🚪 How Nick created a snail-mail platform with $200MRR in just 2 months
The No-Code Success Story of Nick Freiling and StampFans
Hello there,
Katt here. Welcome to the 129 new subscribers this week🕺.
This week I talked with no-code founder Nick Freiling.
Read about:
💥 A frustration leading to a (nostalgic?) business idea
🧪 How he tested the idea with a first version
🧰 The No-Code tools he used to built it
🌱 Growing to $200MRR
Enjoy and happy building!
PS: Did you miss the previous no-code story? Read here how JJ went from film maker to no-code entrepreneur.
✨ Spotlight
Toddle is a new visual development platform to create stunning interactive web apps (or components which you can embed on any static website).
I tried it out and built a pretty web app. It has a:
Pomodoro timer
Reminder messages that pops up on certain dates
Alternating inspiring quotes.
There is a learning curve but it feels like it’s worth it, as this tool has it all to take you without a line of code from simple MVP to scalable complex product.
🎈 6 Cool Finds
A mix of paid sponsorships (in bold) and cool things I discovered. You can get featured in this section by sharing this newsletter with 8 friends.
Task Magic is like an automated virtual assistant. It turns your walkthrough videos (🤯 blown away by this) into automations.
BlogHandy adds in a few clicks a SEO-optimized blog to your existing website.
One Word is a database of available one-word brandable domain names (dangerous for your wallet, fellow domain lovers!) .
Zeroqode builds for you apps 10x faster and at a fraction of the cost. As a Gold Tier Bubble agency with 300+ successful projects it are the experts you need.
Glimpse helps you to discover trends before they are trending.
Learn to build real AI text and image generation apps without code. Join 4,000 No Code MBA Unlimited members and bring your ideas to life.
🔥 No-Code Founder Interview
Learn every week from a real world no-code success story
Screen fatique
From 2016 to 2022 Nick, owned an agency that helped startups with market research. As a passionate advocate for good writing Nick always had been an avid reader. And in the heart of the newsletter age, there is plenty to read with thousands of amazing publications on Substack and newsletters on Beehiiv. But the relentless glow of the computer screen left Nick drained.
The intimacy of reading was lost in the digital shuffle, and the joy of discovery was buried under the weight of unread emails. It was in this moment of cluttered inbox frustration that Nick got an idea.
"Why can't we bring the great writing through regular post again. Like Substack but for snail-mail”
Glowing feedback
StampFans was born—a snail-mail publishing platform for creators. With StampFans, creators can send real, ink-on-paper letters to their audience. Subscribers to StampFans would find something rare waiting for them in their mailboxes: not bills or advertisements, but letters, crafted by those they admired.
Nick launched the first version of this mid-2022. He built a simple landing page with Carrd with a generic form. Everything (like setting-up accounts) happened manually. Just like it is supposed to be for a true scrappy MVP 👌.
To find the first customers Nick scraped his personal network on LinkedIn. It all went slow as he struggled to find time to work on Stampfans. His first startup was in the process of getting acquired and that required a lot of time. But here and there he could find some time to work on it and was able to get dozens of subscribers. The feedback was amazing, they loved the product and concept. That was enough validation for Nick….
Building time
In December 2023 it was time to level up his MVP.
With Softr he created the website and the user interface that hosts the Creator Dashboard. On that dashboard creators can setup their accounts, customize their profile, upload letters, and see how many subscribers they have.
Softr has a built-in integration with Airtable, so all the data lives there and is organized by a bunch of formulas.
Stripe is how the subscriptions are handled. The subscription page is actually just the Stripe Checkout page, no need to make your own. This also allows subscribers to unsubscribe via Stripe which saves him tedious administration work.
With a Brevo Automation new users get an onboarding email and some check-in emails.
Growth
In less then 2 months Nick was able to grow to $200 MRR.
We keep a small fee on every subscriber transaction (monthly). It's $3/month, which covers postage, paper, and processing for that subscriber's letter. Then there's a bit extra to invest back into the platform.
Nick is an active LinkedIn user and that is also his main focus to acquire new users. He posts frequently which results in thousands of impressions every month.
With his previous startup still in mind, Nick shares that it is important to keep things lean so you don't make unnecessary work for yourself.
That was the story of this week. Go and follow Nick on LinkedIn and check out StampFans.
🍿 Katt builds in public
My actions, fails and wins on growing this no-code business to ramen profitability
I was walking on clouds this month. I was laser-focused and got a lot of work done:
I changed my website from just a newsletter subscribe page to the (first version) of the biggest no-code inspiration source on the internet
I made my success story archive more accessible (before you only received access after subscribing)
I added a No-Code Tool and a Maker Tools page
I improved my build in public page (still a few updates to publish)
I created a sponsorship deck to pitch a new partnership offer
I sent it to 10 first potential partners
Tiny revenue this month but there were a lot of inbound sponsorship requests in the last few days and the revenue experiment continues. So excited for the next month! But first time for a week of skiing in Switzerland. Talk to you again in a week!
🙌 When you’re ready, here’s how I can help
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