Doctorate, entrepreneurship as an educational product, teamed up with 10 people and received investment。
She's like, "the chosen daughter of an enterprise."。
But reality didn't follow the script. She, iulia shnai (ulia schneider), ended her first business failure and the company was dissolved and she was forced to lay off all her employees。
One year later, she made 10 new products with her own hands, all of which failed。
But it was unexpected that she had turned over in the eleventh attempt: with an open-source documentation tool, papersmart, she and her partners had earned $45,000 a month (approximately 300,000 yuan) and millions a year。
Today i'm going to take you to break down her whole business method and see how she went from a series of failures to a counterattack。
I. Failure of financing, dissolution of the company, her choice for independent development
Yulia has a very bright background: starting a business immediately after graduation and trying to use her experience in the academic field as an educational technology product. She successfully secured seed-wheel financing and formed a team of 10 people。
But she made some common entrepreneurship mistakes:
As a result, the company was yellow and the team was disbanded。
At the end of 2022, she was lost and didn't know where to go。
So she started every day on twitter and lInkedin post, looking for some direction, and a little attention. She started trying to make her own product, and she didn't write the code, but she did it on ai tools and learning。
In 2023, she made 10 products, all without fire。
But she didn't stop。
Two, an open-source tool is on fire
The opportunity appeared on her partner mark。
Mark used weekends to make a small open-source tool, papersmart, which is dedicated to uploading documents, generating traceable links, looking at who opened the document, a bit like a foreign docsend tool。
He didn't have hope. He just sent a tweet, and it got hot。
It's been a while since the product was released) nthly recuring revue, monthly recurrent income)。
And julia's own product postli has been unable to find direction。
She immediately turned to papersmart, and started to grow this piece。
How
In less than a year, they created more than 1,000 content pages that piled up traffic a little bit through the search engine optimization channel。
Three. Can't write code and do it. She did it
Papersmart is a typical “free start, step-by-step” product model。
Users have direct access to basic functions free of charge, and if more specialized functions are to be used, they need to be upgraded at a fee。
There is only one version at first: $29 per month (approximately 210 yuan). It has now been upgraded to four versions, with a maximum of $349 per month (about $2,500) and — more expensive user retention rates。
Technically, they have two systems that operate simultaneously:
Marketing end (official network/blog/drive tool) product end (user service system)
While the technical details are numerous, the conclusion is that they are not too complex and that tools are mainstream, free and open-source, with emphasis on saving development costs。
Four, they did one thing and they pulled the user in
Papersmart's user growth is uniform, but effective - seo search engine optimization。
What's seo
Simply put, it's about writing what users search for online, so that it leads users to your website or tools。
For example:
These articles attract target users with precision and are much cheaper than advertising。
They rely on this content to push their products towards a growing number of developers and independent entrepreneurs。
The monthly income now stands at $45,000, with a target of $1 million per year at the end of the year。
Summary of sharks
The best thing to learn from this story is not what she did, but what she made in a very “stable” way:
You can't write code to make a product
Ten successive failures
Find an "open source tool" entry point for rapid transformation
Focus on seo, a channel, dig a well, not blind. Network
First, make simple pricing, then upgrade the version, and raise the price of the guest unit
Users are more willing to pay higher prices because the high version is more complete and experienced
But that's what really moved me:
She didn't leave the table。
Those who start a business experience failure, but failure is not an end in itself. As long as you're doing it, trying it, and making it public — there is a chance of success next time。
She failed 10 times and turned her back 11 times。
That's why many people don't get to the end: they give up before they get out。
You just have to stay a little bit longer than anyone else, one step more, and the results may be completely different。
So don't rush, don't roll, don't run — you can relax, but keep moving。
It's only possible when the cards are out。
Yulia schneider shares the following translation:
Iulia shnai had developed a product, obtained seed ship financing and formed a team that had to shut it down. Without knowing what to do next, she had developed 10 products in 12 months, but none had succeeded。
After that, she worked with a co-founder to build papersmart. About a year later, the product had a monthly income of $45,000。
Here's how julia shared her success。
Being an independent entrepreneur
I graduated directly into the entrepreneurial field. In 2019, i began to build an educational science and technology product, hoping to take advantage of my experience in academia。
It was my first start-up, and it was very difficult. I don't know much about business life, and i made a lot of mistakes. For example, i felt like i had to finance, so i spent most of my time on this -- i went to meetings and told my story to investors. Ultimately, we received a round of pre-seed financing。
I also focused on simple but unsustainable ways of selling products, for example through the appsumo platform。
And finally, the original company failed. We had a team of 10 people and i had to fire everyone. I was so depressed that time。
That was at the end of 2022. I don't know what to do next. I decided to spend every day on twitter and lInkedin posted to help yourself find the way forward。
And in the process, i was exposed to independent entrepreneurship. I'm not a technologist, but i opened the code editor and started developing the product. In 2023, i developed 10 products。
Looking for inspiration
My project went red -- this is the whole story about this. That's an lInkedin post generator, and then i hit it to make postli。
At about the same time, my partner mark introduced papersmart -- a simple, open-source docsend alternative。
The first version of papersmart was completed in just one weekend, and the function is very simple -- it can only upload documents, share links, and view basic analytical data. He didn't expect too much, but the tweet that he published the product was hot。
These two projects have almost simultaneously reached $500 per month in recurrent income (mrr), but i have not been able to get postli to find where the product fits into the market, and its heat is declining。
I started from time to time with the development of papersmart and wanted to see if it had development potential. I am primarily responsible for growth. I call it "building for growth" -- developing microtools, running blogs. In january 2024, we both started working full-time on this project。
Since then, papersmart has been growing. Perhaps because the product itself is better, perhaps because we have a clear division of labour and clear objectives: one focuses on product development and one on growth expansion。
Today, its monthly recurrent income amounts to $45,000. And this time a year ago, our monthly income was only $1,000。
Two sets of technology
We have two separate nextjss projects: one for marketing websites, pages, microtools, etc., and the other for the product itself。
Here is our marketing-end technology warehouse:
Next. Js - frame
TypesCript - programming language
Tailwind - css tool
Shadcn/ui - ui component
Vercel - host platform
Railway - database
The technological stacks at the end of the product are as follows:
Next. Js - frame
TypesCript - programming language
Tailwind - css tool
Shadcn/ui - ui component
Prisma - object relationship map (orm)
Postgresql - database
Nextauth. Js - authentication
Tinybird - data analysis
Resend - e-mail service
Stripe - payment processing
Vercel - host platform
More information is available on github, as this product is fully open。
Focus on a single channel
We attracted the first 10 users by posting posts on social media, reddit, dev. To and produc hunt, as well as contacting acquaintances. Product release is interesting, but post-issuance operations are difficult。
At the same time, we're developing the first channel to attract the next 100 users. We have developed free tools, alternative product pages, user guides and localized landing pages。
Today, we have about 1,000 content pages, and blogs are our main channel. We focus on the bottom of the funnel. We've been expanding this channel all year 2024。
In the meantime, we have tried other ways, but most of them have not worked, or we do not have enough capacity to do them well. There are 17 unworkable ways。
In terms of growth, my suggestion is that if your product is a substitute for a given existing product, make good use of it! Write about it, especially when your product is open source. People like good open source alternatives。
Creates several contrast pages. You want to make the product better, you can find the best customers。
Success factors
I think that the growth of papersmart is the result of a combination of factors:
Market demand for better solutions
The explosion of artificial intelligence allows us to create content faster with less resources
We've had failures before and learned from our mistakes
Lucky
Commercial open source mode
We're a commercial open source company. So we have an open-source version that we can host for ourselves, but most users have chosen our software, the saas product。
We now have four payment plans and a completely free version. This free value-added model is an important reason for our growth, as is the expansion of the fee level。
We started with a plan of $29 a month. Now, our top-level plan is $349 a month, and the most popular is $79. Also, for some reason, clients who choose a high-level plan stay longer。
My suggestion is to start with a product package as simple as possible. Then, over time, it will gradually expand into more complex packages, new plans, etc. And the price will be raised gradually. It is difficult to create sustainable development software or service products at low prices。
There are, of course, exceptions, especially in the area of artificial intelligence tools. But we have been trying to cope with the loss of clients, as is the case with the longer time spent on the selection of subscriptions to the advanced plan。
Development should be fun
Overall, i have four suggestions:
First, products should be developed and distributed as soon as possible. If you do not develop skills, you can use artificial intelligence or codeless tools. It is now easier to develop products than ever before. People usually wait too long to release their products。
Secondly, there is a constant commitment to growth and transformation. Don't put all resources in product development. If you want to build a profitable software, a service product, people have to find you。
Third, regular postings. I think it's on x, lThe posts posted by inkedin, ih and reddit helped me a lot. I met a lot of good people and realized i was not alone on the road to entrepreneurship。
Fourth, do what you're good at and like. At first i ignored that, which made me very unhappy. What is the point of pursuing independence and building one's own business if entrepreneurship is not fun
For example, in my first start-up, i'm going through lInkedin for a strange sale, and i hated it. So this time i didn't do it again. And what i did, it actually worked。
Doing things that don't suit you does nothing to start a business. Development products should be an interesting thing
Next plan
Our goal is to achieve a recurrent income of $1 million per year (arr) by the end of the year。
In order to achieve this goal, we need to continue what we are doing: the optimization of the search engine (seo)。
But i want to test new channels, and we need to reduce the loss rate。
Personally, i want to enjoy this time as much as possible. As founder, it is easy to forget to stop, look around and enjoy the present。
