Idea Surfr

Please use this post as a board to share a high level overview for your startup. I'll try to share my high level thoughts, and hope others will do the same.

You are also welcome to send your pitch via DM.

I love the membership model of Costco.

You likely know the magic of Costco is their business runs at breakeven and 90% of profits come from membership fees.

What if there was a more extreme version of Costco with a $1,000 or $10,000 annual fee existed and gut the margins on the products and services offered like Costco

Houses, cars, motorcycles, college, taxes, insurance premiums, vacations

It’s honestly insane how one single video can change a business.

Here’s what one viral video did for us:

- 800k+ views across social media (reposted by dozens of accounts)

- Thousands of visits to our website

- 500+ free trials started (with credit card)

-150+ paying customers

- $15k+ in new MRR

But that wasn’t even the most surprising part:

- Dozens of VCs reached out

- +70% month-over-month revenue growth

We immediately started preparing two more videos.

The launch strategy itself was actually very simple :

- We coordinated with ~10 friends who have solid Twitter/X accounts.

- As soon as the video went live, they all reposted it at the same time.

That initial push gave the algorithm enough signal.

After that, the video took off organically and went fully viral.

Just distribution + timing.

I’m dropping the link to the video just below if you’re curious.

Click here to see it

Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Ciao 👋

Hey, just wanted to share some notes after spending the last year launching products from "original" ideas - and why I've since pivoting to cloning instead. I thought I could find things people hadn't thought of, gaps in the market, ideas that fell through the cracks, etc.

That all changed when I watched a Starter Story interview with a guy who literally just... clones apps. He has 3 apps/services doing $30k+ MRR. He finds something already making money, makes it 1% better/different, and ships.

That video broke my brain a little. So I started researching. What apps are actually cloneable? How are they successful? Could a solo dev actually build these?

166 ideas saved to my database later, these are my takeaways.

1. B2B wins, but not for the reason you think.

63% of profitable small-medium SaaS apps I found are B2B.

But it's not because B2B is "easier to sell." It's because businesses have budgets. They don't agonize over $100/month the way consumers do over $5/mo. It does take longer to sell B2B, but it is stickier and the rewards are larger.

The average MRR in my data is ~$25k/month. That's $300k/year from one person selling to other businesses.

2. The $5k-$50k/month sweet spot is wide open.

64% of the ideas I researched live in this range.

Big enough to replace a salary, but small enough that nobody well-funded is coming after you. This is where small, bootstrapped teams/founders win.

3. Validated demand beats originality.

Every idea in my database has verified MRR. Not "I think this could work" - actual proof that people already pay for this. This is a major point - knowing demand already exists is HUGE.

Stop trying to invent something new and find something that works and make it better for a specific audience.

4. You're more capable than you think.

92% of the apps I researched are solo-buildable. Not "theoretically possible with 80-hour weeks", but actually built and run by one person.

I once heard someone say "VC money is like rocket fuel. It's great if you're trying to launch into space, but it doesn't help if you're just trying to drive a car."

Most of these apps are cars. Simple. Profitable. Built by normal developers solving boring problems.

5. Most of these can ship in a month.

44% of the ideas in my data are buildable in 4 weeks or less. 69% in 5 weeks or less.

You're not building Salesforce. You're building a focused tool that does one thing well.

6. People quit too early. People quit too late.

The line between them is unfortunately thin.

I have an app that helps students find off-campus housing. Started slow. Really slow. For a while I wondered if I should kill it. But the costs were low so I let it live. Today it outranks Zillow on Google for certain searches and I can sell to landlords for summer renters - something I never planned for.

The difference between "quit" and "keep going" was slight traction. Not massive traction. Just enough signal that people actually wanted it.

7. The boring ideas win.

Everyone's chasing AI. Meanwhile, my data shows there are many products quietly making money like:

• SMS forwarding tools
• Local file converters
• AirPods finders
• Calorie trackers
• Supplement tracking apps
• Alcohol consumption trackers

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Hope you enjoyed and happy cloning!