Adrian Horning

Scrape Creators

Psychologie-Student wird zum "Web-Scraping-Guy" und erreicht $10K MRR

$10K MRR

Current revenue · as of July 2025

Indie Hackers (Adrian Horning, first-person post)

1 year

$10K MRR

Twitter / X

Growth Channel

Solo-Gründer

Founder

Adrian Horning

Solo-Gründer•Technical•USA

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

Scrape Creators

Echtzeit-Social-Media-Scraping-API.

Type

API / Entwickler-Tool

Industry

AI / ML

Model

Abonnement

Marketing Strategy

How Adrian acquired customers

Growth Channel

Twitter / X

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Scrape Creators

PythonAWSStripe

The Full Story

Ich war Psychologie-Student an der Uni. Eines Tages erfuhr ich von Uber und entschied mich für die Tech-Branche. Also zog ich nach San Francisco, besuchte einen Coding-Bootcamp, arbeitete für Lyft und lieferte Essen mit meinem Fahrrad.

Die Marke aufbauen

Ich baute meine 'Web Scraping Guy'-Marke auf Social Media auf und startete einen Kurs der in den ersten drei Tagen $20K machte.

Persönliche Kontaktaufnahme

Ich verließ mich auf Twitter DMs - persönliche Ansprache von potenziellen Kunden. Ein CTO wurde Zahlungskunde nachdem ich über das Scraping seiner Website tweetete.

Zeit zu $10K MRR: 12 Monate
Kursstart: $20K in 3 Tagen
Strategie: Persönliche Marke + Twitter DMs

Key Takeaways

Baue ein Publikum um deine Expertise auf bevor du dein Produkt startest

Persönliche Marke ist wichtig - "The Web Scraping Guy" zu sein zog Kunden an

Twitter DMs und persönliche Ansprache können effektiver sein als bezahlte Werbung

Konzentriere dich auf eine Sache anstelle von mehreren Nebenprojekten

Originally published onIndie Hackers

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Adrian's Scrape Creators playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$10K MRR

Channel

Twitter / X

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Adrian's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Twitter / X
A risk check before copying the Scrape Creators playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Adrian's journey? Generate a business idea in the AI / ML space using AI and real founder data.

Milestone Journey

Adrian achieved 3 milestones on the path to $10K MRR

Erster Kunde

$50

14 days

June 2024

53% faster

vs. Median 1 month

+3 months to next milestone

$1K MRR

$1,000

3 months

August 2024

50% faster

vs. Median 6 months

+9 months to next milestone

$10K MRR

$10,000

1 year

June 2025

Avg: 1 year

1 year

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Against every documented journey

Adrian Horning reached $10K MRR in 12 months, faster than 48% of the 295 documented $10K journeys (median 12 months). The amber bar is this journey.

See the full distribution

Adrian's Path to $10K MRRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Adrian actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Adrian's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Audience requestPivot from Not a direct pivot of one named product, but built on top of years of prior scraping side-projects: a Lululemon restock-tracking bot (sold for about $20k after being banned from the r/lululemon subreddit but gaining SEO traffic), scraping freelance work found on Upwork and Twitter, and The Ultimate Web Scraping Course (a Gumroad course that made about $20k in its first three days). Scrape Creators combined scrapers Adrian had already built for that course and freelance work.

A follower of Adrian's on social media sent him a MicroAcquire listing for a company doing real-time social media scraping, making roughly $20-30k/month almost entirely through SEO. That tip, combined with the scrapers Adrian had already built over the years and an audience of scraping-course students who were already becoming customers, is what pushed him to build Scrape Creators in June 2024.

“A social media follower gave me the idea. They sent me a listing on Microacquire for a company doing the same kind of thing.”

Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words")

Validation

Built first, validated after

MvpValidated

Built Scrape Creators largely by assembling scrapers he had already built over the years, leaning on the fact that some students from his paid scraping course were already becoming customers as an early demand signal, rather than running a separate pre-build validation process.

Adrian says the product idea was helped along by the fact some of his existing scraping-course students had already converted into customers, which he cites as evidence the audience/product fit was there before he fully built it out.

“It was also more aligned with my public persona and audience — some students of my scraping courses actually became customers.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

First test users

Cold outreachFree testersX (Twitter) DMs

Some of Adrian's earliest users came from him personally noticing prospects' own promotional posts or tweets that suggested they were scraping social media, then DMing them an offer of 10,000 free API credits to try Scrape Creators.

“for two customers, I saw their promo videos/tweets and saw that they were probably scraping social media, so I just asked if they wanted 10k free credits to try my API”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

First paying customer

Content readersInbound request

Adrian's first paying customer came in after he tweeted about how he had scraped that person's own site; the CTO saw the tweet, commented, and then asked about the product.

“I got my first customer by Tweeting out how I scraped their site. The CTO commented and then asked about my product.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Twitter / X · Personalized, non-automated DMs (plus one round of scraping his own follower list to shortlist targets)ScalingWorked

Adrian describes his DM outreach as manual and unscripted: he watches for people whose tweets or bios suggest they scrape social media, then reaches out directly, sometimes offering free credits. A one-off automated step (scraping his own X followers to shortlist likely prospects) fed a manual DM round that won one customer.

“My DMs aren't automated and there's no real strategy behind it. I just reach out.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

He attributes part of the DM channel's effectiveness to an existing reputation built from years of putting out free scraping content on X before he had a product to sell.

“It was really helpful that I had already built up a reputation on X. I did that by putting out a lot of free content, and I think it definitely paid off.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

SEO / ContentScalingWorked

Adrian names Google as one of two channels he believes drives most of his customers, though he says he does not track attribution closely and gives no further detail on what specifically ranks or why.

“I don't track where customers are coming from super closely, but I'd say there are two primary channels”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

What didn't work

ChannelPre-launch

An earlier side project (a bot that tracked Lululemon restock alerts, built with a friend from his engineering job) was posted to the r/lululemon subreddit to find users.

“We posted it to the Lululemon subreddit and found a bunch of users but we got banned pretty quickly.”

Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words")

The subreddit banned them quickly after the post.

“we got banned pretty quickly”

Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words")

What they did instead: Leaned on the SEO traffic the site had already picked up instead, and eventually sold the site for about $20k, which became his first meaningful internet income.

Product scopePre-launchCost: time

Before committing fully to Scrape Creators, Adrian was spread across multiple side projects and freelance clients at once, which he says slowed his progress.

“I had been shooting myself in the foot by having too many other projects. Freelance clients were a distraction too.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

What they did instead: Committed to Scrape Creators as his one product and said no to everything else, which he credits as the real unlock for growth even though there were still rough months afterward.

Tech choicePre-launch

Before self-publishing The Ultimate Web Scraping Course on Gumroad, Adrian had nearly sold the course/concept directly to a SaaS company for $20k.

“I'd nearly sold it to a SaaS company for $20k, but they work in Python and I'm a Javascript dev, so it didn't work out.”

Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words")

The deal fell apart over a language/stack mismatch: the buyer's team worked in Python and Adrian builds in JavaScript.

“they work in Python and I’m a Javascript dev, so it didn’t work out”

Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words")

What they did instead: Built and self-published the course on Gumroad instead, which made about $20k in its first three days.

How it changed as they grew

Today: 1 person (Solo founder running Scrape Creators himself, describing it as primarily a one-person operation.)

Bootstrapped

What broke as they grew

The founder frames his biggest challenge not as a technical scaling or quality problem, but as a focus problem: growth was slow mainly because he was spreading himself across too many side projects and freelance work instead of committing fully to one product.

“The biggest challenge was just growing it. But to be honest, I made it harder than it needed to be.”

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account)

Sources (3 in the founder's own words)

Indie Hackers: "Growing a scraping API to $10k+MRR in 12 months" (Adrian's own first-person account) · founder-authored · 2025-07
Indie Hackers: "Here's how I made $20k in three days with a web scraping course" (told "in his own words") · founder-authored · 2024-09
ScrapeCreators "About" page ("Run by a human"), written by Adrian · founder-authored

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Scrape Creators make?

Scrape Creators reports $10K MRR as of July 2025. Founder states $10k+ MRR as of July 2025, about 12 months after starting Scrape Creators in June 2024. Source: Indie Hackers (Adrian Horning, first-person post).

What is Scrape Creators?

Echtzeit-Social-Media-Scraping-API. It operates in AI / ML.

How long did it take Scrape Creators to reach $10k mrr?

Adrian Horning took 1 year to reach $10k mrr with Scrape Creators.

Was Adrian Horning a solo founder?

Yes. Adrian Horning built Scrape Creators as a solo founder.

What marketing channel did Scrape Creators use to grow?

Scrape Creators grew primarily through Twitter / X.

What industry is Scrape Creators in?

Scrape Creators operates in AI / ML.

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