CTO turned CMO | My code is making $3M+ ARR | 2x products #1 of the day on ProductHunt

Hey, I'm Igor. 👋

I've co-founded Momentum Page and ClipWing (both products #1 of the day on ProductHunt)

I share what I can to help community around me build $1M startups and beyond (our biggest partner's exit is $1.2B)

Some of the startups we helped build and scale
• VeroSkills (700K ARR reached within 4 months since first users)
• goLance.com (100s of thousands of users)
• Robomongo (1M+ downloads)
and more

I believe that every startup is a media company

You can also find me on twitter: https://twitter.com/igormomentum

Thanks!

Igor Krasnik

There have been two defining moments in AI adoption. The first was ChatGPT's release in late 2022. The second is happening right now, for engineering:

There have been two defining moments in AI adoption. The first was ChatGPT's release in late 2022, when millions discovered they could talk to a machi

Open article: How to start coding with AI agents by Igor Krasnik • 5 min read

AI world moves too fast... So I've collected 8 newest trending AI tools for you to keep track on what's going on:

Newest AI tools

Building in public | Postli ✍️| Papermark🔗| Other tools for fun🤩

Self taught developer, moved from academia to startups. Building in public Postli- LinkedIn content creation software, and Papermark - Open Source Docsend alternative, for sharing documents and creating data rooms.
Launching other micro projects and other products, interested in marketing growth and PLG and Product onboarding catalyst.

iuliia shnai

Six painful decisions we made to bootstrap Papermark to 2000 customers

After 5 years of failing startups and projects, these what really helped:

𝟏) 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜, no stealth mode
Posting our journey, MRR, and challenges were really helpful. Until you become transparent nobody gonna read you. Result? 30% of early customers found us through social posts. 

𝟐) 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝟑𝐱 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞
Everyone when entering a market trying to offer lower price, we also did it. But competing on a price ONLY as a bootstrapped founder, you will just not have enough runaway. Price fairly and offer more.

𝟑) 𝐒𝐚𝐲 𝐧𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲
First we were excited about enterprise deals, not anymore. There is a lot to handle for small team like our. Enterprise customers will want custom features for $50k deal, which maybe nobody else needs. If you can, get 100 smaller customers vs 1 enterprise.

𝟒) 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭
It forced us to build product that speak for itself. 90% of customers sign up without talking to anyone.

𝟓) 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫
In my provious company we spend a lot of time to copy features of others. Zero adoption. So, in Papermark we decided we just listen carefully to every person. 

𝟔) 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 first, 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫l𝐲
You want good motivated people, people who are free and flexible. $7k/month for 3 freelancers vs $15k for 1 employee. More flexibility, faster execution, less risk for both.

Why are all of those painful?
For many reason:
- Enterprise seems like big check quick
- Lower price is easy to sell
- Copying competitors seems like a quick win
- Self serve is hard to set
- Building in public requires you to be transparent about all pain points you have.

Iuliia Shnai

Co-Founder Papermark🔗| building in public, marketing with code 👩‍💻

There is no "𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭" moment with growth, especially in AI time.

I thought, after 2 years and 2000 customers we will know our acquisition channel and we can just scale it in 2026

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲:
• Planned 10+ new experiments
• 1-3 months per test
• Constantly analyzing what works
• Exploring how AI can be used 

What I learned so far?
Aquisiton evolves all the time. 
→ 2000+ customers 
→ $1.5M ARR 
→ Proven initial product-market fit

You still testing:
1. New SEO content approached
2. Different pricing tests
3. AI for growth
4. Social media strategies
5. Partnership channels

So, the core is not in figuring out 1 acquisition channel but 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.

Building a system that constantly finds new things that work rather than finding the one thing that works.

Reducing churn is easy.
You just stop letting people leave.

Any your best practices to share? 😂

You do not need CRM to build $1M ARR business

Avoid all bloat from the beginning

Every time someone asks me which CRM we use , I just change the topic. So many times I tried to adopt CRM and it never worked. 

But every sales person told me, you need one. And yes I saw good experience and adaptation of Hubspot, but for significantly bigger checks. 

If your average check is $50k a year, yes CRM could be useful, as I closing cycle take some time and multiple iterations. But if you build a self service business, focus on analytics, signup, signup to conversation rate.

Here what we do in Papermark, what really works instead of CRM:
1. Stripe to track sub updates and analytics 
2. Enrich customers and users
3. Posthog to track all activity and conversion
4. Connections with customers on social
5. Free plan and free trial available in the product

No alternative text description for this image

Created Papermark intro video with 1 prompt  

The coolest thing is that all components are from our actual open source repo

It would take me at least 10 hours to do the worser version of it in canva as not a designer

Any kind of video is a big pain and always take hours: 
- need a good light
- setting up the proper recording tool 
- be sure quality of recording is good
- voice as a non speaker always so bad
- animations as non designer takes hours

And now finally I feel like we are so close to fully automate at least product demos, swap face, use elevenlabs for voice and remotion for animated product designs.

Working on V2.0

taplio

The Battle

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iuliia shnai

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taplio

The Battle

Igor Krasnik

iuliia shnai

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Igor Krasnik's LinkedIn Performance

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