It’s officially been 5 years since I launched the original Starter Story website:
Starter Story Homepage (2017)
Starter Story Article (2017)
Yep, that’s starterstory.com, when I “launched” the website in 2017. And, of course, nobody visited it.
On the surface, it doesn’t look much different than it does now.
But behind the scenes, everything has changed. I’ve turned this little side project into a real business, with a real team.
Since I’ve been working on Starter Story for half a decade, I wanted to write a bit about the journey and some of my biggest lessons.
Before we jump in…
In case you didn’t know, Starter Story is a platform where founders share how they built their businesses.
Last month (September 2022), we made $74K in revenue, and over 1.5M people visited the website!
You’re probably wondering how Starter Story works as a business and how it makes money:
Premium memberships (~38% of revenue): Members pay a yearly fee and get unlimited access to all of our case studies, databases, and other benefits
Advertising and sponsorships (~57% of revenue): Companies pay us to advertise their product in our newsletter and our website.
Affiliate revenue (~5% of revenue): We get paid when a reader clicks an affiliate link on our website and signs up for something or makes a purchase.
A bit more details on each of our revenue streams:
1. Starter Story Premium Membership (~38% of revenue)
With about 2,500 active members, our paid subscription generates ~$30k/month on average.
Similar to the New York Times, you can read a limited number of case studies on our website per month, for free. But if you sign up and pay to be a member, you can read unlimited, plus you’ll get access to some of our databases (e.g. business ideas database).
2. Ads & Sponsors (~57% of revenue)
Companies pay us to advertise their products in our articles or on our newsletter. Our audience is niche, so brands will come to us, looking to get in front of our audience. We also go out and pitch brands as well.
3. Affiliates (~5% of revenue)
Our case studies & content often mention what products founders use, such as Shopify, Klaviyo, and thousands of other tools. If a reader clicks a link to these tools, we sometimes get a cut of the sale (if they buy). This is a smaller part of our revenue but we’re hoping to grow it (feedback welcome).
Early traction: celebrate and zone in on the smallest wins
I started Starter Story as a side project (while I had a full-time job).
I’ve had many other projects that have failed...
What I’ve learned through these failures: the hardest part about building a side project is not giving up.
IMO the best way to not give up is to work as hard as you can to achieve some small traction or small positive reinforcement in the early days.
This traction doesn’t have to be life-changing, it could be something as simple as getting a few dozen people on an email list, or one happy customer sending you a note about how they love your product.
Finding early traction is not easy though - you’ll need to try a lot of things, and likely pivot your idea, strategy, market, etc many times. At least that was the case for me.
I was lucky enough to get some early traction, here's how:
1. Finding a solid distribution channel: Reddit
In the early days, I was publishing lots of great case studies, but nobody even knew my website existed…
I realized I needed a distribution channel.
I tried a lot of things and finally found something that worked: posting the case studies on reddit.
My first success: This post hit the top of r/entrepreneur, and it validated that our case studies with founders were actually interesting and valuable to Redditors.
These reddit posts would get a lot of upvotes, comments, etc, and some people would enjoy the posts enough to visit Starter Story and read more case studies, subscribe to our newsletter, etc.
There were many positive outcomes of sharing our content on Reddit. Besides its huge reach, these Reddit posts also helped us find our first “sponsors” (advertisers) and it also helped us find more businesses to interview on the site.
Key takeaway: Distribution beats product 99% of the time.
In the early days, I worked hard to make our case studies super in-depth - there was nothing else like it on the Internet.
I wanted to show how people actually built their business, which takes thousands of words.
Our competition at the time: 500-word fluff promotional articles on Forbes and TechCrunch about companies that raised their $20M Series A.
My goal: To create content that was different and better than anything else you could find. Additionally, our case studies also had something unique that caught people’s attention: we always shared how much money people were actually making.
Back then, it was rare to see entrepreneurs being so open about revenue, costs, and profit. We worked hard to get that info into our content, which helped set us apart from other blogs and websites.
Key takeaway: Our content was unique, fresh, and interesting which helped us stand out. Because we were different, people would share our site with their friends, on social media, etc.
3. Document the journey
In the early days, I used to write monthly progress reports about my journey building Starter Story.
I would blog, tweet, and create videos about what I was working on, the results I got after trying different strategies, etc. For example, I would write blog posts like this when the website had less than 1,000 visitors per month and made $0…
I think nowadays this is called “building in public”, but I was doing it because I really loved working on this project, learning new things, and writing about them.
Sharing all this stuff not only helped me build a better business, but it also helped me make tons of friends and connections online and build a small personal brand.
Key takeaway: Writing or sharing your journey can (1) help you understand your own priorities and (2) attract likeminded people into your corner.
Later traction: Reinventing ourselves, over and over
One thing I’ve learned as I’ve worked on growing Starter Story: what worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future.
In other words, what got us from 0 to $10K/month is different than what got us from $10k to $20k/month, and so on.
Growing the business past its early stages was a challenge, and still remains a challenge every day.
I feel like we’ve had to reinvent ourselves multiple times to get where we are… But, I think that’s something that all growing businesses face, even if it’s not on the surface.
Here are some key things that led to our growth in our later days:
1. We found a more reliable distribution channel: SEO
Back in early 2020, I had monetized the business, but it wasn’t making more than $5,000/month.
I realized that in order to grow Starter Story, we needed more, and better, distribution.
Reddit was not a scalable channel of distribution for us, as the novelty of our case studies mainly had worn off.
So, we started looking into a new way to distribute our content: SEO.
We repackaged our content to match high-level search keywords and it was a big success.
This strategy resulted in 10x organic traffic growth over the next year, and it’s how we reached over 1 million visitors to our site per month.
Key takeaway: Find a truly scalable method of distributing your product. You might need to find multiple, over the years. Some good ones: SEO, YouTube, social media, direct sales.
2. Go all in + a stroke of luck
I used to be the guy that had 12 different unrelated businesses/projects going at once.
I wasn’t able to commit to one idea, so I just kept creating and trying new things.
I don't think it's bad to try a lot of things (especially early on), but it's nearly impossible to build two successful businesses at the same time.
In early 2020, I decided to drop all my other projects and go full-time on Starter Story.
Somewhat coincidentally, this was also the time that the COVID pandemic took over the world, which actually became a "boom" for entrepreneurs around the world.
More people than ever were sitting at home, browsing the internet and wanting to find a side hustle or ways to make money online. In 2020 and 2021, we saw records in terms of new startups and businesses created (see image).
This led to a ton of interest in Starter Story.
We certainly got lucky with the circumstances around the pandemic, but I’m not sure I would have been able to capitalize on this opportunity if I was still working on 12 different projects.
Key takeaway: Eventually, you’ll need to pick one idea and go all in on it.
3. I hired someone
In 2020, I made the most key hire in the company, and it was basically by accident.
My sister was laid off right after the pandemic hit, so I asked her to help me write a few articles for Starter Story.
One thing led to another, and she came on to the business full-time just a few months later.
She gave the business life, and pushed forward projects that took Starter Story to the next level in terms of revenue and potential.
As founders, we’re good at many things, but great at nothing. Our attention is scattered all across the business, preventing us from being consistent and focused on certain parts of our businesses that need a full time focus.
Key takeaway: Hire smart people to work on ambitious projects. Let them become “mini-founders” and allow them to learn and grow.
4. We diversified our revenue with a paid membership
We used to rely 100% on sponsorships and ad revenue.
As a bootstrapped company, it’s a bad idea to rely on a single source of revenue, especially because the "plug" could be pulled on us at anytime.
I realized we needed to diversify our revenue streams.
About 3 years ago, we started putting together a paid subscription version of our product (Starter Story Premium) we've refined it ever since.
Starter Story Premium has been a work in progress for years. We are refining it and improving it every day.
Key takeaway: As a bootstrapped company, we don't have the luxury of millions sitting in the bank in case something goes wrong. Therefore, it's better to have more reliable revenue, even if it's at the cost of growth.
5. We built systems and processes for everything possible
As a developer, I’ve built countless small tools and automations that have allowed us to scale our operations as a super lean team.
I’ve automated every piece of the business possible. If something is not possible to automate, then we try to hire or outsource for it.
I like to look at my developer/hacking skills as an advantage in my business. It’s allowed us to move quickly and operate with lower costs. It’s scrappy, and I often break things, but it’s something that sets us apart from the competition and the copycats.
Key takeaway: Identify and take advantage of your own skills - make them your competitive advantage.
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If you want to know more about the business, or want me to clarify some things, shoot me an email or reach out on Twitter.
I invest money every single week. 60% into index funds (auto balancing robo investor). 20% into equities. And 20% into Bitcoin.
I have it set up so it withdraws and deposits the money automatically every week. I barely even think about it much. But it feels like a nice way to financial independence.
1. Make consistent money from a profitable business (cash flow) 2. Don't spend too much of it on yourself, invest as much cash as you can each week 3. Sell that profitable business one day
You get the best of both worlds if you do this. You build wealth predictably, but also set yourself up for a potential big exit lump sum (if you're lucky).
But if that doesn't work, you can always fall back on your money you diligently invested.
And if you're really lucky, something like Bitcoin really pays off.
It blows my mind how endless the possibilities there are building your own business. It is fulfilling and fun and scary. I'm grateful I get to do this every day. Right now I sit here on my couch building. Building cool shit that makes money. Unbelievable that I do this for a living. That is all.
Just came across this media company called 'Future' today. Never heard of them before, but they are primarily digital media and run lots of smaller sites.
Disruption happens a lot differently (and more slowly) than we think.
For example, think about disruption in the newspaper industry by the internet:
Newspapers didn’t immediately go online once the internet was created. Rather, blogs and websites started cropping up, and slowly people started getting their news from the internet.
This adoption took years. Once the shift already happened, the newspapers finally went online. But it was too late. Only a complete shift in business model would allow them to survive.
The next big industries to get disrupted are healthcare and education.
And I think the same thing will happen in healthcare.
Doctors and hospitals aren’t going to adopt new technologies. They have no incentive to. Their system works just fine right now.
But, just like the newspaper industry, people will find new, better, and more convenient ways of getting health care.
For example, the Apple watch can track many of your vitals. And Levels can analyze your blood. You can get prescriptions online. You can see doctors online. WebMD. The list goes on.
Slowly, these methods will become more popular than going to the doctor / hospital. Health care costs will go down for the average person.
The profits will be sucked out of the healthcare industry. Only then will the hospitals and administrators realize they need to adopt these new technologies to survive as a business.
But it will be too late, just like the newspapers. With their business model (massive fixed costs), they won’t be able to make it work.
The same will happen in education. We won’t replace traditional college. But less people will go every year. Thousands of apps, websites, and platforms will replace traditional education (Starter Story being one of them).
Colleges will try to implement these new technologies, but it will be too late.
I want to be a more positive person. More optimistic, less pessimistic. Glass half full, instead of glass half empty.
Stop saying sarcastic, clever, or negative skewing things, in my personal and professional life.
What I’ve been doing lately is just noticing whenever I have negative thoughts or say negative things. It’s OK to have them. But just noticing them is the first step.
I think that with positive thinking, I could achieve more and be happier. It feels like it’s one of those things that I need to “unlock” so I can level up.
I've been working on rebuilding our "databases" at Starter Story. I want them to be way more useful, and have them look a lot more professional.
It all started with this database for side hustles.
side hustles database
I modeled this off of the U.S. News Best Universities database and UX. I love how that page looks and feels. And it does very well in Google search.
That project took forever, but now we're migrating the database to work for other "objects", the first one being our tools database. It uses the same code and logic.
Here is the before and after:
Tools page (before)
Tools page (after)
You can now search, filter, and sort the tools, and see all 2,500+ tools, and ton of more metadata for each tool. Let me know what you think! (and if anything can be improved in terms of functionality, design, etc)
Here it is in all its glory. Really proud of this!
Today, I find myself with a million tasks to do. Last week I was away, and the work piled up…
On one hand, it’s kind of depressing to think that the rest of my life is filled with work. Filled with various tasks I need to complete every day, that in the grand scheme, are mostly pointless.
95% of the things I did today will amount to nothing. Will be forgotten in 5 years. The project will fail, wither out, I’ll lose interest, or I’ll find a better way to do the thing.
But that is kind of the beauty of it all. There is no end.
And if there was an end, I know I would only feel temporary finality, and probably go start working on something new, and the work would start all over.
Lately I’ve been enjoying the process of doing my small, pointless tasks. Instead of feeling burdened by them, I feel empowered by them. They give my purpose.
I work hard to do them to the best of my ability. I’m not focused on just getting them done, but doing them well, with care and passion.
Sure, there are truly pointless tasks you shouldn’t do at all. And you should outsource things to save you time. But there will always be more work after that. And that’s a good thing.
The work never ends. So enjoy the work, learn to love the work. Get addicted to the daily work. Focus on the process, not the outcome.
I spent the last week in Mexico. A few days at a tennis camp during the week, and then a weekend bachelor party with old college friends.
Traveling is finally, finally a thing again. And it felt really nice.
In 2021 I almost never traveled, and it definitely affected my mental health.
Although flying on planes and going through airports are still such a nuisance, it is so very worth it to get out there and see the world.
I forgot how travel opens up your perspective. Being in Mexico City reminded me just how small my own world is.
And seeing friends is worth all the money you have to spend. Bachelor parties and weddings and other related events are so expensive, and sometimes that bothers me. But they are worth the money. Getting together with friends is priceless.
I want to do that a lot more this year. Take more weekend trips. Take advantage of this time where nobody is worried about Covid and we can go anywhere.
More updates on the Starter Story business model transition (to ads). We are finally starting to see some success.
Although it’s taken months of thinking and planning and selling, we have officially locked down 3 big advertisers. For a total of $23K recurring ad revenue per month.
Our goal is to do everything in our power to make them happy, and keep them on board and get them to renew past their original contracts.
Our longer term goal is to get to $50K recurring ad revenue per month by the end of September.
Once we hit that, I think we’ll have a pretty solid grasp on the sales process (and better cash flows), and we can hire a salesperson to do this work.
Then, we can put more time and energy into growing our inventory, so we can sell more ads.
Since I started playing tennis, I’ve been documenting every time I’ve played, practiced, or just hit around for fun.
I track lots of things, such as type of play, opponent, court type, duration, score, and some notes.
(I didn’t actually start doing this until 1 year in, so I had to make up some of the data based on my old playing habits)
I put this all in my “Life” spreadsheet where I also track personal finances, expenses, investments, my business, and other things. I used to have a few different spreadsheets for this, but recently I merged them all into one.
The first tab of my “Life” spreadsheet is my high level “Home” dashboard where I can see bigger picture stuff, like net worth, last 30 months expenses, etc.
I just use some formulas on the raw data and can see some pretty cool stuff.
For example, how many hours I’ve spent playing in the last 30 days, or my official win-loss record.
I’ve dedicated 715 hours to playing tennis over the last couple years. Sometimes, I wish I could get better, faster. But then I realize that 700 hours is really not that much. Imagine how good I’ll be at 10,000 hours!
As a first time founder I focused way too much on implementation. What coding language to use, what marketing strategy, what the business model will be.
Over-systemizing, over-optimizing, and overthinking.
What I’ve learned over the years:
The most valuable thing to focus on is one question: am I helping people?
Am I adding genuine value to at least one person’s life? Success scales when I do more of that.
I talk to aspiring founders and they ask me questions like “should I do e-commerce or should I make an app?”. I think that’s the wrong way to think about building a business. Because that’s doing it for you, not for others.
I believe we would be more successful (more quickly) if we just focused on helping people.
Why? Because the job of a business is to serve its customers. Not to serve you. The best founders are servants to their customers.
This is something I’m only realizing years into my entrepreneurship journey. To be frank, I got into entrepreneurship for me.
Because I wanted people to use the products that I designed and created. And I wanted to quit my 9 to 5. I didn't want to work for someone else anymore.
Those were perfectly normal motivations to start a business, and they actually make sense for why so many people make the leap.
But now, I'm getting close to Year 5 of building businesses full time, and I’m sensing a shift.
Those things don’t motivate me much anymore. I get the most joy out of helping people. I think this will lead to far more growth, too. Will keep you updated.
Over the past year, we’ve been building out our task management system for Starter Story.
Essentially, it’s Trello inside of our actual CMS.
Our team is global, in different time zones, and many of our freelancers work part time. We don’t have meetings or use Slack, so this task management system is our way of working async
How it works
We use the comments section on our blog posts to assign tasks, get work done, analyze performance, and general discussion.
Freelancers get assigned tasks, and people can reply to tasks, leave replies, tag each other, etc. Everyone also gets email notifications (which is useful for busy freelancers).
Let me show you a simple example.
When we have an idea for a new blog post, we create the empty post in the backend.
Then, this comment gets created, and assigned to one of our content writers.
Essentially, this is a task, with a due date, to get an article first draft completed.
What’s so useful is that this is in the comments of the actual article, so we can always go back and see the history of all changes or projects around that article.
This has allowed us to build systems and processes around how articles get written and reviewed (first draft, editor review, final review), which we can delegate to other freelancers.
This is how we are building a scalable asynchronous media company.
Additionally, this allows us to improve content in a structured way. If we see some content that has potential to move up in search engines, we create a task in those same comments, assigned to one of our freelancers who specializes in SEO.
Here’s a simple example:
Why we are doing this
Our goal is to build a scalable asynchronous media company.
There have been a lot of growing pains (mostly in our process itself), but we have been able to change how the thing works dynamically based on trial and error.
This is something I could see growing into 100+ freelancers, all working together. Right now we have about 15 people working inside this tool.
And, this would work across multiple sites (something we plan on doing in the future).
You could do this in Trello or other task management tools, but building this internally does give us an extra level of ownership, customization, and flexibility.
The key here is the process and systems you define that work for you, not the technology you use!
(if you thought this post was interesting, let me know, i'm curious if ppl are interested in behind the scenes stuff like this)
Building a successful subscription-based media business is extremely hard to do as a young company.
I cannot name one successful community that is less than a few years old that makes millions per year.
The successful ones are built over many years and/or have some X-factor (huge distribution channel, insane word of mouth, huge market trend).
For example, the New York Times has a huge subscription business. But it’s built on an excellent brand and decades of publishing and another solid business model of ads. They built a subscription to diversify their revenue, and they had millions of traffic and brand loyalty that got them millions of subscribers.
It’s extremely hard to build a media company and paywall everything right out of the gate and expect it to work because it worked for the New York Times. You might be able to do it with VC money, but I can’t think of many media brands that bootstrapped it.
I think this is what a lot of people get wrong, including me. At Starter Story, our membership is stagnating. It’s not really growing or dying.
I’ve realized subscriptions are not a truly scalable business model for a young media company. As a mature company, it’s a great way to capture money from your loyal users. but we (Starter Story) are not a mature company yet. We are too early in the life cycle.
So that’s why we are turning our focus back to the ad model this year.
If we can continue to grow content, traffic, and our newsletter, we can sell more ads and land more sponsors. That is actually a scalable business model, so I’ve been doubling down on that as of late.
Plus, you see the latest Netflix news? They lost 200k subscribers. Netflix is probably the most popular subscription in the world. If Netflix loses subscribers, I think every other subscription based business is going to lose subscribers over the next few months. Get ready for it.
I’ll keep you updated on this blog about how that’s going. I hope you like these kinds of updates?
I haven’t gone for a run in over a year. Tennis took over my life.
But this weekend, I ran a half marathon. I flew back home to visit family and run the race with my mom.
I wasn’t really looking forward to it as it was snowing and raining on the morning of the race, but when I got there, it all changed. I got pumped as hell.
The atmosphere, just like all road races I’ve experienced, was electric.
I missed that.
I missed being surrounded by thousands of people that all worked their ass off and trained for months leading up - all of us standing in unison at the starting line at 6AM, adrenaline pumping, and freezing our tails off - with the goal of achieving 13.1 or 26.2 miles on our feet.
But even more, I missed what running does to your mind.
Running gives you space to think. Think about your life. Your business. Your goals. Your past. Your future.
There is no other sport like that - where you go out, alone with your thoughts for hours.
It's funny, I remember discovering the Keto diet 10 years ago on a small but passionate subreddit. I tried it and lost 20 lbs, it felt like a magic diet. But all my friends thought it was super weird.
Fast forward 10 years, and it is totally mainstream! It's a good lesson to remind us that if something gets a small cult following online, there's a good chance it will take off and become huge. Just takes many years to become a reality.
(I'm not Keto, this is more of a lesson in markets and business)
Don't worry about the number of subscribers, but rather the engagement. Open rate, etc.
Learn best practices in terms of list cleaning and maintenance. Don't be afraid to remove people off your list and directly ask for readers to unsubscribe.
In terms of advertising and making money from your newsletter, it is ideal to have a newsletter that is sent more than monthly, or weekly. A newsletter with 7,000 subscribers that sends weekly will generally make the same money as a newsletter with 1,000 subscribers that sends 7 days a week.
Ask your readers to reply. This is good for open rates and deliverability. It also lets you talk to your readers and really understand what they want.
Spend some time on the design. Make it look nice, simple, and readable.
Look at the numbers aggressively. If open rates are going down, do something about it, ask for help.
Unfortunately, I learned all of these the hard way 😆
