$500,000 in 8 Months By Selling His Sawdust

Marc Lou is the founder of ShipFast, a code template that gives you the basic features of any app – eg. billing, emails, logins – to help you ship faster 🚀

Back in December, Marc wrote…

After being fired by Tai Lopez in November 2021, I discovered the build-in-public community on Twitter.

It changed my life. In 2 years:

I launched 17 products

I grew this newsletter to 7,000 readers

I grew a Twitter account to 55K followers

I reached $65,000/month at 91% margin and 0 employee

And made new inspiring friends

🗓️ His journey started back in 2016…

…when I believed I was Mark Zuckerberg.

It took 2 years to make my first $1 online. Later, I grew a SaaS to $3,000 MRR, but I started to see my journey as a failure after 4 years of grind. I got depressed in 2021 and quit entrepreneurship.

He then applied for a job and ended up working for Tai Lopez – knowledge! – but got fired later that year…

It didn’t matter. I had a dream. I discovered my role models on Twitter: Pieter Levels, Danny Postma, and other cool kids working solo on their projects from anywhere in the world, making much more money than needed to live comfortably.

I wanted freedom. I was living in Bali with my Korean wife, $20,000 in the bank, no audience, and bad coding skills.

💪 That’s when he started shipping…

In 6 months, I launched 7 projects without thinking about business, just for fun. I learned much about coding, SEO, writing, launching, and marketing. My Twitter account reached 1,000 followers in July 2022.

Those first projects were earning him “a few hundred $” every month.

Marc was much more into coding than marketing, but enjoyed making fun launch videos like this one, where he edited himself into an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast 😂

People enjoyed and shared them, creating a viral loop. Each side-project grew my Twitter following and brought decent traffic.

In 2023…

I was still not making enough to cover my cheap lifestyle.

So I did the 2021 strategy again: Ship startups like a madman. But this time, I applied some rules:

– No free plan
– Only painkiller product
– Move on if no product market fit

I built 8 startups in 8 months. 6 made money. 2 paid the bills. Ship fast, launch viral, repeat. 

In July 2023 I was making ~$3,000/month.

By this time, Marc had figured out and simplified his approach to entrepreneurship…

Ship fast, launch viral, repeat.

Until you find something that works, then stick to it 👍

He ended up selling the 2 projects that were making him money…

I sold my AI landing page generator for $35,000 and my habit tracker for $10,000. It gave me time and clarity.

Then…

On September 1st, I launched ShipFast, a NextJS boilerplate to ship startups fast. I packed 2 years of shipping knowledge in a GitHub repo.

I told my wife we’d be lucky if we made $100 with it. By the end of the month, ShipFast made $40,000. I was blown away. It’s hard to describe product market fit, but when it hits, it’s clear.

In a recent tweet, Marc revealed that ShipFast has since sailed past $500,000 in revenue 🤯

That product is a great example of selling your sawdust: “stuff you already created as a side-effect” of something else.

Also worth emphasizing that Marc started his journey way back in 2016, so it has taken him 8 years of learning and failing before hitting it big 😰

One of his tips…

Even if it’s a stupid idea, build it. You will get more and better ideas, sharpen your skills, and stay motivated.

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