Hey bootstrappers,

>> First doesn't mean perfect.

You'll be painfully aware that few original ideas exist anymore. 

Perhaps you’ve had a few startup ideas only to find others already doing them. 

You probably envy their success and regret you hadn’t started sooner. But things might not be as rosy as they seem.

Seldom does an established business get everything right.

Check out the review boards and forums. You might be surprised to find all sorts of complaints, such as buggy products, poor customer support, or lack of features. 

Even giants like Google and Adobe have room for improvement, as you’ll soon discover. 

And that, dear reader, presents you with an exciting opportunity. 

Which existing products and services could you borrow from and improve? Could you make something faster, cheaper, or easier to use?

This week’s founders reworked existing products and concepts into new businesses, earning millions of dollars and thousands of happy customers. 

Read on to discover how they did it – and maybe borrow a few ideas yourself. 😉

At just 16, Alex Chernikov built a browser-based translator that beat Google Translate’s UX. Two years later, Mate serves over 130,000 customers and earns Alex and cofounder Andrii a fortune.

A Browser Extension That Beats Google Translate? It Earned This Duo $250,000 Last Year

“I would say the translation quality isn’t much better than Google Translate. What we sell is good UX. Especially on iOS, our users adore that they can read websites without having to copy-paste. Neither Google nor other apps like DeepL have the integrations we have.”

Ivan Kutskir’s pet project in college has since become an alternative to prohibitively expensive software like Adobe Photoshop – allowing anyone to open and manipulate .psd files (and more) for free.

This Founder’s Legion of Reddit Fans Helped Him Build a Free Alternative to Photoshop That Brings in $1 Million a Year

“In the beginning, if I didn’t see that my work was useful to someone, I wouldn’t be motivated to keep improving it. I couldn’t see myself working on it for two years in private and not publishing it until it was a finished product.”

Stéphane Guérin helps marketers quickly extract meaningful insights from their analytics tools, summarizing everything in an easy, fast, and automated report – saving hours of hassle.

Combing Through Raw Data Sucks, So This Company Does All The Heavy Lifting – And They Just Hit $5M ARR

“It’s hard to be the best at everything, especially when the competition is well funded, so DashThis focuses on having the happiest clients.”

“We have to be creative and do as much as possible with as little as possible. But the most important part is taking great care of our clients because, in the end, it’s them who will fund our business. No clients, no business.”

 - Stéphane Guérin, DashThis

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