It took me 14 days to build CodeGuide.dev and within 90 days we've gone from 0 to 42k per month. This is CJ, a longtime member of Starter Story and a few weeks ago he sent me a DM that blew me away. In just 49 days he took his app from 0 to $17,000 a month without spending a single dollar on marketing. But what's even crazier is he didn't even build the product until he knew it was validated. So I didn't build any product, I didn't have anything, I just had a glimpse of what a product can look like in a landing page. And people were signing up from left and right and that was the moment when I decided, okay, now I need to take this and create like a proper tool that solves this problem. Now I know what you're thinking, he's probably got a huge audience, but that's actually not true. It all started when CJ set out to build 12 startups in 12 months, which ultimately led him to an idea that would change his life forever. I brought CJ onto the channel to tell his story and he shared everything, including a full breakdown of the tweet that broke his startup, how he got thousands of signups before writing any code, and the unexpected marketing strategy that's grown his business to over 500,000 in ARR. If you're building an AI, this is a must watch because this is what is actually working right now. So let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story. All right, CJ, thanks for coming on. Who are you and what's your story? So my name is Sejila Mazafir and people on X know me by the name of CJZ. I'm the founder of CodeGuide, an AI startup that helps AI developers write detailed documentation for AI coding models. So we launched on 24th of December and in just the last three months, we've grown CodeGuide to 42k MRR with a community of more than 4800 AI developers and we're projecting to cross around 90k this month. Zero to 42,000 MRR in just a couple months is almost unheard of. So tell me about what is the core issue that your product solves and what made it grow so fast? So basically CodeGuide fixes a core problem in AI coding, which is AI coding models are not ready yet. They hallucinate, they assume things. So I just tried to say fix just one problem, which is AI hallucinations, by building a knowledge base around the user's idea. Our core users are pretty much beginners to semi developers and they can attack this knowledge base to these AI coding tools. So you can say CodeGuide is just a bridge between two parties and that's why it is growing really fast because I'm not reinventing my own audience. I'm just utilizing the AI coding tools audience and we're just making the AI coding workflow better. I mean that growth is just amazing and I think that there's something there, the opportunity around building around AI and building around AI apps. Why is AI coding such a big opportunity right now? So English is the most prominent coding language right now and that was not possible before 2024. But now if you know English, you can literally code with AI. AI is writing 25% of Google's code, Cursor AI, which is just the top AI coding tool. That is one of the fastest growing company right now. So if you learn how AI works, how to prompt AI, you can actually build a really profitable application right now that you can deploy online and make money from it and people are doing that. You don't need to learn code, you just learn how to talk to this AI and AI can execute code and build you the applications. What I think is it's amazing what you built and I know that you were a member of Starter Story for some time. I'd love you could just briefly break down your backstory and how you got into building online. I moved to Canada in 2018 and I did my first 9-5 and that was like a horrible experience for me. I knew like I can do any 9-5 so I went back to the drawing board and stick to my basics, which is like just build stuff, just do something and built a lot of agencies, built a lot of software products, SaaS products, you name it. And then in 2022, I was actually writing a lot of tweets about AI prompting and I knew that AI coding is actually blowing up at the back end and people are not noticing it. So I wanted to force myself to actually learn the craft, build and code with AI coding tools for like 10 to 12 hours per day and I just you know publicly announced that I'll be doing 12 startups and I ended up building 11 products of my own. Unfortunately 10 collapsed, they didn't perform well but one of them grew really fast, which is code guide and then in the end you know it was just like an overnight success after like all these seven years and that's why I'm super stoked. I'm working 9 to 10 hours every single day just to make this product better, just to make it the best product out there for AI coders. So you built a bunch of stuff but let's talk about how you found the idea that really kind of changed your life, right? How did you actually find this idea? I was just trying to solve my own problem with code guide actually. Like I said, I was running an MVP agency and for each product I had to chat with chat GPT for like 9 to 10 hours to create all these technical documentations to create a knowledge base that I can attach to these AI coding tools. So I turned my prompts into like a sequence using make.com and I literally saved seven hours out of those nine hours and that was magical for me and then I created a landing page in like 30 minutes using both and within two weeks we got 1800 waitlist signups. Nice, that's great. I would just love to hear a little bit more about your process for validating an idea. How did you know code guide was validated? Yes, so Twitter is actually a really great platform to launch products. All you need to do is just share your screen, create a simple screen recording demo and you just post it and this type of content usually goes wild. So in this tweet I'm just talking about like what is my ideal cursor workflow. I just tweeted that out and I was just mind blown that how many people were actually struggling with hallucination problem with AI and then I just turned this thing into a landing page in like 20 minutes at the max using both and actual validation for me was when people starting to sign up. So I got more than 1800 waitlist emails in like two weeks. That was the first stage of validation for me that people actually want this solution and then I was just talking to all the beta users. I was trying to DM them every single one that was commenting me just to asking them either they are using some other flow to remove or fix the hallucinations and nobody was actually tackling in a better way than what we were trying to do. So that was the second stage of validation and then that was the moment when I decided okay now I need to take this and you know put all my effort into it and create like a proper tool that solved this problem. I want to change the subject a little bit to building. I want to know how you actually built this so could you walk through your step by step process for how you went from idea to actual launched app? Sure, so when I tweeted that and we got like 400 retreats and I got like 300 sign ups that was a different feeling for me and I knew like okay I am up to something. So what I did was I just sat for next you know 10 to 12 hours just documenting what can be the best UI and how I can take this thing to the production stage and then spent like next three days just to design the proper front end so I can visualize it. Once I did that I realized I can't do it myself because I have to launch it fast so I just reached out to my friend and I said hey I'll take care of the front end and the marketing side can you do the backend and just the customer service and he was very stoked about this idea because we were coding with AI for all these months. So now he takes care of the backend still we're just team of two and I take care of the front end so it took us just two weeks to actually from that's just a raw UI to have a proper responsive web app launched for our users and we got 100 users the first day of launch that was on 24th of December 2024. I just love CJ's story because it's proof that sometimes it's just about being in the right space at the right time. You got to try a lot of things but when you finally find something that works you're ready and I really think that space right now is building in AI. Look these AI coding tools are powerful but they're still not magic yet. It's still really early days and the space can feel overwhelming if you don't have the right system or framework to follow. So shameless plug here but we've been working on something for a while it's called Starter Story Build our platform for learning everything AI tools and vibe coding. Our flagship program is the AI app accelerator we're in about two weeks without knowing how to code you'll IDA build and launch a real life production app using all AI tools just like CJ. We've been running this program for a while behind the scenes and every day I'm blown away by the stuff being built in there and just how fast things are moving but this is way more than something you could get into course because you walk away with a real-world app completely built with AI plus skills that might just change your life. Not only will you learn how to use these tools and to build stuff you never thought possible but the program will also give you structure accountability and push you to actually take action get it done and ship it. What's even cooler is that we have office hours with AI coding experts to help you when you get stuck and a whole cohort of other people building alongside you. So if you're curious about building an app like CJ and you want to surround yourself with other builders in AI then head to the first link in the description to see if the AI app accelerator might be worth it for you but we're keeping it small right now because we're focused on quality so please make sure to head to that first link put your email in if you want to save your spot. Now let's get back to CJ. Okay so you launched it this kind of tweet thread blew up let's go deeper into the marketing what's been working for you to market your SaaS and grow the SaaS since then. If I have to go all over again I would do this playbook which is content audience fate approach you need to talk to users what is the core problem and how you can fix it. I would literally go push content for next 14 days warm up my audience and then from there I pick up what are the main core pain points and for those pain points what is the major one and then I just build a product that fix just one problem and then I push that product to that core group that gave me my initial users and from their own words I would just double down on the content that works and I will find more people like the core audience and that's how you can grow and I coined this term called tutorial marketing and what I do every single day is I just write a tutorial in the form of thread or long form tweet and what I do is I write four threads per week and three long from posts I just pick one topic write a draft and then the next day I just edit that draft with clear mind then I design assets using Canva and Figma. So in this tutorial same playbook in the hook you actually talk about the problem and then you show them the exact blueprint what's the ideal solution and then you position your SaaS in between just a part of the solution that type of content actually performs really well because that's bookmarkable content and shareable content if your content is bookmarked algorithm is in your side and people love that and you build credibility and trust so that's how my chanret is super low right now and we're growing at massive pace. Nice you're posting on twitter you're getting lots of attention but how do you actually convert that into users and then to paying customers? Sure my funnel is super simple you just write content every single day and push that audience or traffic to your waitlist landing page and you collect those emails because from those emails you will get your first hundred customers because they already know that this is the pain that they want to solve and they also trust you and that's why they gave you your email address. Cool okay so can you just explain your business model and your pricing? Sure so our business model is pretty straightforward we're not doing any trials because we're using top of the line AI models and AI models right now are not cheap so we're using a mixture of models to create these well structured documentation. Users can literally go to our landing page they can sign up either for monthly membership which is right now at $29 that will be $39 to $49 in next six months and we're also doing a heavy 40% discount on yearly membership which also comes with different perks like we have official partnership with cursor AI, WinServe, Bolt, Laveble and all the top AI coding tools. Cool okay tell me about the tools, languages and everything you use to build and run this business. So for a code guide I use those text tags that are basically favored by AI coding models so for the front end we're using Next.js and for Claude we use it to design our UI components using 3.7 model and that costs us $20. For cursor basically this is our main IDE where we code all our stuff that costs us $20 WinServe is another AI IDE that we use $15 a month. Superbase all our back end is PostgreSQL superbase so $25 a month and that covers our database and storage. Wersel is where we deploy all our apps so $48 a month. Hatchner is basically our cloud storage server it costs us $25 the biggest bill is OpenAI API which is $2,800 then we also use Claude API and that costs us $300 plus. Jamini Flash API is free right now. Cleric Dev is for user authentication that's a very good tool and then we use ConvertKit to send emails to our users that costs us $45 a month so all in all cost is around like $3,500 per month and obviously we're not doing any paid marketing yet we're doing everything organically from user acquisition to converting them into a paid user everything is organic all my traffic is coming from X so that's why the margins are higher. Let's move on to a little bit of personal stuff so you live in Vancouver you mentioned and now you got the successful startup tell me what a day in the life is like for CJ. Sure so I wake up super early like 5 a.m and I just take a shower go for prayer and start my two hours of deep work session just like you then I just go for a walk and start my second session which involves research coding writing content then I take networking calls in the afternoon and then in the evening I listen to my favorite podcast read a book for 10 minutes and then write my schedule for the next day so super simple no fancy routines but that I am sticking with this routine for the last one year now. One thing that I think is cool is that the reason why we're talking right now is that you actually sent me a message inside the starter story community you've been a member of starter story for some time and when I saw your message I was just like so impressed with what you built but I'd just love to hear about your experience joining starter story and how it helped you get to this place where you now have this successful startup. Sure and I'm not promoting starter story I actually got really good value over starter story there's a lot of valuable case studies which I used actually to learn a lot about marketing myself like how this guy actually created this idea what was his flow and then how he ended up you know got like paying users so I read like more than 100 plus you know case studies there so starter story is like a huge asset for me personally and then when I reached somewhere you were the first guy that I reached out to on Slack that this is what I built this is what we're trying to do just asking for different suggestions or advice from you and yeah here we are right now. Cool man that's awesome well really the last question that I want to ask you is you know AI right now is really overwhelming you know things are changing so fast you managed to find a way to make it work and you're already thinking ahead about the next thing what advice would you have for someone watching this who wants to get into AI and building ideas and shipping ideas in the crazy world of AI? Sure I think we are living in the best time to build software or any sort of product online all you need to do is just make yourself AI native the first step can be just go on chat GPT and have a chat with this AI and you will know like how amazing this thing is next step can be you can literally go have a voice-to-voice conversation just brainstorm just improve a skill set with that so you understand like okay this is not a bubble this is not a trend this is actually a lot bigger than that and from there onwards you can just start coding English is the hottest programming language right now so all you need to do is use AI for research about the market then write code then write content and then distribute the product so every single thing or every piece of the puzzle is just right there for you all you need to do is create your own canvas. All right well that's the best advice I've heard all month thanks for coming on CJ it was it was just so cool to see and enjoyed having you. Thanks Pat thanks for having me love the conversation. So I want to thank CJ for coming on and when I look at his story I want to say that CJ had some formula for success but I just don't think that's the case he just got started shipped a bunch of stuff and while doing that he eventually kind of stumbled into an idea that changed his life. I see a lot of people waiting waiting for the right time to start and sitting on the sidelines and then I see others who are just getting started playing around with these tools and shipping stuff every week. If you got started today imagine where you'd be in two weeks what's crazy about these AI tools is basically you can build anything you want without having to be an engineer or knowing how to code. Yes it's early and not everything is perfect but the early bird gets the bag so if you're serious about building something just click the first link in the description and let's build. All right I'll see you guys in the next one peace.
