Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Katt Risen is the founder of No-Code Exits - a newsletter about stories from profitable or acquired products made with No-Code.
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
No-Code Exits is a newsletter that shares how profitable or acquired products made with No-Code were started and grown. The makers share their path, tools and strategies they used.
My first No-Code project also got acquired. When I tweeted about this I received a lot likes, comments but also lots of DM's with questions.
So I followed the pull and in 15 minutes I set up a Substack and tweeted (I had around 600 followers) that I was starting a newsletter with interviews who built with nocode and got acquired. After 24 hours, I had around 250 subscribers. Topic validated: check
The next day I sent out my story and then left on holiday for 2 weeks. I found some other persons via Indie Hackers who sold a nocode project and they were all happy to do an interview.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
Thanks to the very specific niche subject and riding the nocode trend wave the newsletter grew very fast. After one month I had around 1000 subscribers. This was mainly from tweeting about it.
Later I started doing cross promotion and taking content repurposing much more serious. So from one interview I would create 5 tweets (mini thread interview, listicle, tool breakdown,...) that I schedule in the coming weeks and also use in articles to share on Indiehackers, Product Hunt, Reddit and Hacker News. Sometimes just a copy paste of the interview, sometimes in different formats. For example: 5 acquired projects built with No-Code. A lot of those articles flop but now and then there is a tiny hit.
Launching on Product Hunt also worked well (+1000). I waited until I had a few thousands of subscribers so you also have an audience that can support you. They can give you some upvotes early in the day which will result in more visibility.
Since recently I also publish the stories in a LinkedIn newsletter with a big CTA to my main newsletter. It's interesting because all your followers get a notification when you publish your newsletter.
I'm also started to publish on Medium. We will see how that goes.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- Substack for writing the newsletter. It's perfect to get started to see if writing a weekly newsletter is something for you. But now that my newsletter is growing I miss some more advanced analytics and automations.
- Softr for my website
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- Airtable for managing everything (planning interviews, ad calendar, website content...)
- Tally forms for interviews (when async)
- Text expander (for quickly importing frequently used phrases (from UTM URL to cross promotion text)
- Language Tool Grammar tool chrome extension
- Twemex chrome extension for researching interviewees on twitter
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
Writing a newsletter opens so many doors.
+ You can connect with leaders in the space
+ You can talk to inspiring persons for interviews
+ You suddenly have an audience that trusts you
+ You become kind of an expert in your niche
+ If you build an engaging audience (like in nocode exits) you learn what your audience struggles with and you can spot many new business opportunities
+You have an audience to validate ideas
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
- Doing Content Right from Steph Smith
- Trends VC reports
- IndieHackers podcast and newsletter
- Honest Guide to Indie Making from Kayleigh
- Make handbook from Pieter Levels
