🗞 What's New: Building better one-person businesses

Some businesses are better suited for solo founders than others:

• Think small. Avoid businesses that require scale. Don't charge low prices, and focus on businesses, not consumers.
• You will typically only have 10 minutes to pitch an investor. Share your unique founder story, be authentic, and make it about them.
• David Bressler hit $192K in total revenue in one year. SEO and referrals have been key to driving his organic growth quickly.

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by Joshua Tiernan

Not all businesses are good choices for solo founders, since some are almost impossible to grow as a company of one.

Understanding the types of business that are most suited for solo founders can save years of frustration!

Think small

We're unconsciously influenced by companies that we use ourselves, like Netflix, Notion, Google, etc. These companies exist in large markets, and have a lot of money to spend. Instead of thinking big, think small:

1. Avoid businesses that require scale: It's best to best to avoid anything that requires a massive number of users. It's very hard to create network effects when you're the only one at the business. You likely don't have the time or money to make it work.

2. Don't charge low prices: Sales and marketing both require lots of effort, and you can't spend all your time doing that. If your prices are low, you will need to reach tons of customers to be profitable. This will cause you to run into that scale problem again.

3. Target businesses, not consumers: This makes for a much easier sell. Businesses are happy to spend money on things that help them grow. They allocate money for training, marketing, and other things, so they are literally looking to spend the money. A $49 subscription is a lot for a consumer, whereas a business wouldn't bat an eyelid.

4. Don’t choose a large market: The larger the market, the higher the competition. Choose a market where you can be the biggest fish.

A few examples

Swap scale for small, and charge higher prices to businesses:

• Instead of a social network, build a niche professional community.
• Instead of an AI blog, create an AI image generation newsletter for social media managers.
• Instead of a general web design agency, start a web agency targeting logistics companies in the UK.

When you focus on smaller markets with bigger budgets, the opportunities are endless.

I'm sharing guides on building six figure one-person businesses every week on Substack. Check them out here!

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🌎 WhatsApp channels are going global.

🔑 Key challenges of social media marketing, and how to overcome them.

🤑 Use "money words" in your website and landing page copy.

🔎 Identifying your leadership style.

🚫 Brands are paying the price for dangerous internet challenges.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

from The Hustle newsletter

Here's a fun fact: In a 30 minute investor meeting, after meet-and-greet, wrap up time, and Q&A, you only have 10 measly minutes to sell to them.

Anxiety much? But things are a lot easier when you realize that you have one simple goal: To make them want to know more.

Understand the assignment

Speaking coach Robbie Crabtree refers to pitching as "competitive storytelling." It may be tempting to go in guns blazing, ready to impress investors with hyped-up data and fearless confidence.  But that's not the vibe they're after.

Nick Grouf, founder of Alpha Edison, has invested millions of dollars into early-stage tech startups. He says he looks for a mature mindset with zero arrogance:

The goal of your first investor meeting is not to close the deal, but to:

• Impress them with a unique founder story.

• Show them why you're the one to build this business.

• Give them reasons to tell other investors about you.

• Leave them wanting more.

Focus on building the reputation of your business by telling the most compelling story possible.

Learn from Scrub Daddy founder Aaron Krause, whose famous Shark Tank pitch started a bidding war:

• Dive in with product differentiators.
• Dazzle with the functionality and uniqueness of the product.
• Outline a specific ask and use of the funds.
• Show you are qualified to lead the expansion.

Pro tip: Leave the stats and data for the Q&A. Don't try to jam everything into 10 minutes. Tell a story that makes them ravenous for more information.

Hit the right tone

This is not the time to fake it 'till you make it. Ask people for brutally honest feedback on your business idea and your pitch.

Investors will throw questions at you at random, so a rehearsed pitch isn't going to cut it. Divide your story into sections (stats, finances, goals, key partners, and founder story) so you can pull from any piece at a moment's notice.

Be authentic

Not everyone is born to be the face of a brand, evangelizing its unique value to investors. But founders should be the ones telling the story, so if you struggle taking the mic, find someone to help you work through that.

The goal is to sound like your business is an organic extension of you.

Confidence + Humility = Authenticity.

Confidence comes from knowledge, and humility comes from being comfortable with the fact that you are asking for help.

Make it about them

Investors ultimately want to know what they're getting out of the deal, preferably a juicy ROI.

Share facts about your business that:

• Appeal to their values.

• Align with their portfolio.

• Point to a positive exit.

Once your stats are in place, it all comes down to the delivery!

Subscribe to The Hustle newsletter for more.

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by Diego Jaggi

David Bressler founded FormulaBot in August 2022, and has hit $192K+ since then.

The overview

FormulaBot is an AI platform that provides users with Excel formulas based on text instructions in seconds, and also analyzes their data.

• Total revenue: $192K+.
• Total profit: $164K+.
• Monthly website traffic: 379K.

David was able to monetize this market gap by integrating the OpenAI API, and providing the total addressable market of 750M Excel users with a user-friendly, all-in-one platform. Since its launch, FormulaBot has been able to establish itself as a leader in the AI Excel bot niche, amassing 650K+ freemium users and nearly 11K paid users.

Business model and initial growth

The business runs on a subscription pricing model, while also offering a freemium version. The paid subscription package costs $6.99 per month, or $75 yearly.

David attributes the healthy margins to the fact that the formulas require very little text and ChatGPT tokens. Also, he grew his business organically with few overhead costs.

At launch, David posted on Reddit, hitting 10K upvotes. That post brought in 81K+ visitors to his website.

This served as validation, so he built out the whole product. Next, David launched on Product Hunt, bringing in his first large batch of paying customers.

Since then, David's primary growth strategy has revolved around SEO. FormulaBot currently drives half of its website visitors from this acquisition channel. Referrals have also been a major part of the growth strategy. FormulaBot has been reviewed by Influencer Marketing Hub and Caracol. Other referral traffic has come from viral user-generated content (UGC), like this TikTok video by Jordanueva, which drove 200K+ views.

Key takeaway

If your business helps users make or save money, be sure to include a section on the landing page where those statistics are clearly communicated. This will help improve conversion rates.

If you enjoyed this overview, check out my newsletter, Lucrative Unicorns!

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by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Joshua Tiernan, Darko, Susie Ippolito, and Diego Jaggi for contributing posts. —Channing