🚪How Ambar built and grew a job seeker AI platform to $1000 MRR
🚪How Ambar built and grew a job seeker AI platform to $1000 MRR
The No-Code Success Story of Ambar and Coverdoc
Hello there,
I fell from my chair this morning, we crossed 11,000 subscribers ❤️
This week I talked to Ambar, an experienced product manager, he shares amazing advice and tools. Read about:
✨ From idea to $10,000 revenue
🔥 The problem his startup solves with ai
🧰 His detailed no-code stack
💥 The marketing channels that are working well
👑 Why positioning is key
Enjoy and happy building.
PS: missed the last interview? Read here how Nick build a native mobile accountability app with no-code.
🎈 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.
Typefully is my favourite social media tool. The clean interface, analytics and cross channel publishing do it for me. Try it for free.
100 Days of No-Code rebranded to 100 School with an amazing new website and 2 free challenges on No-Code and AI starting in July.
8 years of design knowledge condensed into 2 simple checklists for UI and branding by the amazing Shu Phoon.
Bookmarkish helps you to stay on top of your bookmarks and sends you an email with your bookmarks every Sunday.
Creating a successful app starts with a well-defined scope. Download this e-book for navigating the complexities.
This blew my mind. Snipowl turns screenshots into a dynamic dashboard with all your data.
🔥 No-Code Founder Interview
Learn every week from a real world no-code success story
Hello! What's your background?
I'm Ambar, a Product Management leader focused on growth and experimentation based in Austin, TX. I’ve worn many hats over the years as a web developer, in-house SEO and Product leader at companies in EdTech, e-learning and recruitment. I’ve used quite a few no-code tools over the years to build prototypes of new products or automate workflows.
My solopreneurship journey started in November 2022 when I was laid off from a Head of Product job at a startup. This was around the time ChatGPT came out and generative AI was gaining more attention. I decided to spend my downtime learning more about AI and no-code while also applying for jobs.
How did you come up with your idea?
As a job seeker I was frustrated with how long it took to research companies and write personalized cover letters for each job application. I was unsatisfied with the options at the time: cookie cutter, generic templates, or skipping the job application.
I started playing around with writing prompts in ChatGPT that pulled in data from my LinkedIn profile along with the target job title, company and job description. Over time I learned how to write effective prompts for a variety of use cases related to job search.
Initially I built CoverDoc to solve a problem for myself and to stand out as a job seeker in a competitive job market. I had no idea it would evolve into a tool that’s being used by 10k+ job seekers worldwide!
As I went through the job seeker journey myself, I saw more opportunities to save time using AI: predicting interview questions based on the job description/title, suggesting answers to those questions using my resume and LinkedIn profile, summarizing the company’s website, finding and summarizing company news and evaluating offers.
Job seekers provide details about the job they’re applying to and CoverDoc creates a tailor-made Google Doc with company insights, interview prep and personalized cover letter in the preferred language of the job seeker. Each document includes an originality score to guide the job seekers on much time should be spent on further personalization and edits.
If a job seeker gets a job offer, they can use CoverDoc to get market data so they can confidently negotiate compensation with built-in salary & benefits insights. For those struggling to initiate negotiation, CoverDoc will write a first draft email to start the negotiation process. Without CoverDoc a job seeker would need to write 14 different prompts for each job to get the same prep material that they can get in minutes with CoverDoc.
Which No-Code platforms did you use?
The very first version of CoverDoc (just me as a user!) was a simple Airtable form + Zapier integration to connect to OpenAI and Google Docs.
The next version aimed to reduce reliance on Zapier for the OpenAI integration by using Airtable Automation scripts. I hard to re-learn JavaScript to do this and make API calls directly to OpenAI using JS fetch.
The No-Code tools I used:
Landing page: Framer
Pre-sales page: Waitlist
Website UX and exit intent surveys: Hotjar
Database: Airtable (Automations and Interfaces for reporting)
Front end app: Softr.io
Integrations with OpenAI and Google Docs: initially Zapier (now Google Cloud Platform)
Web scraping: MrScraper
Payments: Stripe
Refer a Friend: Prefinery
Email: ConvertKit
Affiliate program: Rewardful
Product Analytics: first Pendo, but switched to UserPilot purely based on price. Recently I started using Amplitude as I was approved for the startup pla. It has more in-depth analytcis that tell me which features lead to higher retention.
Revenue Analysis: ProfitWell
While I was familiar with Bubble, I ended up choosing Softr.io due to its ease of use and tight integration with Airtable. I went with Stripe over Paddle since Softr had a native Stripe integration that took very little time to set up.
Hotjar was critical from a marketing perspective to help me understand why website visitors weren’t converting. Exit intent surveys uncovered content gaps on the landing page.
The product has evolved from its no-code origins to a low-code product that now runs API calls in Google Cloud Platform for performance reasons. However, the foundation of Airtable, Zapier and Softr is still in place today.
What went into building the first version?
The very first version of the product was a simple Airtable form that would capture job details and store it in a table. This would trigger the Zapier workflow to get content from OpenAI and generate a Google Doc. That whole process only took a few days to build.
Eventually I added Softr so the app had a front end and a simple way for people to sign up and manage their documents. In addition, I integrated with Stripe to process payments prior to the public launch in March 2023. Integrating Softr and Stripe took a few weeks to build and test.
What is the business model?
CoverDoc launched in March 2023 with two consumer models: Subscription and Pay as you Go (PAYG). The PAYG plan is great for job seekers on a limited budget who aren’t very active in their job search. The monthly subscription plan is better for more senior job seekers who will need the service for a longer period of time or need to apply to a higher number of jobs.
Since then, I’ve started working with small groups to test a B2B model where group admins buy credits on behalf of multiple job seekers. I’m currently in talks with a few nonprofits, career coaches and schools to grow this side of the business.
In Jan 2024, I raised subscription prices to $9.99 / month but didn’t see a drop in conversion rate. I’ll continue to experiment with packaging and pricing this year.
This summer I’ll start to test a Reverse Trial where new users get to try the paid product and then are downgraded to the free plan if they choose not to upgrade after they use up their trial credits.
How have you attracted users and grown your product?
Being recognized by Zapier in March 2023 for the No-Code Day Contest really helped with initial interest.
Since then, user growth has been mostly organic with a few sponsored newsletters and some directories. Here are a few that continue to drive traffic:
And these articles continue to drive traffic months after publication:
Sponsored Newsletters worked well early on to drive awareness, but fewer than expected converted to a paid plan.
A referral program has been an effective method to acquire users. I set up a two-sided incentive so existing users earn credits for each friend that signs up and that friend also earns 2 credits for using the referral link. Prefinery reports a viral boost of 14% from this program.
Affiliate program is doing fine with 50 affiliates in the program but I need to invest more time in recruiting more affiliates with a relevant audience.
I recently started writing blog posts to drive organic traffic but I need to invest more time into writing more unique data-driven posts and promoting them via social channels.
Let’s talk about the numbers
As of June 2024, CoverDoc has 14k total registrations with 16k+ prep documents created.
10.3% website visitor to free registration conversion rate
64% trial to paid conversion rate
28% Stickiness (WAU / MAU)
Total revenue: $9,920
$1,250 MRR for subscriptions + $200 in PAYG revenue per month
87%+ profit margin on subscription plan
35+ mins saved per job application
What's your advice for people just getting started?
For those just starting out, I’d suggest focusing on distribution and a go-to-market plan as it is becoming a lot easier to build complex products with no-code tools.
There will be a lot of competition no matter how unique you think your idea is. Don’t obsess over the competition. Spend more time finding a unique insight about your target customer and develop a strong solution to address a specific problem. Then figure out where your target customer hangs out and who influences them.
Don’t be afraid to use AI to help get the most out of no-code tools. For example, I used ChatGPT and Gemini to help write Airtable formulas when I got stuck.
I’d also suggest spending a lot of time doing discovery work to make sure your product is a pain killer and urgent for your target audience to solve. While any job seeker can get value from CoverDoc, mid-level immigrant professionals and international students have a greater need for it due to language barriers and limited time on work visas.
Finally, spend the time early in the building process to get your analytics in place so you can start to identify patterns and leading indicators for retention and churn.
Thanks for sharing your story with such detail Ambar. Rooting for you! Give Ambar a follow on X or LinkedIn .
🍿 Katt builds in public
My actions, fails and wins on the road to ramen profitability with no-code
I have been mostly working on Build The Keyword the past weeks. We are staying away from the shiny objects and doing the ‘boring’ stuff. Email sequences, conversion rate optimisations, product improvements, never-ending marketing experiments (building backlinks, affiliate program, seo, reaching out to newsletters and publications and soon our first youtube video)
Here are some resources that helped me:
How to do programmatic SEO by Marc Lou
How to do keyword research for YouTube by Brian Dean
How to rank Youtube videos by Brian Dean
Great tweets on how to get backlinks by Connor
Best landing page for SaaS by Dan Kulkov
🙌 When you’re ready, here’s how I can help
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Inspiring as usual. Sometimes I think that you could make a great info product by making a database of all the tech stacks mentioned in your newsletter. For statistics, for alternative searching.