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Cohort-based writing challenge and course.
How Dickie acquired customers
Tools used to build Ship 30 for 30
In December 2020, Dickie Bush tweeted: 'is anyone interested in doing a daily writing challenge for 30 days?'
Six days after that tweet, 50 people had joined a Slack channel. Seven days into the first cohort there were 61 community members. By December 26, 2020, Ship 30 for 30 had generated $10,240 in total revenue, and the first cohort passed $25,000 in revenue in under 60 days, both cumulative totals rather than monthly recurring revenue.
Nine months and 1,800 students later, it became an immersive cohort-based course. Now 4,000+ students with millions in revenue.
Start with a simple tweet to validate demand
Leverage Slack for community before building custom platform
Money-back completion incentive drives accountability
Scale from 61 to 1,800 students in 9 months with cohort model
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.
$100K ARR
Twitter / X
Action checklist
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Dickie achieved 2 milestones on the path to $100K ARR
$100,000
The median of the 226 documented journeys with this milestone is 2.0 years; this one took 6 months.
The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone
See the complete breakdown: launch strategy, validation methods, startup costs, expert analysis, replication playbook, and more actionable insights.
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