How to get to 75,000 USD revenue on $0 advertising spend?

hi dear friends,

Here’s a look back at how our AI headshot app the Multiverse AI grew to its first $75k USD in revenue.

Here’s a timeline for you:

• April 2023: launched the Multiverse AI and quit my full-time job

• January 2024: $20k USD revenue (9 months after launch(

• June 2024: $30k USD revenue (14 months after launch)

We don’t have any investors, we are fully bootstrapped. How is that possible? Read here 👇

PS I first wrote this post in February 2024. I’m posting this now on the newsletter since I’ve looked back on it a lot, thinking about our past growth and how we can accelerate that further.

Stay hydrated and eat your vegetables.

Tanya

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We launched the Multiverse AI late April, 2023. I’d just left my corporate job in marketing at OnePlus and OPPO. The world was abuzz with generative AI and I’d been playing around with Midjourney, ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion. 

Motivated by the bootstrap community, Anika, Zeeshaan and I got together and decided to build an AI SaaS headshot generator platform. Bootstrapping in the startup context refers to the process of launching and growing a business without external help or capital

It’s been so so many long nights (and days) grinding away. Days working while having a fulltime job, nights working on our project. 

It is HARD. It was a bootstrap from the ground up, zero marketing budget, zero investments, zero money raised. 

We launched late April. 

So... How did the first nine months go? 

Since April 2023:

• The Multiverse AI was recognized by and featured in Forbes, Superhuman and TalkAndroid 🥳

• We got to 75,000 USD total revenue in 9 months ⚠️ and closed a record month in January with 20,000 USD revenue ↑

• Shipped a TON of features, including our flagship b2c product, The Multiverse AI for Teams, many iterations to improve our accuracy, and developed more styles in partnership with HR and sales teams

• We've welcomed our first large teams, serving our B2B platform to teams of +200 members, demonstrating the scalability and appeal of our AI platform

• Forged meaningful partnerships that have expanded our reach and impact with organizations like Unite.ai, GeeksforGeeks, and many more

• We’ve delivered AI headshots to professionals from dream companies like Google, Walmart, McKinsey, Deloitte and more 👩💻

• Our product-market fit has been validated by overwhelming positive feedback and high ratings on platforms like Product Hunt (4.9/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Why share?

1. I’ve seen a lot of people in the bootstrap community share numbers, and it’s been incredibly helpful. Everyone’s journey is different. Ours isn’t the best, isn’t the worst. We’re getting there and learning every day. Sharing is our way of contributing to the startup community and I hope this helps someone out there - I know I’ve benefitted a tremendous amount from people I’ve never met sharing information I never even knew I needed. Through online sharing, I've connected with so many people who have been helpful and hope to pay that forward. If you think I could be helpful to you in any way, my DMs are open.

2. Another thing that’s so much more challenging than I thought it would be: highlighting growth. I wish I’d written something six months ago. Now, I look back at that period and I think “my god I was an idiot, I should have done x and y instead of z.” That’s growth. I hope I can keep looking back to the past and think my god, I was an idiot”. 

How did we grow to +3000 paid users within 9 months?

1. Customer driven features! If your customer is asking for a feature, get on it and get on it quickly. Zeeshaan Lakdawala is our rockstar developer and is fantastic at swiftly implementing changes that our clients ask for. This also works well because you know it will benefit the people asking about it. That matters! It reminds me of my time at OnePlus where one of our key tenets was to stay in touch with the OnePlus community. Your users know what they want and they will ask for it. Listen!

2. Team-building is KEY. You are nothing without your team. We wouldn’t be where we are if we hadn’t paid attention to that. We are lucky to have expertise in fields with very little overlap: marketing, UX and software engineering. I’d recommend anyone who is building a company and looking for co-founders to start there.

3. Ship quick. Ship ship ship. It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to just get 👏 things 👏 out 👏 there 👏. Your first version is your first version. You can always iterate, change, upgrade, build more. But get that first version out there as soon as you can.

4. Pareto prioritizing. We’re only three people. Everything takes time. So much time. And there is so little of it. The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences, come from 20% of causes. Focus on getting important things done and don’t get stuck in the details. My co-founder Anika Lakdawala manages to combine a day job, with raising a baby, with her work at Multiverse (with staying alive as a human being who needs to eat and drink and exercise). It is no small feat and on a base level, I have no clue how she does it. But I will bet it has something to do with her killer ability to prioritize.

5. If you build it, you need to market it. Building something only takes you so far. Educating people about your product, meeting them at their knowledge level and communicating your value proposition is key. We’re building a high-tech platform that implements AI to get people a great professional photo. I can talk about what the Multiverse AI is for days on end. But that doesn’t work. Ultimately, what is your added value? Focus on marketing that. Product market fit gets you far. Marketing gets you further.

In February 2022, I was working long (long) hours in China at a tech company. In February 2023, I had just moved to Dusseldorf as a PR manager. February 2024 is looking very different.

We’d launched Multiverse in April 2023, thinking that with a lot of luck and hard work, we could hit our goal of reaching 10,000 USD by the end of the year. We more than 7xed that. Our revenue growth month over month is at 45%. Quarter over quarter it’s 191%. Hard work pays off!

Looking ahead, our vision is clear: to establish The Multiverse AI as the premier AI-powered headshot platform for professionals, with a strong focus on B2B solutions.

Reflecting back, I’m filled with gratitude for the support and feedback from our users, partners, and the broader community.

We’re sleepy but hungry and ambitious and ready for more. We're thrilled to continue evolving, innovating, and serving our growing community of professionals.

In the next couple of weeks, we have some really exciting features that are coming out too. Stay tuned! 

I want to also take a moment and give a big thanks to our early supporters.

Some of you have helped us with product feedback, word of mouth sharing, business advice, emotional support. Nothing exists in a vacuum and our business sure as hell doesnt. The little comments you've made along the way or sharing of our product as we're doing another 12 hour work day, it really helps. I appreciate you. Thank you ⭐♥️

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PS I first wrote and published this in February 2024.

Get your professional headshots here: https://www.themultiverse.ai/ 

Here is mine btw