- Startup Spells 🪄
- Posts
- 🪄 Sneakily Game Appsumo Customers
🪄 Sneakily Game Appsumo Customers
PLUS: Gather Info on someone through OSINT
Startup Spells 🪄
April 17, 2024
Hey,
The Startup Maester is back!
Welcome to the 11th issue.
Today's topics:
How to Sneakily Game Appsumo Customers
A newsletter on The Big Tech's earliest stages of innovation
One recommended video on how to gather info on someone through OSINT
How to Sneakily Game Appsumo Customers
Raising money is hard for developers who are not naturally charismatic sellers.
It takes a different skill and 100s of hours of practice to get good at sales.
Fortunately, you can raise enough runaway from your customers without giving away your equity so you can work on the product for the next 6-12 months and get it to a decent state.
Unless you are building faster supersonic planes or sending rockets to mars, 6 to 12 months are enough to get going for a small 2 to 4 person team.
So how do you raise money without giving away equity?
Enter Appsumo.
It is essentially a marketplace where SaaS (Software as a Service) products get sold for one-time price, also known as Lifetime Deal (LTD).
Its not always SaaS though as other products like digital ebooks get sold as well and its a great way to make money for your product if it is any good. They help with distribution too which is great for first-time founders.
But countless winners launched on AppSumo like Headlime AI, Snazzy AI, Nichesss, Autoblogging AI, and many others.
Many of these had single founders who sold their tool for ~$1m to Jasper AI (like Snazzy and Headlime) and the founders went on to run much bigger startups like Loops and Headshot, already making ~$1m per year.
The other ones turned the LTD runaway into a profitable SaaS business like Nichesss and Autoblogging AI.
Now you might think selling a lifetime deal is a terrible strategy for a SaaS business which has monthly costs but it simply isn't true.
Software is cheap. Trust me, I'm a developer myself.
The strategy Autoblogging AI used to get free distribution and runaway is great for other founders to copy.
Autoblogging AI launched on July 2022 with a Lifetime Deal (LTD) of $180.
Just 2 months later, it crossed $10,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
And they used GPT-3 when it used to be a bit expensive. Now, its very cheap.
Everyone misses Appsumo as the distribution channel.
Its often underlooked by SaaS people even though startups like Lemlist launched there.
There's 3 benefits to launching on Appsumo:
You get brutally honest customer feedback
You make tons of cash at once even after Appsumo's 70% cut
You improve your product within 60 days otherwise you need to refund them
The strategy Autoblogging AI used was terrific.
They used this pricing structure which worked to their advantage as they were giving away very little for a price that looked like a steal.
$19/mo → 20 blogs
$49/mo → 60 blogs
$99/mo → 150 blogs
$249/mo → Unlimited blogs
This strategy pissed off many Appsumo LTD buyers but it worked for Autoblogging as it got them to $10k mrr in 60 days.
They also banned multiple account creations.
You could only use 1 account to buy LTD. If caught, all accounts would be banned.
This is pretty easy to do using browser fingerprinting.
The advantage Autoblogging AI had at that period of time is GPT-3 based Copywriting SaaS were extremely famous on AppSumo so it was easier to ride that wave to make money.
You can do the same with the 3rd wave of AI as AI Agents are coming soon.
Appsumo will be filled with those.
In short, make your SaaS credit based so LTD buyers subscribe to your SaaS when their credits expire.
With this strategy, you raise funds, get feedback, and hopefully get MRR going.
Autoblogging founders were smart enough to think out of the box.
Big Tech has enough resources to get early in on things.
One way to find about them is through Patents but Patents are hard to read and scour through.
It's definitely an interesting read at times.
The good thing about being early on something is you can use it to your advantage so you are ready when its time to capitalize.
One recommended video on how to gather info on someone through OSINT
An0n Ali has a terrific YouTube channel around Hacking, OSINT, SOCMINT, Social Engineering.
This video dives deep into the powerful world of OSINT.
Previous issue included a video on SOCMINT (Social Media OSINT) which is a field of OSINT.
Once you learn about this stuff, you'd realise how much info are people really sharing online.
You can find anyone with basic skills.
Rabbit Holes
The ONLY Facebook Ads Course YOU Need - While watching this video, I realised that all algorithms want similar content to be manipulated into going viral. Idk if its a human thing or algorithm thing but the triggers are the same from TikTok to Twitter to Facebook Ads. Watch it for the Psychology. Its definitely long.
Most unique writer on this planet right now - Go subscribe or read his work that I've compiled in a PDF to know why he's great. Not just a startups masterclass but a writing masterclass as well.
OSINT: how to find anything on the internet - Most people don't know how to search. Its an essential skill in the digital world. This post has some tips on how to actually search.
Until next time,
Your Spells Maester!
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