Welcome to the 9-5 to Founder Newsletter: Edition Nº 03
I share my learnings building a $1M/year startup from scratch, in public as a solo founder.
Learn to Sell, Learn to Build
One of the biggest startups killers is unclear product messaging. Last week we went into depth on product positioning and how to improve your pitch.
This may seem contradictory but you must sell your product before you build it.
Naval said learn to sell, learn to build not learn to build, learn to sell.
Why - you want to be crystal clear on what your building and who your building it for.
How - reach out to who you think could use your product and ask them to sign up. This will determine if your product is a nice to have or a must have.
If no one signs up you either need to fix your pitch or ask your customers what would actually solve their problem.
Once you have a few customers who have committed to use your product then you can start the building process.
This will motivate you to work fast and stay on track solving your customers pain.
The last and most important reason why you must sell before you build is to overcome any limiting beliefs around being able to start a business. The theory is simple but not easy - getting your first customer is much harder than building the product even if you not technical (teaser for an upcoming edition)
Weekly Standup
Get Paid
This week the goal is to make our first dollar.
I will be A/B testing 2-3 different sequences to see what copy and messaging lands with our ideal customer.
I’m also exploring Reddit which I am still getting used to.
Going from 0-1 Building AI Automations
This guy makes $400k/mo and he did it by selling his services before he even had a product.
Become a Distribution Engineer
Once you have distribution you can share and test ideas instantly. Having distribution is the biggest advantage you can have in the new AI world.
Tool of the Week
maxly.chat (maxly.chat)
a better way to visualize your ChatGPT conversations
Thanks for reading!
- Dimitri
(P.S. you can reply to this email and it will go directly to my email)