как Nico Jeannen развил TalkNotes от идеи к выходу на $200K за год

Spent about two hours submitting the app to every startup directory he could find on launch day, building the list from competitors' backlinks and Google rather than any curated master list.

“I don't even made a list, I just checked competitors backlinks + google + some I knew and spend 2 hours filling forms.”

Soft-launched a quick prototype directly on Twitter to his existing following instead of doing any pre-build validation.

“made a quick prototype, then soft-launched TalkNotes.io on Twitter”

A brief sales recovery in mid-September came from being mentioned by a large LinkedIn account, alongside a fresh round of ads.

“I was mentioned on a big account on LinkedIn and I ran ads”

The same September ads push that briefly helped around the LinkedIn mention did not hold up on its own.

“Ads started decently but completely plummeted.”

Kept adding the app to any directory with a domain rating above 10 on Ahrefs as an ongoing, low-cost distribution habit, not just a one-time launch task.

“Adding the app to tons of directories (anything with a DR above 10 on ahref = I add)”

Launched on Product Hunt in October 2023 after rebuilding the app on Nuxt; the launch finished #1 Product of the Day.

“Now, what REALLY made a difference is obviously ProductHunt launch. I ended up #1 product of the day”

He attributes the jump directly to the media coverage that came with the Product of the Day placement.

“reached $1500 MRR thanks to the media coverage”

After the Product Hunt bump, he rebuilt on Nuxt, took a break, then ran Facebook ads and closed the loop with product data: get new users, learn about them via the onboarding form, then make new ad creatives based on that data.

“Making good creatives is 80% of the job when doing ads on Facebook, most of the technical stuff is done by AI now.”

The onboarding-informed creative loop compounded quickly.

“And it completely blew up. MRR doubled in ~2 months”

By late 2023 the app kept growing even on weeks he did not post on Twitter, because most traffic was coming through Facebook ads and Google rather than his personal following.

“even if I don't post on Twitter, the app keep growing, because most of the traffic come from Facebook & Google.”

He deliberately valued this because it meant the business would not be tied to him personally if he ever sold it.

“It's better because if I want to sell it one day, it's not tied to me, so better deal for the buyer.”

Focused content production on the single use case he saw dominating actual usage rather than spreading content across every possible use case.

“I'm focusing on writing good content about Brainstorming using AI, since I saw it was the #1 use case”