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Testing a low-carb ghost kitchen: $3K in month one on an $8K bet
Sam's friend Andrew tested a low-carb bakery idea cheaply: he paid a chef a few hundred dollars to develop monk-fruit-sweetened recipes, built a Shopify site, listed it on DoorDash/Uber Eats with local delivery only, and did $3,000 in month-one sales against $8,000 invested. It lost money but proved the idea fast.
“Dude, he sold like $3,000 in month 1 worth of stuff and he's like invested $8,000 into it. So it didn't make a profit, but it kind of sick. He was able to test this idea very easily.”
Steal thisValidate a food brand for ~$8K: hire a chef for recipes, list on Shopify plus a delivery app, local-only.
Story
Shaan teased a $400 writing course, got 1,200 sign-ups from one tweet
Shaan tweeted that he'd run a $400 course on 'power writing' for the real world (emails, tweets, blogs, ads, landing pages) and asked who was interested. Roughly 1,200 people filled out the survey — proof that a credible creator with an audience can productize a skill instantly.
“I said, it'll cost $400. For the first batch of people, whoever was like kind of the guinea pigs. Let me know if you'd want to do this. And I got, I think, I don't know, 1,200 replies of people filling out the survey saying they want to do this.”
Steal thisPre-sell a course by tweeting the offer and a price, then count the survey replies before you build anything.
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1,000 signups off one tweet for a $400 course = ~$120K potential
Shaan tweeted a 3-tweet thread about his writing course and got 1,000 people to fill out a Google form to join the first batch. At a $400 price and ~30% conversion of a qualified list, he estimates he could net six figures off essentially one tweet.
$1K
Course wait-list signups from one tweet · signups
“So I got 1,000 responses already of people who gave me all their info, said, I'd like to sign up to be in the first batch.”
Story
Shitty tweet + Google Form = 1,000 signups for a $400 writing course
Shaan almost over-engineered his Maven writing course launch (build content, do 10 example emails, build a site). Instead his friend Gagan told him to just tweet the idea with a Google Form. The lesson: people overestimate what they need to do to start because they're afraid to fail.
“you are afraid to fail, so you overthink what you need to do to make it successful. And Abreyu, you're listening to this, you're about to go do your own startup. Don't make this mistake that I was about to make, that I've made many times in the past, that most people make every time they go do a new venture is that they are afraid to fail. Therefore, they overestimate what they need to do to get started.”
Steal thisValidate demand with a shitty tweet and a Google Form before building anything; if you're not embarrassed by v1, you launched too late.