching out to. You endUp truly understanding what the person’s life is about, like what the pain isabout and how you can truly delivervalue because you really understand theworkflow of the people you reallyunderstand, like the core pain. Item four,uh talk to them every single day. Youare looking for recurring usage, and soyou are looking for how to make peoplecome back every day on your software, andby talking to them every day, you will[music] understand why they are notcoming back or why they are coming back,and how you can reproduce that feelingfor other customers. One thing that Idid, which worked very, very well for me,is until each product is making 10k permonth in revenue, the support link oneach software is directing people to myTwitter DMs. [music] And that creates adaily flow of people that comes to me.
People feel much, much closer to you.[music]And it gives you this insane reactivitywhere if someone tells you aboutsomething and you fix it in like 5 to 10minutes, they might be like customers forlife. Something that can change [music]the game is step five: understand theultimate goal of the users by.
Understanding how far you can go withhelping them achieve their ultimategoal and how much you can help themdoing so, you can generate 10 times or 100times more value for your users.
So step six, when it comes to buildingfeatures, remember that you need to fixyour users’ problems and not yours. Onething that I do with pretty much everyone of my products is beingthe user of my own product. [music] Andby doing that, I’m ten times morerelevant in understanding the coreproblem and giving a proper solution.
Every single time there are tiny thingsto fix, I just fix them and life getsbetter for both me and the users. Whenyou are able to build that feature inlike an hour or two from when people askfor it on Twitter, it creates this insanefeeling for the user. He’s going to talkabout that. He’s going to become thefirst advocate for your product.
Step seven, it’s about iterating. What youdid before, you need to do it again andmaintain this constant relationship[music] with users. Something thatworked exceptionally well for me is by beingactive on social media; I was able tomaintain a constant relationship withPeople were asking for new features in my software every day.
Step eight: a lot of people are trying to go broad, and I think it’s happening way too soon.What I want you to do with step eight is to repeat until they cannot live without your software.
If you go broad, like if you focus on acquisition and simultaneously have low retention, you will spend a lot of energy pushing people to your software.Ninety-nine percent of those people are going to flow away directly after trying your software.You need to ensure that your retention is good.
You need to make sure that you have stickiness.If you want to build a sustainable business, you want to deliver true value to your customer, which translates to great stickiness.One amazing way to know if you have stickiness is when people are complaining about something.
Most people think that if a user is complaining about something, it’s usually a bad thing.I think that’s really not the case.If a user takes the time to complain about something in your software, it definitely means that they’re committed to using it.
He wants you to fix it. So now wejust talked about the hardest part, theeight steps until you kind of— I don’twant to say product market fit, but youhave some sort of stickiness. Now it’stime to go and think about distribution.So what’s the next step there?
Step nine, basically, it’s go broad.There are tons of acquisition channels. Ithink at this step you need to figureout which ones are really working for you.To do that, you need to go broad; youneed to try many things and seewhat’s actually working. What’sbasically true right now is likelaunching on product sites, launching onsocial media and talking about your softwarelike building in public is basicallyfree. So doing that is maybe good enough[music] to get to the one, two, three K permonth that you need to live and tobe able to spend a little bit more onyour product. In my case, launching onplatforms and talking about my software onsocials is always the thing that I dountil I reach 10K in revenue.
Step 10. At onepoint, a company needs to become a mediacompany. Either you are good withsocial media or you are good with SEO or youare good with coding.
Step 10 is about creatingcontent. You need to build a pipeline orworkflow that enables you to shipcontent that’s going to fuel everythingthat you do. You need to have somethingto say [music] about your industry. Youneed to have testimonials and case studiesof people who have beenincredibly successful with yoursoftware. But you need to have thisengine for creating content that will fueleverything else that you do. Step11 is to focus on sustainablestrategies that can help you scalemuch further, which in my opinion include SEO,ads, and affiliate marketing. You can set theseup once, and they can scale to crazy high limits.
For example, if you have workingads with a budget of 10,000 or even20,000 per month by just enteringthe public eye. However, after reaching $20,000 per month, ifyou want the growth to continue at thesame pace, you cannot just rely onthat alone.
We worked the SEO much further byhiring someone dedicated to that, andwe ramped up the affiliate program, tryingto make their life super easy withrecommendations, and it worked.That’s how we grew from 20 to 200.
Step 12 is to scale what works and killwhat doesn’t. I know that I saidearlier that you need to go broad andtry out all the acquisition channels thatare available in the market. It’sbecause acquisition is hard. But in theend, my experience is that for each software,growth is pretty much about one or twoacquisition channels. Those twoacquisition channels, I’m going all inon them. For example, take SEO. I knowthat SEO works very well for posting.
I know people are asking a lot ofquestions around social media. Once[music] SEO works, you have so much workthat you can do which is SEO related.You can find new keywords, find new queriesthat people are asking for on eachacquisition channel. If they work, thereis always a way to double down on them.This is basically my 12-step playbook.
This is what I do with everysingle one of our products. I think thisis how I grew four products above 100K per.
Month. Okay, thank you for sharingthat amazing playbook. I do have aquestion. You have six products andyou’ve probably had a lot of otherproducts that you’ve tried and are currentlytrying lots of other products to see ifthey have product-market fit. SometimesI hear people arguing online about whetheryou should just go all-in on one productor have a portfolio of projects. Clearly, you’vegone for the portfolio strategy, but I’mcurious why.
I have a family. I have two kidsand a wife, and I really want to beable to sustain the family, and [music] Ithink this move is primarily driven byfear. I’m scared as hell right nowbecause the world is moving toofast. Sometimes I feel lost with[music] the 10 AI news that we haveevery day. It’s pretty much every daythat you see some new AI killingstartups because it makes them obsolete.So I think this move of creatingvaluable products is really about beingmore resilient. If OpenAI releases[music] a new feature tomorrow and itkills one of my products, which by theway happened when Elon Musk took over X.
And almost killed Tweet Hunter whileit was making 200k per month. Ifthat happens today and OpenAI kills oneof our products, it’s not going to bethe end of the world. We’re going to beable to sustain the company and[music]. My family, and that’s why I’m movingforward this way. I want to askyou a question that we ask everyone whocomes on Starter Story. For that personthat’s watching this right now, or foryoung Tibo, before you had your exit,before you had all your businesses, whatwould be your number one piece of adviceto make it in this build online world?
Your job is to deeply understand thecore need of your user, and for that, Ihave just two pieces of advice. One,maintain a constant [music]communication channel with your user. Itcan be social; I think it’s a great one,but this is really up to you. Talk toyour user every day and understand theircore situation. And the second one isbeing the user of my own products helpedme become an expert on the problemthat I’m trying to solve, and so Iunderstand much more what I’m trying todo and how to solve my own problem.
Well, thank you to TBO. I think that’sThe best advice I heard all year. Thanksfor coming on, sharing your playbook.
Amazing what you’ve built. So, thanksfor coming on, sharing, and being sotransparent about everything.That was amazing being here. Thankyou so much, Pats, for having me.
Thank you to Tibo for coming on to thechannel and sharing so transparently allthose different SaaS businesses he’sbuilt, all six of them, which are allreally successful. Absolutely insanenumbers. I’ve never seen anything likeit. Personally, I think the playbook’samazing. The biggest piece hetalked about is the need for builders toget out of their shell, get out oftheir cave, and talk to people. Talk tocustomers every single day. Be on X andhave that direct line of communicationwith your customers. I really do believethat is the difference between alot of people building stuff and not
really seeing success and thepeople that absolutely crush it, likeTibo. If you’re ready to do thesame, to get off the sidelines, to buildsomething, to launch it, to get it intothe hands of customers and talk to themevery day, you should definitely checkOut Starter Story Build. It is ourprogram where you will come up with anidea, build it, launch it, and get it inthe hands of customers in just a coupleweeks using only AI tools. I’ll put a[music] link in the description for youto check that out. Our next cohort isstarting this week. All right, guys.
That’s it for this episode. Thank youfor watching. We’ll see you in the nextone. Peace.