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He Made $20K Selling an App That Didn’t Exist

  • Gil Hildebrand

  • SaaS Founder
  • $30,000 monthly subscription revenue

Gil Hildebrand opened a brand new X account with zero followers, in an industry he didn’t know much about πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

For months he gave away free tools and data reports to YouTube creators, building an email list of 1,000+.

Then he mocked up an app idea and put 50 lifetime licenses up for sale πŸ‘€

He recently shared…

The first 10 licenses were super super cheap and then every 10 after that went up… Pretty quickly it sold out, I think within 2 or 3 days and I made my first $20,000 before the idea was even built.

$20K in the bank, and the product didn’t exist πŸ€‘

Buyers weren’t taking much of a risk…

I’m going to deliver this product to you in 60 days and after that you’ll have 2 weeks to continue trying it and ask for your money back.

Eighteen months on, Subscribr does $30K/month from 4,500+ customers.

On why asking people what they’d pay is useless πŸ‘‡

The only way to really get validation is to collect money from people.

Whatever you’re itching to build, mock it up and try selling 10 first πŸ‘

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Updated: August 11, 2026

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