Selling $400k worth of digital products and growing Super to $40k MRR—both within a year. AMA ⚡️

@lvlars he got a large chunk of his customers for Super.so from Twitter. His icon set icons.tr.af went viral on Twitter, so that helped him build a following.

@lvlars Hey Marcel! I actually didn't validate the idea before launching it because I was building it primarily for myself. Building products based on your own desires is a great way to guarantee your first customer (yourself). Like Dinakar mentioned our first customers were mostly through Twitter! Having an audience to launch anything to (before you launch it) is highly underrated imo, and I think why first time founders obsess over product and second time founders obsess over distribution.

@ospfranco Having an audience to launch to is indispensable, no matter what you're launching. Once of the best ways I've seen to build an audience is through permissionless building, which is making things for other people that makes them look good and that they're likely to share. Jack Butcher has a great course on this subject. Also, keep creating a ton of content related to the products you're building. One product can usually be turned into thousands of individual pieces of content that you can keep pushing out to as many places as you can around the web. Use every social channel you can, and make sure you're actually doing any one of these 5 things for people: 1. Saving them time 2. Saving them money 3. Making them look/feel good 4. Helping them make money 5. Entertaining them

@julianpaul Hey man, appreciate that! Correct, I'm mostly focused on product and marketing. I did a short design program in Vancouver about a decade ago which was definitely too artsy for me but lead me to the world of web & UI so am definitely glad I did it. I used to dabble in so many random projects that all taught me a thing or two about the internet & product-building. The biggest one was a company I previously helped run called Spoil, which got me to move out to silicon valley and introduced me to the whole world of startups.

@vladpasca5 I have seen him share this before. His icon set icons.tr.af went viral on Twitter, and was covered top tech outlets, YouTubers like Marques Brownlee, and more. This coverage helped him grow his Twitter following. The Twitter following in turn is now helping Super.so. Everything here can be attributed to the virality but virality happened because at that time he already built around 4000 followers, so that might have of huge head start.

@vladpasca5 1. Having a prior audience to launch to. Relating to the digital product sales, these mostly came from my iOS icons and I've outlined the story here. Basically came down to hopping on a trend, acting quickly, and having an audience big enough that would allow the right content to go viral. 2. Making something people want. Relating to Super, the number one thing would be to make something people want, and the best way I know how to do that is to make something that I want. Another great way is to look for edge cases in already existing products. If people are using a tool in a way that it wasn't intended, it would likely work better as its own product.

@traf got it also what resource did you use to learn web design? or what resources you recommend now to learn web design? (the main principles)

@ignacioberges I know HTML, CSS, and some very basic JS, so while I take care of building out the website & templates, I have a co-founder who takes care of all the technical development for the actual web app. First customers were all through Twitter for me. Once you build distribution, you can build anything you want and have an audience to launch & sell to. Definitely something I'll keep doubling down on.

@joshdance Most of the opportunities I see now are within the web3 space. Crypto, blockchains, NFTs. Programming money, identity, digital objects, etc.

@joshdance @traf As a designer myself, I would love to know how you think a designer with limited coding knowledge (basic Javascript, etc) could leverage the web3 space? I love the the idea of working within the Blockchain, Crypto, NFT space, buit other than working for companies building stuff for it, I struggle to think of products I could make myself.

@joshdance @kieranparker77 You can build things that may not require lots of dev like defi courses, resource directories, etc. If you're looking to build software, I'd find a smart contract dev to build things with. Lots of them are looking for designers too I'm sure. As for ideas on what to build, the space is still really early and so many experiences are still really lacking, or just really not accessible like mobile wallet integrations within the nft space. Lots of ideas to explore!

@jamesvclements Remember seeing your oldfriends studio website a while back! Very clean. I think the biggest thing was strategic, but honesty all of your points apply. Even though I was attracting bigger freelance clients with bigger budgets, I still wasn't making money when I wasn't working. This was especially important to me because I don't like (or am particularly good at) working a fixed 9-5. Some days (although a little more rare now days) I just don't feel like being behind a screen, and if you're providing a service that usually means you also take the day off from making money, but for digital products or software, nothing really changes if you take a day off, not to mention the compounding benefits of working on something consistently over the years and the fact that you're building up your own equity vs someone else's. Sales from my iOS icons are what first gave me enough of a cushion to stop freelance work completely, so now days I mostly tell people that the first step of anything should be to make money, so that the second step could be anything you want.

@dinakar All questions should be answered now :)

@pablosmith_ Thanks man! Before I sold my iOS icons, I sold things like ebooks and Lightroom presets. These mostly came from people asking for them through DMs on my Instagram. I've never spent any $ on advertising, as I'd rather spend my time and energy on building up my audience to make future product launches easier, since it will allow you to validate any ideas and find your first few customers much quicker than if you're starting from zero. I don't do a whole lot of frontend dev work anymore, the little that I do is mostly for building out Super templates. I'll just use the built-in Super editor within the dashboard or I'll use VSCode. I'll have a think about my favorite code hacks!

@adamokane I use Notion for everything personal and work related. Usually use a simple collection board (ideas, doing, done) for personal stuff as I prefer to keep things really simple for when it comes to project management. For Super, we just starting using The Bulletproof Notion Workspace and although it feels like overkill for me our team seems to like it :) Good ideas for me sit at the intersection of: - Something I want to use myself - Something I'm uniquely suited to build - Something I wish I would have had when learning x