$10K MRRin 11 months

3 milestones

Current revenue

$2.4M ARRas of October 2024Source

No 2025 update found. Portfolio has expanded since.

Construyendo una herramienta de testimonios de $10K MRR compilando en público

Founder

Damon Chen

Fundador en Solitario•Technical•USA

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

Testimonial.to

Recopila y muestra testimonios en video de clientes sin necesidad de código.

Type

SaaS

Industry

Marketing

Model

Suscripción

Marketing Strategy

How Damon acquired customers

Growth Channel

Twitter / X

Also Used

Product HuntSEO / Contenido

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Testimonial.to

Next.jsSupabaseVercelStripeCloudflare

The Full Story

Construí Testimonial.to después de experimentar el dolor de recopilar y mostrar testimonios de clientes para mis proyectos anteriores. Cada fundador sabe que la prueba social importa, pero el proceso de reunir testimonios siempre fue doloroso.

El Problema

Lograr que los clientes escriban testimonios es difícil. Lograr que graben testimonios en video es aún más difícil. Y una vez que los tienes, mostrarlos bien en tu sitio web requiere desarrollo personalizado.

La Solución

Testimonial.to lo hace súper simple - envías a los clientes un enlace, graban un video directamente en su navegador, y obtienes un widget embebible para tu sitio. Sin fricción, sin descargas, sin configuración complicada.

Compilando en Público

Compartí todo mi viaje en Twitter - los días buenos y los días malos. Cuando alcancé hitos, celebraba públicamente. Cuando las características fracasaban, compartía lo que aprendí. Esta transparencia construyó confianza y atrajo adoptadores tempranos que querían apoyar a un creador indie.

Lanzamiento en Product Hunt

El lanzamiento en Product Hunt fue un punto de inflexión. Llegamos a los 5 mejores productos del día y obtuvimos cientos de registros. Pero lo más importante, el lanzamiento generó entusiasmo que duró semanas.

Twitter compilando en público: 60% del tráfico
Contenido SEO: 25% del tráfico
Product Hunt: Pico inicial + cola larga
Boca a boca de clientes felices

Key Takeaways

Construye herramientas que resuelvan tus propios problemas dolorosos

Compilar en público crea una audiencia antes del lanzamiento

Haz la experiencia del cliente lo más sin fricción posible

Product Hunt puede proporcionar un pico inicial y beneficios SEO a largo plazo

Originally published onIndie Hackers

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Damon's Testimonial.to 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 Damon's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Twitter / X
A risk check before copying the Testimonial.to playbook

See what a proof brief covers

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

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

Milestone Journey

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

Primer Cliente

0 days

December 2020

100% faster

vs avg 3 months

+2 months to next milestone

$1K MRR

$1,000

2 months

March 2021

78% faster

vs avg 11 months

+9 months to next milestone

$10K MRR

$10,000

11 months

November 2021

47% faster

vs avg 1 year

11 months

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Damon's Path to $10K MRRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Damon actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Damon'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

Pivot from prior productPivot from indielog.com

Testimonial.to was the fifth side project Damon built in 2020, and by his own account a pivot from his first one, indielog.com (a hobby vlogging site for indie makers). He named money, not a specific testimonial-collection pain, as the reason for the pivot.

“The rest influenswer.com and testimonial.to are just pivots from indielog.com because I want to make some money”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Validation

Built first, validated after

MvpValidated

Built the MVP in about four days from the first commit (finished in under a week), reusing large amounts of code from the three prior 2020 projects. Damon says he sought no external validation before building; the Product Hunt / Indie Hackers launch itself, and the early lifetime-deal sales it produced, served as the validation signal.

Damon has said directly that he skipped a pre-build validation step and treated early launch sales as proof the idea worked.

“After I launched it on PH, and got a few sales from the LTD, it also validated the idea”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

First test users

Online communityFree testersIndie HackersProduct Hunt

Testimonial.to launched simultaneously on Indie Hackers and Product Hunt on 20 December 2020. Damon later said some of his early users told him directly they had found the product through Product Hunt.

“I do have some early users who told me they found Testimonial from PH”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

First paying customer

Online communityPaywall from launch$199

The launch post itself carried a $199 "unlimited video testimonials" lifetime-deal offer, capped at 100 seats. Within ten days of the 20 December 2020 launch, Damon tweeted that Testimonial.to had generated $3,025, the only one of his five 2020 projects to make real money.

“testimonial.to $3,025 in 10 days”

Damon Chen, tweet listing all 2020 side projects and their revenue

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Product HuntLaunchWorked

The launch offered a capped lifetime deal to drive day-one sales.

“I am also offering launch deals for unlimited video testimonials for $199. Only 100 seats available”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers: "Launched Testimonial.to"

Damon credits Product Hunt's own daily-featured-product pages with driving organic search traffic well after launch day, on top of direct signups from people who found the product through the PH listing.

“PH did really a good job on SEO for daily featured products”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Communities · MarTech Facebook groupLaunchWorked

Damon named Product Hunt and one specific Facebook MarTech group as the two places that drove his early lifetime-deal sales.

“Mainly PH and a MarTech group on FB”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Twitter / XScalingWorked

Continuous build-in-public updates over roughly a year took his following from about 70 to about 7,000, which he frames as the payoff of showing up daily rather than any single tactic.

“I could never imagine I can grow my Twitter follower from 70 last year to 7000”

Damon Chen, Testimonial company blog: "One year of indie hacking, I've learned a lot!"

Asked which acquisition channels were most productive, Damon ranked Twitter first.

“So far it's Twitter, then the SEO, then the affiliate program”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Twitter / X · #QuitInPublic milestone tweetsFirst customersWorked

A milestone-progress tweet approaching $1,000 MRR reportedly reached Andrew Gazdecki (founder of acquire.com), who signed up for Testimonial's highest plan directly off the tweet.

Per Peter Yang interviews Damon Chen, Creator Economy newsletter (Substack), "From Engineer to Indie Hacker Making $1,300,000 ARR"

SEO / ContentScalingWorked

Damon describes his SEO effort as basic content publishing, not a specialised program.

“Just started SEO, mainly write blogs, nothing special”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

In a later third-party interview Damon attributes a chunk of ongoing SEO-adjacent revenue to buying the frequently-mistyped testimonials.io domain for $35,000 and redirecting it; he says it has returned about $80K in lifetime revenue. This is not in his own published sources, only a secondhand interview quoting him.

Per Peter Yang interviews Damon Chen, Creator Economy newsletter (Substack), "From Engineer to Indie Hacker Making $1,300,000 ARR"

Other · Affiliate programScalingWorked

The affiliate program was promoted through the onboarding email sequence rather than through a dedicated campaign or third-party affiliate network.

“I mentioned the affiliate program in the new user onboarding email campaigns”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Cold OutreachScalingDidn't work

A third-party growth writer's account of Damon's journey (not his own published words) says cold calling stopped being viable once he tried to grow past the initial $1,000 MRR mark, pushing him toward content and social channels instead. This claim is secondhand and not verified in any source Damon authored himself.

Per Cullin McGrath, LinkedIn post about Damon Chen's journey (reposted by Damon Chen, not authored by him)

What didn't work

Product scopePre-launchCost: time

Before Testimonial.to, Damon shipped four other side projects in 2020: indielog.com, howdy.so and influenswer.com each made $0, and backlogs.co made $1.99. Testimonial.to was the only one of the five that made real money, and quickly ($3,025 in its first 10 days).

“I shipped all these apps in 2020. Most of them generated $0”

Damon Chen, tweet listing all 2020 side projects and their revenue

Asked when he decided to abandon those earlier products, Damon gave a general, not product-specific, answer.

“no more motivations. It could be because of no users, no revenue, no engagement”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

What they did instead: Reused the working parts of that codebase (mostly from indielog.com) to build Testimonial.to in about four days and shipped it on Product Hunt and Indie Hackers.

ChannelScalingCost: time

According to a third-party account of Damon's journey, cold calling was one of the tactics he tried to grow revenue past the initial $1,000 MRR mark.

Per Cullin McGrath, LinkedIn post about Damon Chen's journey (reposted by Damon Chen, not authored by him)

The same secondhand account says he found cold calling unsustainable as a solo founder and shifted toward content and social channels instead. This is not Damon's own published wording, only a third party's paraphrase of his journey.

Per Cullin McGrath, LinkedIn post about Damon Chen's journey (reposted by Damon Chen, not authored by him)

What they did instead: Shifted toward marketing content, SEO blog posts, and public social media updates, per the same secondhand account.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 1 person (Solo, no team, matching the record's solo founderType.)

Today: 2 people (Damon plus one marketing hire, per a later third-party interview covering the business well past the $10K MRR milestone this profile is built around.)

Revenue based · 2021-05

Pricing restructure: One-time lifetime deal (LTD), $199 → Subscription only

Damon's own AMA timeline dates the switch off lifetime deals to January 2021, about a month after the December 2020 launch.

“Jan 2021: stopped LTD, and only focused on the subscription model”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Pricing increase

Asked whether he experimented with pricing, Damon said he had raised prices substantially in the six months before the AMA (roughly April-September 2021).

“Price was doubled twice in the past 6 months”

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder"

Sources (8 in the founder's own words)

Damon Chen, Indie Hackers AMA: "Hit $100K ARR after 9 months grinding as a solo founder" · founder-authored · 2021-10
Damon Chen, Testimonial company blog: "One year of indie hacking, I've learned a lot!" · founder-authored · 2021-05
Damon Chen, Indie Hackers: "Launched Testimonial.to" · founder-authored · 2020-12
Damon Chen, tweet listing all 2020 side projects and their revenue · founder-authored · 2020-12
Damon Chen, tweet reply on building Testimonial.to in 4 days from reused code · founder-authored · 2020-12
Damon Chen, #QuitInPublic tweet · founder-authored · 2021-03
Damon Chen, $100K ARR milestone tweet · founder-authored · 2021-09
Damon Chen, $20K MRR milestone tweet (states time from $0 to $10K MRR) · founder-authored · 2022-05
Peter Yang interviews Damon Chen, Creator Economy newsletter (Substack), "From Engineer to Indie Hacker Making $1,300,000 ARR" · third party · 2023-11
Cullin McGrath, LinkedIn post about Damon Chen's journey (reposted by Damon Chen, not authored by him) · third party · 2022-09

Persistence

Projects attempted before finding success

failed projects before this one worked

High persistence — rare trait among founders

Launch Strategy

How they introduced the product to the world

Product Hunt

Initial go-to-market approach

High-visibility single-day launch

Validation

How they tested demand before building

MVP

Method used to confirm market interest

Most common approach — build and learn fast

Launch Pricing

Price point when the product first launched

$100-500/mo

Initial pricing strategy

Starting Audience

Whether they had followers before launch

Existing Audience

Leveraged existing followers

Having an audience accelerates early growth

Biggest Challenge

Carecía de habilidades de marketing - 4 productos fallidos ganaron solo $0.99 total antes de aprender a comercializar

Unlock Damon's Full Journey

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Testimonial.to make?

Testimonial.to reports $2.4M ARR as of October 2024. No 2025 update found. Portfolio has expanded since. Source: Founder Indie Hackers post.

What is Testimonial.to?

Recopila y muestra testimonios en video de clientes sin necesidad de código. It operates in Marketing.

How long did it take Testimonial.to to reach $10k mrr?

Damon Chen took 11 months to reach $10k mrr with Testimonial.to.

Was Damon Chen a solo founder?

Yes. Damon Chen built Testimonial.to as a solo founder.

What marketing channel did Testimonial.to use to grow?

Testimonial.to grew primarily through Twitter / X.

What industry is Testimonial.to in?

Testimonial.to operates in Marketing.

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