A Fun Story about Reply Guy
Hi everyone,
Happy Holyday.
It is now nearly 2 years of the AI revolution.
AI has changed many things and helped a lot of entrepreneurs create a lot of businesses.
Some of them are essential businesses.
Some are fun.
Some require 100 people to execute.
Some require just 1.
Today, we will talk about one that requires 0 people to execute, runs on the back of a cool idea, and makes $10k/month for its founder.
Introducing: Reply Guy
What is ReplyGuy?
It is an AI tool that will scan the internet, find where people are talking about your business or problem you solve, and reply promoting you. Here’s an example:
This reply was done using ReplyGuy.
Here’s the timeline:
October, 2023: This guy creates a tool called Replyze (same as ReplyGuy but named differently). He posts on product hunt. Nobody bought it. He then starts tweeting about it and replying to others who are talking about marketing on Twitter.
That’s how he got his first few sales.
November, 2023: He tries ads on Reddit and Facebook. Doesn’t work. Only the Twitter thing seems to be working, and he reaches the $200/month mark.
December 2023: He couldn’t really market it. It was stuck at $300/month. So he decides to sell it. He asks for $25k for the tool. Nobody buys it.
However, one guy reaches out and asks if he wants a partner. He says yes.
The new guy is all about branding and marketing.
He changes the name from Replyze to ReplyGuy. They change the logo, color, everything—and they relaunch on the product hunt.
They immediately get 30 customers from PH.
Takeaway: Invest in good branding. It works.
March-June: A lot of Twitter ads; nothing else worked. Twitter ads and constant posting were alone to get the business to $10,000/month.
Here are the lessons:
- All you need is one idea.
- Development is easy. With 100s of development services, your idea will see the light of day within a month.
- It is all about branding and marketing when it comes to a SaaS
- An idea doesn’t have to be a million USD idea. It can be a $10,000 idea. A tool like ReplyGuy will never make a million. But it doesn’t have to.
Sometimes, we spend so much time finding million USD ideas that we ignore $10,000 ideas.
Don’t do that.
Let’s search for a few $10k ideas this week.