ANNOUNCEMENT:
We've launched a new product - Lemon Hire.
Now you can hire engineers from Europe and LatAm directly for your team.
We'll get you a pipeline of interviews within 48 hours.
ChatGPT has crossed 1M+ users in just 5 days.
To compare, it took Netflix 41 months, FB - 10 months, and Instagram - 2.5 months.
But many haven’t yet realized its full potential.
Here are the 10 mindblowing things you can do using it right now:
I'm obsessed with 1-person companies and have spent over 50 hours researching them.
Here are the 10 most impressive ones that have generated millions in revenue with 0 employees:
Since 2011 Peter Thiel has been giving out $100K to college students to drop out and start a company.
Forbes wrote, "Thiel Fellows will create lesser successful companies than degree holders."
10 yrs later, they've founded some of the most breakthrough companies of the decade:
Sunday read.
Been rounding up Reddit posts where ex-employees reveal “company secrets.” Here are some crazy ones:
1/ “Glassdoor removes job reviews and lets employers choose which ones get shown first!”
There are tons of blogs by exceptional CTOs/engineers you probably have not heard of. They are super nerdy and beautiful.
Here are 20 you should be reading:
AI is changing every industry—from healthcare to automobiles to even space.
Here are the 10 most fascinating AI startups to give you a peek into the future:
There is very little you can do as a CEO when your country 🇺🇦 is on the edge of a full-scale war.
But at such times everyone has to play their role at best. We have 40 employees and 100s of Ukrainian developers in our network.
Right now it is my job to make their lives easier.
Eric Barone has made $300M+ (yes, that's not a typo) in revenue in 6 years with 0 employees.
He developed a game that has sold 20M copies to date.
At this rate, he can easily become the first one-person founder to do 1B+ in sales.
Here's how he did it:
There is a founder who is doing $10M/year in revenue with 0 employees 🤯
Business: Google add-ons
Traffic: 5M visits/month
Installs: 40M
Here's the breakdown of his business:
Cold emailing changed my life.
I made friends with founders I won't have met otherwise, made partnerships that bring us millions, and sold to clients who have never heard about us.
I've curated the best advice on how to write a killer cold email:
Dylan Jacob made $20M in revenue in 2 years with 0 full-time employees.
Then, he hired a small team and scaled it to $150M+ in revenue in 5 years.
Business: Adult beverage cans
Customers: 2.5M+
Traffic: 1M/month
Here's the breakdown of his business:
I'm obsessed with 1-person companies and keep track of all I can find.
Here is the full list:
• Star Dew Valley game generated $300M+ in revenue in 6 years
• Digital Inspiration builds Google plugins and generates $10M in rev/year
• Rego apps generated approx $100M+ in
There's a $4B startup that:
• raised 0 funding
• spends 0 on marketing (11M users came organically)
• If today revenue goes to 0, it will still have 13 yrs of runway 🤯
Here's a story you never heard of:
It's hard to make the right hiring decision based on just a few hours of interviews.
Here are 10 questions that help me get to know the candidate much better:
Amazing story.
In 2015 Jet promised 100K shares to anyone who referred the most users.
Eric Martin, spent $18K on Google Ads to refer 8K users and WON.
In 2016, Walmart acquired Jet for $3.3B. Eric made $20M.
WHAT A YEAR for tech.
Everything feels like one step from burning to the ground, but I'm more excited about the future than ever before.
The 10 most important tech events and breakthroughs of 2022:
There is a founder who is doing $14M/year in rev with 9 employees 🤯
Isn't it fascinating?
• The site gets 2M visits/month.
• Customers include Google, Meta, Amazon, and Twitter.
Here's how he built it and operates the business alone🧵
A father confronted Target about why they sent emails to his teen girl to buy baby products.
"Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?" he shouted, only to find out she was already pregnant.
Here's how Target predicted such pregnancies and grew its revenue by $23B
1/ Star Dew Valley
• It's a country-life role-playing game
• Developed by Eric Barone
• It has generated $300M+ in revenue in 6 years
• Eric could become the first 1-person founder to do $1B+ in sales
Here's how he did it
Eric Barone has made $300M+ (yes, that's not a typo) in revenue in 6 years with 0 employees.
He developed a game that has sold 20M copies to date.
At this rate, he can easily become the first one-person founder to do 1B+ in sales.
Here's how he did it:
1/ Generate code
ChatGPT can help you generate code to build your app/website from scratch.
You save time and effort and can focus on the more important tasks.
100X engineer just arrived.
5/ “I used to work for a large smartphone company.
Never, ever, buy an electronic device in the first 3 months of mass production.
Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases tenfold.”
Running a startup feels like the biggest mental disorder:
9am: *competitor funding news* I can't believe we are so slow
9:10: *new lead* screw VC, we'll grow 4x without them
9:12: *churn report* we won't make it
9:18: *new lead* we'll all be billionaires
Snowflake CEO explains how B players can tank your company.
This is especially true for early-stage startups because founders (including me) get confused by: "they are not bad enough to fire."
Except for compromising on actual outcomes, you are setting a culture of mediocrity.
Famously Facebook turned down Yahoo's $1B acquisition offer in 2006 and is now worth $1.28T.
For many it does not turn out well:
▫️ Groupon declined a $6 billion offer from Google in 2010. Since then, its valuation has dropped to $600M
▫️ Moz declined a $25M M&A deal from
11/ "Health insurance dude
When you file a claim, it's often denied because they're counting on you not escalating it.
Once you do, your case goes to a medical management (we don't wanna pay) group.
Keep escalating / involve your doctor. Fight for the insurance you paid for."
Sunday read
If you want to learn how to win in a commoditized market, Liquid Death is THE playbook.
• It sells water in a beer can
• Valuation: $700M
• On track to do $250M/yr in revenue
Here's how it used branding to become the fastest-growing beverage of all time:
Masterclass has built a $2.5B business on the back of one SEO tactic.
They use the power of "second-order questions" to drive free traffic to their site.
Here is how they do it 🧵
Amazon has built a $1 Trillion empire with this one hack:
Turning cost centers into profit centers.
But they are not alone.
Here are 8 companies that have converted their expenses into revenue:
3/ "If you were on Live Chat with Customer Care, I could see what you were typing before pressing send.
I watched people work through racist, sexist statements, fraudulent lies, grammar fixes, & their whole range of emotions in real-time before deleting and typing ‘ok.’”
6/ “Scientist here. About 50% of all published results cannot be reproduced in another lab.
A lot of statistics are tweaked to get results that are 'statistically significant', which is skimming the edge of what's legal and what is not.”
2/ Checked this one myself and got a discount on a mower last week:
“Home Depot employees can give $49.99 off any item without it flagging for approval.
Department heads can do $99.99.
Assistant store managers can do ~249.99.
Store manager ~499.99.”
4/ Have a personal assistant
Integrate ChatGPT to your WhatsApp and automate the manual and repetitive tasks: write emails, get quick answers to any questions, fasten research, and more.
Matt Mochary has coached
@naval
, the founders of Reddit, Coinbase, Notion, OpenAI, and leaders at Sequoia, Y Combinator, Benchmark, and many others.
Here are his 5 mental models that will help you become a strong leader:
Did you know that Zoho was bootstrapped???
Sridhar Vembu grew it to 80M+ users and $1b annual revenue without ever raising a penny. Pretty wild.
Here is what I've learned from their bootstrapping story:
AI is going to permanently change how marketing works.
If you're not paying attention, you're going to be out of a job pretty soon.
I played around with ChatGPT (a new AI tool) recently.
Here's how AI will change marketing forever:
8/ “Your straw at McDonald's is larger.
Why?
Because it lets more carbonation hit your tongue and makes the soda taste better.
That's why it's better at McDonald's than most other fast food chains.”
Bonus: If you don’t know how to use ChatGPT to 10X your productivity, here's a cool tool to get you started.
Whether you’re a software engineer, marketer, product designer, artist, or student, this will help you.
Introducing 🚀
Have no idea how to use chatGPT for coding, prompts, or anything else?
It's a website where we can collect and curate the best prompts. I'm currently adding a lot of prompts, and you can help by submitting more 🔥🥳
I mean this sincerely when I say that ChatGPT might be the most incredible tech to emerge in the last decade.
Here's how I got it to create a weight loss plan, complete with calorie targets, meal plans, a grocery list, and workout plan 🧵:
Uber is the world's largest ride-sharing company (operates in 10K+ cities), generating $25B+ annually.
Its success lies in how fast people can book cabs. So, Uber uses psychological hacks to persuade drivers to keep driving.
Here are 8 of them:
☢️ BEWARE, you can waste a day on /r/badUIbattles 😂
Follow me
@volodarik
. I break down companies and transparently share how I build .
Also, RT this tweet to share this thread with your audience. Don't be greedy.
Did you know there are religious institutions worth $10B-$100B?
• making more revenue than 70% of startups
• owning a million dollars worth of lands/stocks
• contributing $1.2T of economic value in the US alone (as of 2016)
Here are a few examples that will surprise you:
When I needed some funds I went to an angel investor.
I took $60k for 17% equity.
Could make this by bringing 4-5 customers.
Don't repeat my mistake. Choose clients over investors. If they don't pay you enough right away use
@pipe
.
One of the most underrated ways to build a startup is to start a consultancy/agency and use the profits to fund a product.
It's a great way and I did it for quite a bit.
But screw me, better examples:
• Basecamp - $10m revenue
• Tiny Capital – $100m
• Mailchimp – $700m
We are a Ukrainian startup that had all of our funds in SVB.
Whatever happens on Monday, we should be prepared to move forward with just $250k from FDIC.
Please, share this message. This will help us bring new clients and keep operating to support the engineers and startups.
We’ve created an amazing brand!
Agencies quoted $250k for rebranding. Ridiculous money for early-stage startup.
Screw them, we did much better than they ever could.
If this tweet gets 50 replies, I’ll do a free minicourse on how can anyone create a better brand.
Who wants it?
VCs will tell you: "Don't do it"
These founders didn't listen and outsourced their engineering. Now they are worth billions.
10 stories that will surprise you:
1/
@ethereum
@VitalikButerin
founded the 2nd-biggest cryptocurrency ($150B+, at peak it was $400B+).
Its merge reduced global electricity consumption by 0.2%.
2/
@figma
@zoink
used the $100K grant to launch the collaborative design platform. Adobe acquired it for $20B+.
2/ BuiltWith
• It helps you find what technologies and services a website uses
• Founded by Gary Brewer
• It generates $14M in revenue per year
Here's the full story of how Gary built it and operated with 0 employees
There is a founder who is doing $14M/year in rev with 9 employees 🤯
Isn't it fascinating?
• The site gets 2M visits/month.
• Customers include Google, Meta, Amazon, and Twitter.
Here's how he built it and operates the business alone🧵
In-N-Out Burger has a cult following:
• Customers wait for 14+ hrs outside a new store (cops have to manage traffic)
• Fans include Gordon Ramsay, Paris Hilton, and Donald Glover
• Has 350+ stores, generating $2.5B+/yr
Here's how it created unmatched loyalty:
In early days I did all our copy.
It sucked so bad. Good thing, I made friends with people who taught me how to write.
Copywriting is the
#1
skill for entrepreneurs. You write emails, articles, landing pages every day, and it helps you grow.
This will 10x your copy 👇
Ever wished to climb Mount Everest? It could cost you $100,000.
The tallest mountain in the world (29,030 feet) runs Nepal's economy.
It employs 1M people and generates $2B in revenue (~8% of its GDP).
Here's how Nepal made Everest a multi-million dollar business:
13/ I've heard this one many times, but never tried. Who did? Any significant result?
“When purchasing items on the internet (especially airline tickets), use incognito mode on your browser.
We use your cookies against you: raising the price on tickets the more times you check,
4/ Photopea
• It's a free photo and graphics editor
• Made by Ivan Kutskir
• It generates 10M visits per month and ~$1.5M in revenue per year
• People spend 1.5 million hours a month using Photopea
Remember I told you about
@labnol
who created a ~$10M/yr business with 0 employees building plugins?
Now with the help of ChatGPT, you can do the same.
There is a founder who is doing $10M/year in revenue with 0 employees 🤯
Business: Google add-ons
Traffic: 5M visits/month
Installs: 40M
Here's the breakdown of his business: