Founder stories
First Customerin 7 days
From 2 Failed Products to API Success: First Customer in 50 Minutes
Founder
Pierre de Wulf
Co-Founders•Technical•USA
Commitment
Full-timeExperience
ExperiencedProduct
Web scraping API for developers.
Type
API / Developer ToolIndustry
Developer ToolsModel
SubscriptionMarketing Strategy
How Pierre acquired customers
Primary Channel
Product Hunt
Tech Stack
Tools used to build ScrapingBee
PythonDjangoStripe
The Full Story
Pierre de Wulf and his co-founder Kevin met in high school. After building ShopToList and PricingBot with limited success, they went all-in on ScrapingBee.
The Pivot
They sold their previous business to a buyer in Belgrade, giving them runway to build ScrapingBee.
Fast Validation
Their first paid customer signed up 50 minutes after sending the email announcing the paid tier.
- Previous failures: 2 products
- First customer: 50 minutes after launch
- Product Hunt: 200 users, 6 customers
Key Takeaways
1
Reuse code and infrastructure from previous projects to ship fast
2
Selling a failed business can give you runway for the next attempt
3
APIs can be validated quickly with simple MVPs
4
Beta users converting to paid in minutes is a strong signal
Originally published onIndie Hackers
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