Sumit was working full-time as an analyst, spending several hours a day inside Excel. As he picked up faster techniques for his own job, he started writing them up and sharing them, which became TrumpExcel.

“I was working as a data analyst, and my daily work involved using Excel spreadsheets for about 4-5 hours.”

Before there was any product, TrumpExcel's audience was free tutorial and video readers/viewers who arrived through social shares rather than any existing following, since he had no audience before starting the site.

“When I started, I was only getting traffic from social media.”

The first paying customers came from a single email announcement to his own subscriber list when his first course went live; the course was priced and sold immediately, not offered as a free trial. Sumit's own account of this launch email is only preserved in a third-party interview, though his separate Indie Hackers post independently confirms the $99 launch price for that first product.