His Unoriginal App: 13 Weeks to $2000/Month

Nico Jeannen started building Talknotes a few months back and recently tweeted…

I reached $2000 MRR using vanilla HTML, CSS, JS…

I still have no idea what Typescript, Kubernetes and other alien technologies are

💬 The blurb for Talknotes…

Turn hours of note taking into minutes. Just speak, and let the AI transcribe, clean up and structure your voice.

From Nico’s Blog…

Got the idea when trying to use Google Docs audio transcription, but it sucked. So, I made a quick prototype, then soft-launched TalkNotes.io on Twitter.

After his August launch…

I added it to every single startup [and AI directory] I could find. I didn’t even make a list, I just checked competitors’ backlinks + google + some I knew and spent 2 hours filling forms. Ended up with 1000 users from that + Twitter

🤧 But then…

I got super sick and was completely unable to work for a week. Still recovering. Made $1500 of sales in total. Not incredible but not bad.

Nico wrote elsewhere…

There were days I didn’t even want to get out of bed because it felt like crap 🥲

The #1 thing that helps me go through it is to do at least ONE little thing per day:

– Write one post
– Add one tiny feature
– Fix one bug

After reaching $100/month, he wrote…

I switched from one-time payments to a subscription model and raised the prices.

Sales took a massive hit from that, from $150/day to $0 🥲

But it was necessary to grow the app. Recovery is super slow, but now I have recurring revenues.

💡 The strategy is to start with as little friction as possible to test the market, and push more to see how far you can go until you find the “balance point” between volume & price

We previously covered a similar app called AudioPen, which made $15K revenue its first month, built with no-code 🚀

Seeing Talknotes hit $2000/month I can’t help but think: you don’t need an original idea to be successful, the market is often big enough to support multiple businesses doing pretty much the same thing.

With that in mind: could you build your own version of a product or service that already exists? 🤔

Maybe put your own twist on it or target a slightly different customer?

Last words from Nico…

I’m someone who likes to move fast, so I had constant doubts about the app.

You can’t know if a product will work. But you can get some hints: If users are happy about the product, it’s a good sign. If they complain when the product crashes, it’s also a good sign.

HOWEVER: If you get absolutely 0 positive feedback, 0 user, 0 sales after working on the product for a whole month, maybe 1) It’s not a product for you 2) People don’t care. 

In both cases, it’s time to move on.

Btw, I should note that Talknotes was not Nico’s first rodeo. He previously built and sold an app for $65,000 💰

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