Isaac

A 10-year-old's unblocked games site spread across schools via COVID Chromebooks

Isaac built CookieDuck at age 10 to play games during school computer time when game sites were blocked. When COVID put a Chromebook in every kid's hands, it spread school-to-school, hitting 4,000 concurrent players in a 30-minute window by 7th grade.

“so CookieDuck, it started when I was around like 10, where we had computer time at like school. We had free time on the computers and the games were always, they were always blocked on the computers, right? So what I wanted to do was I wanted to create like a website that allowed me to play games at school in our free time. So I would just start like building little parts of code, like putting little games on this website. And after a while, right, just like me and my friends are playing it. Then when COVID came around, what happened was everyone got their Chromebooks and then it just started spreading like wildfire. So by the 7th grade already, we had like over 4,000 people playing on it in like 30 minutes.”

A 10-year-old's unblocked games site spread across schools via COVID Chromebooks

Isaac built CookieDuck at age 10 to play games during school computer time when game sites were blocked. When COVID put a Chromebook in every kid's hands, it spread school-to-school, hitting 4,000 concurrent players in a 30-minute window by 7th grade.

“so CookieDuck, it started when I was around like 10, where we had computer time at like school. We had free time on the computers and the games were always, they were always blocked on the computers, right? So what I wanted to do was I wanted to create like a website that allowed me to play games at school in our free time. So I would just start like building little parts of code, like putting little games on this website. And after a while, right, just like me and my friends are playing it. Then when COVID came around, what happened was everyone got their Chromebooks and then it just started spreading like wildfire. So by the 7th grade already, we had like over 4,000 people playing on it in like 30 minutes.”

Distribution edge: be the one site that's unblocked on school Chromebooks

CookieDuck spread organically because school-issued Chromebooks block almost everything. Being a rare unblocked site turned the product itself into the marketing channel as word jumped school to school.

“So it started out like a couple people at each school. And then before you knew it, like the whole school was already on it. Because it's like rare to find a website that's unblocked on the Chromebooks.”

Steal thisWin distribution by being the rare thing that gets through a gatekeeper everyone else is blocked by.

Beat URL blockers by spinning up a new domain each time you get blocked

Isaac kept the games site reachable on locked-down Chromebooks by creating fresh domains for each link whenever the existing one got added to the school's blocklist.

“So once it gets blocked, what you really need to do is you have to create like new domains for each to get around like the blocking system.”

CookieDuck peaked at ~$1,500/day in Google Ads before getting blocked

At its peak the main cookieduck.com domain made roughly $1,500 a day on Google Ads, but the revenue collapsed once that link got blocked and the spare domains couldn't be monetized.

“So in the beginning, when the main cookieduck.com was popular, it was making around $1,500 a day at its peak. So, but eventually, you know, that link got blocked and you can't really monetize the other ones.”

Luxury-goods price-by-country comparison site as an SEO land grab

Isaac built PriceSatellite to show how much cheaper luxury goods (Dior, Louis Vuitton, Chanel) are in other countries. He picked it because every product name is a rankable SEO page in a category nobody had compiled.

“The reason I basically did it is basically whenever like we travel, we always notice how much cheaper it is. So I saw that as like a blank space and I think it would be good for SEO because you have every product name, right? And you could rank on each one. So it's like a good opportunity for views.”

Steal thisFind a category with thousands of unique product names but no aggregator, then build one rankable page per name.

Chase the blank space: build where there's no competitor compiling the data

Isaac's filter for an SEO opportunity is whether anyone already compiles the information. PriceSatellite exists because no competitor was aggregating cross-country luxury prices, leaving a 'blank area' to rank in.

“I just, I just looked and there's not really like a competitor to this already. It's pretty much a blank area. No one really compiles it.”

Steal thisTarget topics where the data exists but no one has aggregated it yet, then be the aggregator that ranks.

Build the comparison engine: pull official prices, layer VAT, equalize FX

To make cross-country luxury prices comparable, Isaac scraped prices from each brand's official site, combined them with VAT data, and normalized for foreign exchange so a buyer sees the true equalized cost.

“Yeah. So I, I got the data off like the official website and then I, and like put together all the VAT data along with it.”

PriceSatellite at 30-50 visitors a day, all organic search, no backlinks

Isaac's new luxury price-comparison site PriceSatellite was getting roughly 30 to 50 visitors a day, entirely from search and with no backlinks yet, just weeks after launch.

“Right now it's around 30, 50. A day, but it's been expanding pretty quickly. It's pretty new.”

His dad's one rule: don't optimize for now, think about the future

Asked what guidance his entrepreneur father gives him, Isaac said the core lesson is to not think about what you want to do now but to think about the future.

“Well, he basically just encourages for me to like not think about what I want to do now, but think about like the future.”

Dad made him build his own PC instead of buying one

For his 8th birthday, Isaac's father refused to just buy him a computer and instead made him build his own. Isaac watched YouTube tutorials on parts and assembly beforehand, an early lesson in learning by building.

“Yeah, yeah, I was around, that was for my 8th birthday because my dad wouldn't let me just buy a computer. He wanted me to like actually build my own computer. So I was watching like YouTube tutorials before I asked him if I could build my computer. I was watching YouTube tutorials on how to build a computer, like what parts to pick out. And for my birthday, he let me do it.”

Stack affiliate revenue from resale platforms onto a price-comparison site

Beyond ads, Isaac plans to monetize PriceSatellite via affiliate deals with secondhand and resale platforms like The RealReal that sell the same luxury bags, earning a cut on referred purchases.

“Not only ads, but you have affiliates for places that sell these bags, like secondhand, or they sell like, uh, The RealReal, which sells like the new bags. It's just like a reseller platform, and I can be an affiliate to those companies along with that.”

Solo-build a 10,000-product site by letting AI write the code and descriptions

Isaac built most of PriceSatellite with AI: the web scraper, backend, frontend, and styling, plus AI-generated product categorization and all 10,000 product descriptions he couldn't write by hand.

“AI, a lot of Price Satellite is built on AI. So first of all, like a lot of the codebase, like the web scraper, the backend, the frontend, the styles, all of a lot of that was built off AI. The categorization of products done with AI and the product descriptions. I can't do 10,000 product descriptions by myself. So I really used AI for almost all of those.”

Steal thisUse AI to generate code plus thousands of unique product descriptions so a solo builder can ship a content-heavy SEO site.

AI's real unlock is being built into messaging/phone apps, not standalone apps

Isaac predicts the convenient future of AI isn't everyone building separate apps but embedding AI into existing messaging and phone apps, so you text an assistant to find people, places, or things and it calls around and books for you.

“But I think that building like AI into what we already have, like the messaging app, the phone app, that's really what's going to make AI a lot more convenient for people. So instead of searching for like people, places, or things through like a search bar, basically we just text like an AI, like, can you find me this? Can you find me someone who does this? Like a job for me. And then it will like basically call a bunch of places, like maybe reservations. It'll find you like places in the area. You text an AI and it'll book for you. It'll find you times. And that's what's going to make AI a lot more convenient for people.”