I'm a French guy that was lucky enough to build three successful SaaS in the e-commerce industry. This is Loic, a founder from France who's built three separate successful SaaS apps to over $50,000 a month. But it's important to note that it did not start this way. I spent the first five years building an app nobody used. Five years of building in the dark with zero users and zero revenue until something happened that changed his entire outlook on what makes a successful idea. If I was starting over, this is what I would do. I asked Loic to come onto the channel to break down his playbook for finding ideas that win. And in this video, we'll go over exactly how he builds his initial MVPs, what specific platform he uses that drives over 60% of his sales, and his exact playbook for what he would do if he had to start over from scratch today. All right, this one is going to be fun. Let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls. This is Starter Story. All right, Loic, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story? Thanks, man. So yeah, my name is Loic. I'm a French guy that was lucky enough to build three successful SaaS. I've actually launched more than 10 SaaS companies, most of them failed, except three that basically worked with the same playbook, all of them reaching at least 35kMR within their first month of activity, all 100% bootstrap. And this is why I'm here. I'm really excited to share with you this same playbook that was super successful for me. Okay, I'm really excited to talk about that playbook. But first, I want to understand what were these SaaS companies you built? You said you had three companies that made over $35,000 MRR after starting. Can you break these down? Yeah. So basically, the first one is InfoSpy. It's not working anymore, but basically it was the best tool to really help e-commerce businesses to spot the best influencers on Instagram and Snapchat to promote their product. So InfoSpy, we hit 20kMR in two months. And then yeah, the next one was Mynia. Mynia is actually a SaaS business to help other e-commerce businesses to just find products. So basically, Mynia helps job shippers and e-commerce businesses to detect opportunities currently in the market. And Mynia actually peaked at 750kMR within two years. And my third and actually latest successful SaaS is Dropmagic. And basically, Dropmagic is a SaaS to create online stores for beginners with AI. And Dropmagic is actually now growing to over 45kMR within the first four months. So we're really excited. Okay, cool. I mean, three successful apps. That's amazing. We're going to get into the playbook of exactly how you kind of rinse and repeat these and do these over and over. But first, I need to understand your background. How do you get into this space where you've built three successful SaaS apps? So yeah, I've actually spent the first year of my professional life developing a SaaS that literally no one ever used. I shipped a ton of features, still zero, customers zero, MMR for like five years, and basically made the all of the bad decisions possible. And then e-commerce owner actually came to me with a problem. And it turned out that actually he wasn't the only one with this problem. And from there, we just followed, you know, the simplest path we could with as little risk as possible. We started with a newsletter that validated the initial traction, then with a no code app at the time that validated the product market fit, and then a real app that I've developed to really scale. Oh yeah. And now, you know, I've actually left my position of CEO of my Nia and being focusing entirely on scaling Dropmagic with the same playbook that I used on the two other ones. Okay, cool. So you have this mindset change going from builder to problem solver, which I love. And this was your big turning point. But the main reason why I wanted to have you on is you have this growth playbook, which I think is really, really cool. And I'm excited to talk about it. Can you first break down real quick, what is your approach to growing SaaS in 2025? A lot of the issues with current enterprises is that they always focus on the product, but they just don't know how to do distribution. And you know, guess who can do distribution creators. So basically, I've been using the same playbook with all my successful apps. It's essentially working with YouTube creators as promoters or co founders. So promoters, you basically pay them with cash or Fiat revenue. And co founders, of course, you pay them with equity. I'm obviously not the only one that does this. I'm thinking about, you know, Twitter Hunter with Tibo, Mark Luiz is doing it. Also a lot of big known SaaS like Arcades and 8n that are like also scaling usually with creators on YouTube. So yeah, for my Nia and Draw Magic, we actually work with more than 500 of YouTube creators, right? I'm primarily focused on YouTube for four reasons. First one is it's by far for me the best array positive investment you can do as a business. Also, the outcomes are like way more predictable. YouTube videos have like at least a minimum number of views that you can guarantee you're not just looking for a TikTok to go viral. Second thing is it's a long form video. So the creator has like time to show to his audience how he uses the app, which is just the major difference here. The third reason is also it stays over time where we still got conversion from you know, videos are like three years old and also helps for your organic traffic. And the final reason is that you can also repurpose the long form videos in short forms and ads. So you can really start with long form. And then if you really want to do short forms, yeah, you can actually do it. I actually see a lot of businesses that are doing a lot of short forms and trying with creators on TikTok. But you know, it's it's nice to always have like views because I think TikTok is really good, good form for like brand awareness, but it doesn't convert. Whereas YouTube is just a machine for conversion. Like for ourself, I think more than 60% of our new customers come from YouTube. I think one reason Loic is successful is because he follows a specific playbook. He knows exactly what apps can make money. And then he just builds them quickly. Clearly this works because he's done it three times already now. And this is not him just getting lucky. And this kind of got me thinking. Loic's playbook is very similar to what we teach at Starter Story Build, which is our bootcamp where you will learn the fundamentals of building with AI so you can launch over and over again, just like Loic. In just a few short weeks, you will learn how to build apps with AI and ship them to the real world. But the best part is that we lay out the whole playbook for you, what tools to use, how to write prompts, and how to use AI to ship the product living in your head right now into the real world. So if you are ready to build and you've been looking for the builder's playbook, then Starter Story Build might be for you. Just head to the first link in the description to check it out. Our next bootcamp is starting soon. So if you are ready to get off the sidelines and build something real, just click that link to learn more. All right, let's get back to the video. Okay, YouTube, more than 60% of your customers come from YouTube because you partner with creators, people have distribution. This is exactly why I wanted to bring you on the channel. I believe obviously YouTube is the future. YouTube is the best place to get customers. So I want you to get a little bit more detailed on this. When you start a SaaS business, how do you go about finding hundreds of creators to partner with that ultimately market your SaaS for you so you can focus on building? So yeah, to find a really good creator, I actually have this four step system. So step one, I actually need to find a creator. And so what you need to do is just go on YouTube type keywords, looked at all the videos of your creators, see who are talking about what, look at the competitors. So are they pushing with micro influencers, big influencers? You know, what topic are they like making a long trend video or like more of an integration? And then once I found out actually a creator, I actually look at these two metrics. So the first one is engagement rate. So basically it's like views divided by followers. It should be over 10%. I think that's a good number and also a minimum of like 100 comments per video. And the second thing I actually look is basically, you know, how long has he been working with brands? So usually if it's just a one off deal, it means that the brand was not profitable. So you shouldn't really go with them. Usually what I try to look is did the creator work at least with the brand three times? So step three, reaching out basically have seven email campaigns. So basically for each email, you try to have like a different marketing angle. And I also blast them on Instagram and Twitter. You can look on my Twitter, I'll share all of this. And the fourth step actually the deal making part. Usually it's a fixed fee and a commission always lobal. The initial offer by 30% and then offer two package. So with different strategic approach. So the first package is a bit more risky for you. So basically means that you put a bit more upfront costs, but with the lower commission. And then the second package would be less risky, which has like a lot more commission, but less upfront cash. So basically what I typically do is I just make a deal for first video. The first video is a test, see, you know, if the audience is responsive, if it's engaging, see if you break even after a month. And then if all the all the numbers are green, and then deal for a package like three, four videos, you know, more like the mean run, so you get like a discount per video and you know, a bit go deeper into your partnership. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing that playbook on how to work with lots and lots of creators. This seemed to work out so well for you that you even took it to the next level. And you actually asked creators that were really successful in the space to become your co founders. I think that's really, really smart as a builder to have someone with equity that's really, really focused on distribution, knows how to create content and knows the customer. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you went that route? Yeah, having a creator in your co founding team actually has three really good positive impact. The first one is actually to do risk the distribution, especially when you're early, when you're launching a SaaS, you have basically two big risks, you have the first one, which is the product risk, and the second one, which is the distribution risk. It's really hard to do, you know, both product and distribution. For example, with the best is down, which is the co founder of draw magic, we knew that it would secure 10 KMR because he had like this impact. And with 10 KMR, you can actually now spread with other creators, you can actually do some ads, you can really also develop your activity. The second reason, and for me, it's actually currently the most important is the product insights. So basically, you want to have a creator that is a power user of your solution. And this will just provide key insights for the product direction and vision. He's actually the one selling it. So he's the one, you know, like, you know, explaining the features and talking about it on on this platform. So he will really have like this front row man, where he will get you back feedback from his community. And these are like super important. The third reason is actually marketing insights. So one thing that is so undervalued is that you can actually with a creator in your founding team, you can really iterate super fast on scripts on funnels on pricing on marketing angles. And you can actually ship a lot of videos, obviously for free, because he's a co founder. And then this will actually get you knowledge on your secret sauce. From there, you will have your economics, and you can just replicate with other creators with the proven system, right? So you can actually know how much you can spend on on on a creator. Okay, cool. Well, I want to switch topics a little bit. And I know you build all these products, you build the MVPs. What is your tech stack? What do you actually use to build an MVP and build it really quickly? So I use Superbase for database, next GS and Verocell for front end and hosting, Century for debugging, trigger dev for big compute, cursor and cloud code to actually develop the solution. Now, no, but not to actually generate images with AI, and then Gemini and Open AI for the copywriting. Then for the marketing part, I actually use, you know, blind to detect the best creators and opportunities. I use tools to handle the tracking and payments of my creators. I actually use at you as a serum. And I use loops for email marketing. Okay, and on that note, let's talk about costs and profit. What are the costs and margins typically look like for your SaaS businesses? So you have server and compute, you have like 100 bucks per month. And then for all the AI, so we use 11 lm's, of course. So we pay like 1.5k, because we actually offer five AI images for every free user. So that scales pretty much. And then for the ads and creator, currently, we're really scaling hard. But I think on the sweet spot, especially for mania, we had like 80% margin. Now for drop magic, we're a bit lower because we're just testing a lot. But yeah, I think the sweet spot will be between 70% and 80% margin. Well, thanks for sharing that being transparent about the numbers. The last question that we asked everyone who comes on starter story, if you could give yourself advice for when you were starting out or for anyone who's watching this who wants to build many successful SaaS tools like you did over and over, what would be your advice? So I personally struggle with it. But yeah, just don't get emotionally attached to a project. Just use simple deadlines and milestone as the only source of truth to carry on or not. I've wasted so many years to just, you know, believing in something that had no traction, just because I was emotionally attached to the logo or the project or the team members. So yeah, you're just wasting time and it will hurt. Well, I agree 100%. Drop your ego. Don't get emotionally attached to what you're building, pivot when necessary and good things will happen. Thank you, Loic for coming on and sharing everything. I love what you built. Thanks for coming on and sharing with us. All right, thanks, man. All right, thank you to Loic for coming onto the channel. Stories like these are insane, right? This is the power of building on the internet. We are in this small pocket of time right now where you could just come up with an idea, prompt it with AI tools and get it in front of real users using it right now and build a business off of it. Look, these things don't happen overnight and not every idea that you build is guaranteed for success. But I promise you that if you try, just like Loic did in this video, double down when things were working and stop working when things weren't good things will happen. If you're ready to get off the sidelines and start building something today, please check out starter story build. I'll put a link in the description down there. Just check it out. See if it's right for you. I promise it's something that you don't want to miss. All right, thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.
