🚪 How a GPT-3 No-Code App was built and acquired
The No-Code Exit Story of Fernanda and Inspired.so
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The interview this week is with Fernanda Graciolli. In 48 days, she built and sold a GPT-3 app made with Bubble. 👇
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🔥 Maker Interview
Hello Fernanda, tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Fernanda Graciolli. I'm a neuroscientist turned web developer. I started out with (code) web development back in 2012. I freelanced and started countless side projects. None of them really took off. In 2017, I heard of Bubble.
Bubble quickly became my favorite pass time.
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I learned it really well by just playing around for years. I tried to launch a few things, but they all flopped.
Which product did you build?
In 2021, GPT3 was the latest craze and I jumped on the bandwagon. I spent a ton of time playing around in OpenAI's playground and learning how to engineer prompts.
I've always been interested in content marketing so I tried a bunch of content marketing related prompts and I got pretty good at getting the AI to output relevant texts. So I decided to integrate GPT3 with Bubble and actually build a full app.
How did you launch and grow your product?
I actually didn't launch or grow. At the time I was building the product, I had recently started a new contract job that was taking up a lot of my time and I decided I wanted to focus on the job instead of on growing a product.
So, once the app was fully functional (including payment, analytics, etc), I figured I'd try to sell it. What I did do was build in public and the building phase got a lot of attention and helped me refine the app and the prompts due to the amazing feedback I was able to get from doing it that way.
Can you share some stats from the time you listed it for sale?
Time spent: around 60 hours
Revenue: 0$
Users: around 10 users
Why and how did you sell it?
I placed the app on Microacquire. The domain I had for it was "inspired.so" which apparently was also a big asset.
I listed it for $5,000 and sold it for $4,000. I had about 15 inquiries about it on Microacquire in the span of 2 weeks.
It was 48 days from the day I started building it to the day I closed the deal.
Why did the buyer want to acquire your project?
The buyer was putting together a Copy AI type product with several AI driven sub-products. They almost immediately after purchase integrated my app into their product, essentially just using the prompt engineering and the integration with bubble.
The design totally changed. I also was able to get the buyer an invitation to GPT3 which I believe was a huge draw. At the end of the day, my guess is that they decided to buy a ready-made solution over paying a developer to build one. I believe they got a deal that way. If I were to have been hired to build this product, I would have charged significantly more than $4K.
What kind of advice would you like to share with someone who wants to get started with No-Code?
There are a few pieces of advice I would give:
Focus on a single tool at first and get REALLY good at it. These no-code app builders are not simple/easy to master. If you try to learn a bunch at once, you'll never really get anywhere with any of them,
No-Code does not mean easy. They are lower barrier to entry, but to master them is difficult and requires time
Follow people who have mastered it on Twitter. The discussions, tips, brainstorming are invaluable.
Build real life products end to end, even if you don't release them. You can always add them to your portfolio. There are intricacies to a fully built product that are different/more challenging than its standalone parts.
What kind of advice would you like to share with someone who wants to sell their No-Code project?
I would say, make sure everything is buttoned up before listing. Bugs are taken care of, the design is pristine, performance is good. Buyers who are willing to pay top $$ usually want a well-functioning app, not a fixer-upper.
I would also definitely encourage people to build some MRR before selling as that will increase their selling price by a lot. (Even though I didn't do this).
Where can we go to learn more about you and your projects?
You can follow me on Twitter
You can read some more about building with GTP-3 in this article
Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge Fernanda! 🙏
💡 Acquisition Inspiration
Get inspired by No-Code projects for sale on Microns 🚀.
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I didn't get this quite well. According to her Indie post she build this on 2021 and did she sold recently on micro acquire?
You have written the listing price is 5k USD and sold It for 40K USD? FOR REAL?