I took everything that I knew and built my first staff. Meet Hassam, a non-technical guy who launched an app with cursor. So I spent literally all day for the next 48 hours building it out and this is what I did. But he had no audience, no distribution, and no way to reach customers. So he did something I've never seen anyone do before. He found a distribution channel overnight. Then 90 days later, his app was doing over $20,000 a month. If you can spend 1000 hours on a project and implement your domain knowledge, you're going to be successful. So I asked Hassam to come onto the channel and share exactly how he did it. And in this video, we'll get into how to find the perfect business idea customized to you, how to save yourself years figuring out distribution, and his six-step playbook on how he would do this all again if he had to start over today. All right, let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story. All right, Hassam, welcome to the channel. Stoked Abbey here. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story. I'm Hassam and I turned my Amazon business into Launch Fast. I built it with cursor in 48 hours. I pitched it to a coaching company with a massive audience and now we're earning 20k plus MRR. I'm excited to share my story with you today. Okay, that's amazing that you did it so fast. Before we get into how you built it and everything, I do want to understand what is this business, is this SaaS, what is it? Yeah, so Launch Fast is an AI-powered Amazon product research tool and is built specifically for private label sellers. So it helps you find, validate, and source products all in a matter of minutes instead of weeks. And the growth timeline has been pretty steady since we launched. Day zero, we launched with the partnership with Legacy X. And about 30 days in, we were at 10k MRR. Around day 60, we were at 17 to 18k with steady growth. And now 90 days in, we're at about 21.8k. We offer a $50 a month pricing to the coaching customers of Legacy X. And we have the regular pricing model for $199 per month for the general public. We also have an official Chrome extension with 330 active users. And all our users are paying because I feel like we launched in a unique niche built specifically for that audience. That's really impressive, man. To be doing over $20,000 MRR in 90 days is amazing. This is a super cool story. Before we get into how you built this and everything, I want to understand a little bit about your background. Do you have a coding background? Are you a developer? What's your background? So I have a non-technical background. I was working at corporate job while running two Amazon brands on the side. It's the classic side of sogrine. Because of Twitter, I discovered cursor and AI tools early on before a general purpose. And I was so fascinated that I finally had the power to build things without a CS degree. I built about 10 to 12 projects across different spaces. Most of them never made it to production, but I did learn something from each project. So when I eventually started building tools for my own Amazon business, I realized that I had something most developers don't. And that's the niche domain knowledge on Amazon. So I thought that instead of solving theoretical problems for sellers, I could build a tool I wish I really had as an Amazon seller. So decided I'm going to put cursor to use and I built the tool to monetize my knowledge. Okay, I want to dive real quick into the idea because you had mentioned that you had 10 to 12 failed projects. But then this one was the idea that really took off. Walk me through how you found that idea and how you sort of knew that this could be something big. Honestly, this idea came out of pure frustration. While I was launching products, I was spending 20 to 30 hours researching each product idea, copypasting data into Google Sheets. It was honestly exhausting and all the tools I tried, I just felt like they had the same problem. They looked like they were solving important problems on paper, but they didn't tackle the real bottlenecks. But the thing is, while I had this idea, I also realized that I had zero audience. And zero audience means zero distribution. So even if I did build the best tool out there, no one's going to know about it and it's not really going to matter. And that's when I remembered that two years ago, I'd actually bought a coaching program called Legacy X. And Legacy X already had the distribution. They had thousands of active Amazon sellers just looking for a new tool. So instead of trying to build an audience and own distribution, which can sometimes take years, I thought that I'd just partner with somebody who already had the distribution. And I guess I would be giving up equity by what get instant access to my target customers. Okay, so super smart there. You kind of solved the problem that a lot of builders run into, which is AI tools can help me build it really quick. But now I have a way bigger problem, which is distribution. I really, really like how you saw this idea. Can you explain to me how you solve the distribution problem? Yeah, so I reached out to Legacy X and I said, guys, I can build you a better product research tool than anything on the market. So I told them, give me 48 hours. And if you like what we see, we can partner. No strings attached. And you guys have nothing to lose. So I spent literally all day for the next 48 hours building it out. And this is what I did for the first four hours. I mapped out their existing systems and SOPs, what data they had, workflows they use. And then they combined it with my own processes to build the MVP foundation. Once I had that for hours five to 12, I started using cursor to build out the core features. It didn't have to be perfect, but as long as it was functional, it was going to be good. And then from there, I spent hours 13 to 20 testing bugs, iterating, and cursor was a lifesaver here. And then hours 21 to 30, I thought I would spend a lot of time polishing the UI and making it look professional. Something I learned from Amazon is that branding is everything. So I put the branding in and made it feel like a real product. After that, hours 31 to 40, it was more testing again, testing out the edge cases, making sure I put everything together and it worked fluently. After that, it was just the final polish, prepping the demo. And then from there, I recorded the video and sent it over. Next day, I woke up to the call, hey, quit your job. We're going to do this full time. And from there, that's when I felt like the pitch was worth it. Even though I traded equity for this instant distribution, I knew that I was going to get instant validation. And now I literally had a built in customer base. So when it comes to software, instead of me sacrificing other resources that can be more valuable than equity, such as my time, I wouldn't trade that any day to get access to someone else's distribution. Even if it's at 50%, I would say 50% of 20 kit MRR is better than 50% of zero MRR. What I love about Hassam's story is that he did it with zero coding experience. He had an idea, he shipped it with cursor, and with the right distribution strategy, he hit $20,000 a month. So I wanted to ask you, what's your idea? What have you been planning to build and are you ready? Now AI is making it possible for anyone to become a builder. And Hassam is perfect proof of that. If you've made it to this point in the video, I think you might want to become a builder too. So I want to invite you to check out Starter Story Build. It's our program where we teach you how to build apps with AI. And in just a few weeks, you'll go from idea to launch and finally build that idea that's sitting in your head right now. Our next bootcamp starts soon. So if you're ready to build, head to the first link in the description to join Starter Story Build. All right, let's get back to the video. I'm also curious about another thing. You mentioned that you had like 10 to 12 products that went nowhere. Why do you think that this product really took off? I felt like this project was successful over others because I had niche domain knowledge in the Amazon world. Previously, I was trying to launch products like Larek AI video generators or automating job applications. I didn't really know what the end user wanted or why the current software is weren't living up to their hype. With the Amazon world, I already understood from A to Z what problems new sellers were running into, what data they needed. That's why I feel like putting my domain knowledge into launch fast was successful When the tax year ends on the 5th of April, valuable tax allowances may be lost simply because people left things too late. Thankfully, Vanguard is here to help you make well-considered decisions, not rushed ones. Their tax year-end hub is full of clear guidance, helpful tools and timely reminders to help you understand your allowances and give your investments the best chance to grow. Search Vanguard Investor to learn more. When investing, your capital is at risk. Tax rules apply. Hey, Sainsbury's, we get through so many snacks. Have you got anything to help me save? Well, we're always matching and lowering prices. So, hundreds of Sainsbury's fresh fruit, veg and everyday products are price matched to Aldi. And every week with Nectar, you can save money on thousands of the products your family loves. So, you can snack away knowing you're saving money. Sainsbury's, good food for all of us. Selected products, Aldi price match not in an eye. Nectar prices require Nectar account. Sainsbury's.co.uk slash aldpricematch and netto.com slash prices terms. Versus the graveyard in my gift. And honestly, I think every person has a niche hobby or interest that they're into. And with access to AI, now you have the chance to monetize that knowledge. You probably know problems and solutions better than anybody in those niches. If you turn them into software, productize it properly and get the solutions into the hands of other people, there's a huge opportunity waiting for you. This is something that I 100% agree with and it's something I tell a lot of people who join starter story is pick an idea where you have domain knowledge, where you have knowledge, where you have skills, go build something in there and you won't have to waste two years learning about a whole new domain. For anyone watching this who's maybe questioning what is my domain knowledge, or if I have domain knowledge, how do I get started? What would be your playbook if you had to start over today, finding and then building on some domain knowledge? If I were starting today, here's the exact steps that I would take. So step one is going to be to identify your domain knowledge and then write down three to five industries or domains where you have deep knowledge and you've personally solved problems. So step two would be to find validated markets. So from those three to five domains, you're going to look for niches that already have successful SaaS tools. If they're already making money, that means the market exists. We can use tools like sensor tower, RF, or even Google console, just to find other competitors that are doing well within these niches. So the key here is that you don't need a unique idea. You're just going to execute better in the proven market. Step three is going to be to do a deep dive on user pain points. So we're going to go where those customers actually hang out. We're going to dive deep into Reddit, Facebook groups, Twitter's, and even review sites. We're going to identify who the user is, what the ultimate goal is, and what are the current defects in the tools they're using. Step four is going to be to build the MVP. We're going to build the one feature with the highest ROI potential, yet the easiest implementation. Don't worry about getting it perfect. Just make sure it's functional and get it into the hands of users as fast as possible. Step five, we're not going to try to build this audience from scratch. We're going to see who already has access to our target customers. Is it coaching companies? Is it communities? Or is it other influencer groups? We're going to send them the demo and we're going to offer them a partnership for access to the distribution. And just remember that 50% of something is a lot better than 100% of nothing. So start listing out five potential distribution partners and try to reach out to three by the end of this week. Step six is after we launch, we're going to have to ship daily and we're going to iterate fast based on real user feedback. We're going to take actionable insights from their feature requests, from bugs and what things break, take their feedback, and commit to shipping at least one improvement every day for the next 30 days. To wrap up the playbook, just remember that you no longer need to be an engineer to build production software. If you can spend 1000 hours on a project, test it thoroughly, and implement your domain knowledge, you're going to be successful. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that playbook. I think it's super cool. I want to change the topic slightly. As someone who doesn't have a crazy development background, what is your tech stack for building a SaaS right now? What have you used for your product? So this is a tech stack that literally anybody can use to go from idea to MVP in 48 hours to write the code. We're going to use cursor. We're going to host on Vercel. And Vercel is great because we can host right from cursor. We're going to deploy it with the CLI, and it's going to be no friction or configuration. We're going to use SuperBase to do our database, auth, and storage. This is going to replace Firebase. And with the SuperBase MCP, there's going to be no friction in implementing it with cursor. We're going to make sure all of our onboarding emails are personalized, and we're going to send that with the email for developers, which is resend. We're going to use Apify because a lot of niches depend on data aggregation. And Apify is going to simplify the collection for us, and it's going to be critical for some niches. And we're going to make sure that we build the app on TypeScript and Next.js, just because this is the most modern and AI-friendly stack. And you're going to find cursor works a lot better with this tech stack. So the great thing about this stack is once you launch, your costs are going to be pretty minimal. Cursor is going to be the only one with their max subscription at $200. And until you hit that winning product, you won't have hurt your pockets too much. The last question that we ask everyone who comes on Starter Story. If you could stand on young Hesame's shoulders before you built any software, or for anyone watching this that wants to build software, find distribution like you did as well. What would be your advice? If you're an ideas person, or somebody who sees problems, imagine solutions, you can now use AI to build those solutions. Feel like AI tools have really closed the gap between idea and execution. So I'll tell Hesame to just stop waiting, stop planning, just start building. Try to ship something this weekend. Just get in front of at least 10 people, listen to their feedback, iterate, and ship again. And if it doesn't work, just repeat it. I feel like the tools exist, the knowledge exists, and the only thing stopping you from shipping is yourself. So just ship and keep shipping. Well, that's amazing advice, Hesame. Thank you for coming on. $20,000 MRR in 90 days is amazing. This is such a great example of what's possible in 2025 and beyond. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing everything, being transparent, and good luck in the future. Thanks so much. That was pretty fun. What do you think? What's your takeaways? I mean, this story is absolutely insane. This guy who did not a code, who didn't have an audience, he built the app in 48 hours. Obviously, they probably took some equity, maybe 50% equity in that. But now he's making $10,000 a month pure profit. And the business was started in 2025, which is the year we're in right now. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, it's just such a smart strategy, like especially for people who have no audience or small audience, it's like a hack. It's a new way of thinking like, oh, how do I get customers? You always think, well, Reddit and Twitter and all this stuff. And I hadn't thought of something like this before. So yeah, that's what I'll take away for sure. I think a lot of people out there are just no offense, but you suck at finding customers, you suck at marketing, and it's going to take a long time for you to get better. This is a great way to shortcut that. You don't have to sell half your app for the next app you build or the next app you build. But for the first one, that's a pretty good deal. I would take that any day of the week. But again, reminder that none of this would be possible without the knowledge on how to build apps and an idea. So if you were inspired by Hassam, you want to learn how to build stuff quickly. Well, that's exactly what we teach you in Star Story Build. In a couple of weeks, you'll come up with an idea. We'll teach you how to build it with AI tools, and we'll teach you how to launch it into the real world and get it into the hands of real customers so that you can do it over and over and over again until you become great like Hassam. And if you are ready to get off the sidelines and get building, check it out. All right, guys, see you in the next one. Peace.
