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This is Sam, a university student who built a SAS with zero coding background. But here's the even crazier part. He validated this idea in a way I've never seen before. Discord. I would mute my mic and literally just share my screen. He found a tiny community, started showing off his product, and just six months later, he's at $14,000 a month with over 10,000 users. I got my first 400 users all on Discord. This is such a crazy simple strategy that I had to get Sam to come on the channel and break it all down. And that's exactly what he did. And in this video, we'll dive into how he shipped a broken MVP that didn't even work and why that didn't matter, how he went from zero to 10,000 users in just six months, and how Discord might be the untapped channel to find your first 100 customers. All right, this one you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story. All right, Sam, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story? My name is Sam. I've outcoded my first SAS six months ago for Algro and I've gained over 10,000 users and made over $14,000 in revenue in the last 30 days. And the way that I did this is something that I don't see many founders doing, and it's tapping into Discord communities and growing your SAS through there. And I'm excited to share that playbook with you today. Awesome Sam, before we get all into Discord, which I think is amazing, I don't even know a whole lot about Discord, which I'm really excited to learn from you. But first, what is the app that you built? You built a SAS, can you explain what it does? So there are two core features of our product. We help creators research and also replicate viral formats. We have three different pricing plans at the moment. There is a 25 a month plan, a 45 a month plan, and an $80 a month plan. So as you can see here, we analyze the subscriber counts, the average views of video, and you are given a list of trending formats that are working in Rota. And when you find a channel you like, you can have a save and Algro. If you want to take it a step forward, you can go and create new videos themselves. So if you find a channel, for example, that was trending with Sora2, you can plug it into the AI video generator and then generate it inside of Algro, download it, and then optimize it for whatever platform you post on, then you can post it. Okay, super cool business that you launched before we get into the whole Discord strategy and all that. I'd love if you just showed me a little bit more of the metrics behind the business and pulled up some of your Stripe dashboard and just showed us a little bit more about how the business is doing financially. All right, no worries. Here is the last four weeks on Algro. And as you can see, it's made over 10,000 pounds in revenue. When you convert that into dollars, it's around 13,000 to 14,000. In terms of customers, we have exactly 480 new customers this month. So initially when I launched Algro, I launched it as a tool for faceless YouTubers. However, in the recent months, Algro has grown to influences using it as he dropships using it. So it has many different use cases now. Okay, cool. Thank you for sharing your metrics, pulling up your Stripe dashboards and being transparent with all that. I want to understand a little bit more about your background. How do you even get into the idea of building a SaaS? All right, so I've been around the internet for the past three years looking for different ways to make money. The first way I started was affiliate marketing. Me and my two best friends from home, we worked with a company called Rizapp and we posted faceless texting stories about different fake scenarios to help promote their app. And we did over $10,000 in revenue with that company. However, it wasn't sustainable, but I took that money from Rizapp and I thought, okay, let me try different business models. So I went into something called YouTube automation where you post videos online and make money from ad revenue. And I had a close friend called Mason who first introduced me into the idea of why doesn't someone build a way for us to find more short channels to run? Because the more channels you have to run, the more opportunities to make money. And I was like, you know what? I'll try the idea. So I opened up a notepad and I blurted out on the chat to devolse mode my whole idea. So I was given a bunch of code and I was just copying it back and forth into notepad. And then I do go and I saw something called the visual studio code and I still didn't know what to do. So all I would do is just still copy back and forth. But instead of notepad, I did it on VS code. And that's how I coded my first ever MVP. However, I showed that to my friend Mason and he was like, so raw dog in it and VS code is dumb when cursor exists. And I didn't know what cursor. I threw something like a mouse cursor at the time. So I downloaded it and ever since then I've just been cursor. You basically have no technical experience. How did you teach yourself this? Did you build the whole MVP? How long did it take you to do this with AI coding tools with zero technical experience? All right. So the initial MVP that you see, it was coded in about a week. And that is the version I did on notepad. When I first shipped my product, I hosted it on a site called Heroku. And the first person I gave it to, they got an application error. They still managed to use some of the core features and were able to still use the app. Yes, there were bugs. Yes, there were issues, but the main idea of the app was working. So as long as what you're trying to solve works, I think you could ship anything. Okay, cool. You can build anything nowadays. This isn't news. I want to understand about the marketing. How did you get your first customers and then how did you build this? It's something that makes over $10,000 a month. So the way I did it is I hopped on a site called disbord.org. Type in any keyword or any niche and will find you disco communities with people in that niche. And what I did is at the time it was a server called MoneyMind. I went to search for and I typed in the word niches. But the major result that I found was people were searching, how do I find a niche? Or how can I replicate this niche? When I saw that people are repeating, how do I find a niche? I was like, okay, that is the demand. I see the demand. So I thought, let me get a bit more validation. So what I used to do is I'll go in that server and I'll join a discord voice chat and I will share my screen, not talking, nothing, just me using my tool. And I was seeing at Sam, what are you using at Sam? What is this? And I would respond to him being, oh, it's a tool I built. And I did this for about like a week straight. It even attracted the eyes of the discord server owner to the point that he created a YouTube long form promotional video on the tool. I didn't ask him. I didn't pay for it. I didn't do anything. And then after weeks of just sitting in the discord server and screen sharing, I thought, how can I get these people to convert to my product? And I saw the typical thing was for us to release a waitlist. And I was able to send that waitlist to those discord servers. So I would put in the discord server in the chat, just a waitlist and be like, if you want to try the tool, just sign up here. And once released, we'll get an email or something like that. And that's how I started. Man, I just love hearing how Sam went out and found his customers through this platform called discord. It's really something that I haven't seen or heard of that much. I mean, to hear a lot about Reddit and Facebook groups, but not discord. And if you stick around to the end, you're going to hear him break down his entire process. But it got me thinking about all the niche communities that are out there where you can go find customers. I get a lot of DMs from you guys about where is the best place to post my product and get my first customer. But the truth is there are a million places to do it. And it's different for every type of business and customer that you're trying to reach. Honestly, it's easy to get lost or confused and potentially even pick the wrong distribution channel. And I know a lot of you guys watching might not know exactly where to start. So I decided to put something together for you for free, where you can find your perfect distribution channel. Again, this is all free. I put together the ultimate playbook of how to find customers through niche communities, not only discord, but Reddit, Facebook groups and all sorts of places where you can find customers for free. And this is all based on real data and real examples from successful founders that I talked to through this YouTube channel and also through Starter Story. This is important because it's 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. Get away! So embarrassing! They're growing up. Won't be long before the thought of a family holiday is just... But with Hilton's staycations all over the UK, we don't need to go far to feel close. And with connecting rooms confirmed when we book, we'll have plenty of space to make the most of every moment. Everyone in the photo! When time away means time together, it matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day. Why didn't you get banned? Why did people love your stuff so much they were willing to self promote it? What did you do right? What would be your advice for other people who want to nail discord distribution? Most discord communities that you join have server rules and in the rules it always says no self-promote or else you'll be banned. And most people see that and what they'll do still is go in the server and be like, Hi, I've got this tool. Please use it. But you just look like spam. You look like an annoying person. And I think the main thing you have to do first is build maybe a bit of a report in the community. A person would give me like a type of channel they were looking for and I would use my tool to help them find that channel. So I wasn't directly selling it to them because at the end of the day, those people would tell their friends, word of mouth was so big for me at the beginning. Just because it solves a pain point that is so big, people will end up telling other people. I asked them, where did you come from? They'd be like, Oh, my friend told me. Okay, cool. This is amazing. Could you give me the playbook on how you would get customers from niche communities or specifically discord if you had to start over today? So the first step that I would have for you is to find where your ICP lives, attempt to find if there is a discord community for your niche. Let's say we're going to build a SaaS that creates 3D assets or something. So what I would do is I'll go on discord and have a look at the blender servers, their outputs, and I would join every single one of them and do the same thing for cinema 4D. And then for step two, I would say you need to listen before you build with anything. One cool thing about discord is you can scroll through and copy and paste days and days worth of chat history, copy and paste it into chat activity and give it a prompt saying, list me all of the pain points that these people have talked about over the last couple of days. You want to be looking for recurring pain points because those are the ones that would have more demand. So the more struggle there is, the more likely the product is going to do to do better in my opinion. Step three, now you want to validate your ideas by having real conversations with people. So once you DM these people, you need to have a goal in mind. Drop them a screen recording of whatever, like a quick loom, a sped up of your tool. And if you see them, like give great feedback, like on my days, this is something I've been looking for, something like that. That is a strong indicator that you're building the correct thing. However, I say at least try and find five, six different people in different servers as well. Step four, I would say you should build in public with the community. I don't mean the whole Twitter build in public where you document the process of you building your SaaS. I genuinely think that's a whole bunch of rubbish, but that's my personal opinion on it. I think that you should build your product with your users. So if you think you can collect enough users, then just build a waitlist and get the emails ready. But another really cool thing you can do beyond the waitlist is make your own Discord server for your future product. So instead of being scared of getting banned for self promo in the big communities, you can start growing your own private Discord community and then you're funneling in your ideal customers. And I'm all for emails. I think emails are great, but Discord is 10 times better in terms of building a relationship with your users. I think young people will go on Discord more than they check their emails. So for step five, another thing you want to do is turn all of your early users into potential advocates for your product. So one thing I did is I gave all of my early users how to validate my idea. I gave them all free access. So the early access user would have free access, then his friend would have to pay. But his friend might be a bit skeptical on how the tool works. But the really cool thing is the early access user can just show him because he has free access. And that is how I grew as good as they did because I post it in these communities and these people would tell their friends. And that is how it initially blew up. Okay, cool. Want to change topics on a second? I know that you vibe coded this without technical background. What's your tech stack? How did you build this and what tools do you use? So I've upgraded from the $20 a month cursor plan to the $200 a month cursor plan. And then I have an AI image generation feature inside of Algro. So that is based off Nana Banana, where I'm paying around, I'd say $100 a month. There's also AI video generation, which uses models like Sora too. And I'll say I'm paying around $200 a month. Hosting now costs me about $100 a month. I'm still on Heroku. And then in terms of email marketing, I use a site called Mailer Lite and it costs around $80 a month. And in terms of like different AI compute now, other costs, the Gemini I'd say goes around $300 to $500 a month. Cool. Last question that we ask every founder who comes onto the channel. If you could go back in time, what would be your advice to young Sam or for anyone watching this who wants to build a 10K plus per month business? My main advice for people would be build your tool to accommodate for scale. You need to initially better yourself, think that, okay, cool, I'm going to have 100,000 users building my tool and you want to have the frameworks behind that. And you might not know them, but when you tell cursor to think that way, it will change its mindset in the way it prompts you to do things. It will prompt you in a way that will accommodate for those 100,000 users instead of just that one user being you. Because then it saves you so much time and money down the line. Well, that's great advice for anyone watching this. Vibe coding, building stuff, believe in yourself. Thanks, Sam, for coming onto the channel. Amazing strategy discord. I love it. So thanks for coming on and sharing everything so transparently. Thanks for helping me out. All right, thank you to Sam for coming on to the channel and sharing all that. I'll bring Gus, our producer on. What do you think of this one, Gus? Yeah, that was pretty awesome. My big takeaway is like there's a million places to find customers, but discord is just not something I've ever thought about. Maybe I'm just old. Like I don't use discord. So that's probably part of the problem. Yeah, he did sort of mention this a couple of times. It's like he said, my users are younger and they're on discord. They don't check their email. I think that's really important. If you're going to build this business and then you're going to go promoted on LinkedIn, that's not going to work. Right. Yeah. Just crazy to think that there's these tiny places of pockets on the internet. It's pretty cool. A million different places to go find people. You just got to understand a certain niche really well to know where to go look. And what I thought was cool in the early days, he didn't even have the ability to build any software, but he just built something super niche. I think that's super cool. And it's what I would recommend for anyone to do who wants to get started today, who wants to build stuff, go to small communities, solve a really, really niche problem for a really, really niche customer. You could probably vibe code something really quickly and just start getting interest and validation. So if you're looking to do that and you want to build something quickly, I definitely check out starter story build. It is our platform. We will teach you how to build and vibe code products to production in just a couple of weeks. You'll come up with your idea. You'll build it and you'll launch it to real users. You might be on discord just like Sam did. I'll put a link in the description for that. Our next cohorts are starting this week. If you're looking to start and build and get off the sidelines and build something, definitely check it out. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.
