🚪How Jeremy turned a no-code mvp into a $4,000,000 startup

The No-Code Success Story of Jeremy Redman and TaskMagic

Sep 13, 2024

Hello there,

I had absolutely no idea. Taskmagic (the company/founder who acquired this newsletter) is a wild success story all made possible with no-code. It blew my mind.

Read about:

✨ Trailer park to Hollywood
💥 Building an automated virtual assistant
💎 Tips for cold outreach
🔥 The advantages of Appsumo
👑 Beef-as-marketing

Enjoy and happy building.

PS: missed last week’s interview? Read here how Marc turned his passion and professional knowledge into a a 5-figure ARR app.

🎈 4 Cool Finds

Find your dream job in No-Code + AI with the job board from No-Code Alliance
This new Glide feature blew my mind
H1gallery is an amazing directory for H1 inspiration
Mailead helps you to do cold email outreach at scale in the right way. Get 50% off with promo code EXITS

🔥 No-Code Founder Interview

Learn every week from a real world no-code success story

Trailer park baby

Jeremy Redman his life started in a trailer park. After going to State University in Michigan he worked for a while in the corporate world. He moved across the country to manage operations in the film industry and started playing with the OG no-code tool: Wordpress. That together with Zapier automations became his first web app, which he then turned into a mobile app with apppresser: a Wordpress plugin that created a mobile app from a Wordpress site.

After a while he got bored of running around on film sets, he wanted to focus on his dream of starting his own company. So in 2020 he started building no-code tech companies. He built and grew 3 six-figure companies (that is a story for another time) and is now working on his 4th and biggest one yet, from his office on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

Frustrations

The idea of TaskMagic started from frustration. Jeremy wanted to automate stuff with Zapier but was frustrated with the limitations of the API. He just wanted the tool to “click a button” or “type a thing” or “grab that thing from that website”. So like any no-coder would, he started hacking a solution together to validate the idea.

V1

In the first version (early 2023) everything was still manual. It was just a Tally Form with logic that brought in the API endpoints that Zapier had that people could choose from.

Everything was still way too manual. When I think back at that, that seems insane. But it gave us the opportunity to really learn how we could build the automations ourselves for them.

Jeremy got those first users from cold outreach: knocking on doors of small businesses, cold emails and cold DMS. There were around 200 people at $199 per month ($30,000 in MRR).

During this v1 there was a lot of miscommunication. So in the next version they started asking customers to send them short loom videos on what they wanted their automation flows to be.

Push that button

When that brought in the next 100 customers, they started creating the real TaskMagic software that used the customer video (where they recorded their clicking, typing, and copying/pasting) to create automatically automations. Jeremy did this behind the scenes, so they could slowly test the tool and improve. As they automated more and more they could bring the price of the product down.

After that first simple form, Taskmagic moved to a combination of no-code and custom code. The backend was built onto an open source project (Puppeteer). The frontend was done with Bubble, the marketing website with Webflow and the database was almost entirely Airtable.

Hi [first name]

Most of TaskMagic’s user growth has been by cold outreach (in the beginning), affiliates and referrals. Jeremy thinks most bootstrapped founders don’t realize how powerful (and scalable at low price) cold email outreach is. For Jeremy his startups, this has always been a crucial strategy. His tips to do this successfully:

Target properly: make sure who you’re reaching out to people who may need your service.
Get use cases for that target customer: even if you’re making it up at the beginning, make use cases that you can share with them. They don’t have to actually be from prior customers when you’re starting.
Be a therapist; Jeremy used to send something along the lines of “can you just vent to me for 15 min of something that’s keeping you up at night?” He listened to them and then addressed their problems with Taskmagic where posssible.
Make it personal: At the beginning. Jeremy send personalized Loom videos to thousands of customers. It makes a difference to hear the founder/maker use their name and take time. At the beginning you have time to give. So give it to them.
Don’t be afraid to pivot your target: make adjustments as you go as you get feedback from people who want to talk to you.

AppSumo record holder

In the summer of 2023, for the official launch of Taskmagic, Jeremy decided to list on AppSumo. There are downsides to launching on Appsumo but the reach of Appsumo is unlike anything else. Jeremy believes it’s a great way to build your first community members and get paying customers. You have to sell a lifetime deal but that is a good thing. The only way to know that anyone wants your product, is if they whip out that credit card and pay.

A lot of things change when you’re talking to someone and you ask them to pay. Everything they say after you ask them for their credit card is their REAL FEELINGS. I actually don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t pay. No one should. There are too many opinions. The only opinions that matter are the opinions behind credit card charges.

Jeremy shares that Appsumo helped them level up TaskMagic because they had to proof their mettle on a daily basis. The revenue, YouTube channel and community skyrocketed and most importantly improved the product at a rapid pace.

Beef-as-marketing

Last year Jeremy started punching up to competitors. Not without good reason:

Zapier took the TaskMagic app out of their integration store. TaskMagic their intention was to use Zapier for the API based tasks and the clicking and typing was TaskMagic.
People often complain how expensive Zapier is
People often complain how restricted their free plan is

So Jeremy turned that frustration into an opportunity and started marketing Taskmagic as a free and better Zapier alternative. And it has been working well. Taskmagic is now at almost $4 million revenue and over 7,000 paying customers. With just a team of 4, they are trying to stay lean and win the battle against giant Zapier.

I’m definitely rooting for that little team. Thanks for sharing your story Jeremy, subscribe to his YouTube channel, his build in public updates are great (and hilarious).