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Earlier this year in January, Tibo and Tom, founders of TweetHunter, sold their startup for 8 figures.
It was started as a tiny twitter project just 18 months before that - A collection of viral tweets.
Turned into a Thread scheduling tool, reached $1 Million ARR in 12 months.
And eventually sold to Lemlist for an undisclosed (7 figure+) amount.
Top framework of their success?
- Building in Public
- Strategic Partnerships
- Side Project Led Growth
This is their rough deal structure at the time of the acquisition -
Initial Validation
Tibo and Tom didn’t want to dwell on the wrong idea for too long. It’s better to fail fast and move on than to fail slow and get stuck.
So they decided to launch a bunch of projects - 1 new project every week.
In about 4 months, they shipped 11 products.
Only 1 took off - Tweet Hunter.
Strategic Partnership
Tibo and Tom partnered up with Twitter ghostwriter JK Molina to boost growth.
JK had a huge audience in the “money Twitter” niche - A market where TweetHunter had no presence.
This follows the broader trend that people buy from people, not from faceless companies. So influencer partnerships can yield better results than running paid ads.
Side Project Led Growth
They kept shipping tiny side projects every month around their niche, and they kept growing.
They launched these projects on Product Hunt with much fanfare.
Every PH launch is a big event that generates a ton of eyeballs for Tweet Hunter. And since these side projects were free, people loved using them.
Some of their most successful side projects include:
They even acquired tiny products around Twitter growth.
One of the coolest side products Tweet Hunter acquired is called WhatToTweet.
It’s a tweet prompt generator. And it ranks on the first page of Google when someone searches for Tweet Inspiration.
Building in Public
Building in Public doesn’t work for all products.
But it is the perfect growth strategy for a Twitter scheduling tool. Because BIP is part of Twitter culture.
So Tibo and Tom shared their journey openly on Twitter every day.
This built up their following, and eventually the top of the funnel for Tweet Hunter.
A good example of building in public is this very thread where Tibo openly shared the story of the exit and the deal terms.
Top Lessons
- When you don’t have a validated idea, ship lots of stuff. Once you have it, double down go big. (Put more buy buttons on the internet)
- Partner with people with completementary skills/resources. Find a co-founder, or collab with influencers.
- A good product is table stakes these days, killer distribution is the real needle mover.
- Side projects help with virality as well as SEO.
- Building in Public works - more so if you’re building a social media tool.
Do read Tibo’s thread about the exit, it’s enlightening.
Also read a deep dive I wrote last year when they reached $1 million in revenue -
Proud Moment
Quite proud that this week my tiny AI startup Elephas was named one of the top Mac AI apps according to Setapp's 2023 Mac apps report 😍
More in this tweet.
We also got mentioned in Techcrunch this week. Do read this article -
Weekly Marketing Checklist
Made a rough weekly marketing checklist.
If you're not sure what marketing activities you should be doing every week, this might be useful -
More in this tweet.
🔗 Super Links
Useful links you don't want to miss -
- Cracking the E-Signature market - Ruben Gamez on Arvid Kahl’s podcast. Some hard earned SaaS lessons here. (YouTube)
- Bootstrapping a SaaS Business from 0 to $10K MRR in Germany - Lukas Hermann
- Building in public forces true competitive advantage - Jason Cohen
Last week’s top link -
🤗 How can I help?
Whenever you’re ready, consider joining the Indie Masterminds community. The goal of this newsletter is to inspire and motivate you, but the goal of the community is to help you take action and go to the next level in your journey.
So if you’re at that stage where you don’t need more inspiration, but you do need to take the right action, then come join us!
We’re here to help 🫂
