The whole story

Initially, Marc is trapped by the engineering mindset, which attempt to build software which "seems to be a great idea". Keep adding on feature to them, without consulting and research about the market.

The software "Tinder for sport lovers", but was failed at the end due to various reasons:

• Lack of technical skill
• No marketing skills
• No idea how to monetise

Later, Marc have attempt again to build the next billion dollar idea, which is a AI startup in Korea. Even though Marc was funded this time, The mindset that caused previous failure ended this startup as well.

Just building -> no customer

Two things wrong with this approach:

1. Product without market need is just a toy, no matter how fancy the toy looks
2. Even if the idea is great, solo founder is unable to obtain traction to their work. No immediate market feedbacks, no iterations, no connection with other founder to learn from and discover hidden opportunities that lies within the community.

Marc reflected upon this journey, and did two things to improve:

1. Sharing his solo founder journey with the community
2. Abandoned "billion dollar idea", and start working on smaller, manageable projects, that can iterate fast.

By combining these two strategies, Marc is able to:

• build his community and connection
• locate niche pain points with the community that can be solved by a SaaS
• validate and even sell the idea before making it
• attracts more connections to enlarge his community
• rinse and repeat

What Marc does extremely well

Building a personal brand

Marc understands the success of solo entrepreneurs can be achieved by building a personal brand. Which allows him to compound the following aspects:

• Connections - Increasing followers and friends
• Reputations - Positive feedback from his existing users
• Content - Even old content can attract new users (ever green contents)
• Social media - Increase attraction on both Youtube and X

These all help hims tremendously, to distribute new product, and increase customer's trust on his product. Especially for the new course he launched, which is called ""

Marc's personal brand is built by:

• Sharing his personal journey
• Give insight of create software in the community
• Advocate for atomic SAAS and fast iteration
• Engage proactively with his community

Fast iteration and consistency

Marc iterate everything with great consistency, not just his product. Including:

• Technical and coding abilities
• Marketing skills: SEO, launching, get attraction by making fun videos
• Content creation: Video editing, how to write viral tweets

Life work balance

Marc consistently exercise each day, eating health food and priorities sleep. These habits are often overlook by other solo founder, which can avoid burn out and keep motivations consistent.

What could we learn from Marc?

Start to build your personal brand, even before you have any product ideas. The benefits will compound over time.

Focus on customer need, locate the pain points to build a atomic pill, and validate/sell before you invest the time to build.

Prioritise you health, keeps you consistent and motivated.