Hrishikesh Pardeshi
@hrishiptweets
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Dev turned founder at & ($3 million+ revenue). Tweets about my learnings from building bootstrapped tech startups.
Joined April 2019
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Flexiple is hitting new milestones rapidly!
We've now reached $3 million revenue, fully bootstrapped & $0 in paid marketing 🚀
Our startup journey (ARR):
- $0 in 1 year
- $1 mn in 4 years
- $2 mn in next 4 months
- $3 mn in next 3 months
Questions? Ask Me Anything 👇
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My 30-step SEO strategy for startups based on 4 years of learnings, marketing & growing my startups to 1 million+/month organic traffic.
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In the initial days of our startup, I had no clue about SEO.
5 years later, SEO is a crucial part of our marketing strategy.
I've built a robust 33-step SEO checklist based on my learnings.
Today, I am sharing it with you 🧵
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21 marketing lessons after 5 years of growing my startup from 0 to $3M in revenue.
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My startups get 750K/month organic traffic and SEO has been a major reason for our growth to $3 million+ revenue.
I honestly can't imagine a startup marketing plan that doesn't have SEO focus.
So here's my 30-step SEO strategy for startups based on 4 years of learnings 🧵
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21 lessons in marketing after 4 years of growing my own startup from 0 to $1mn in revenue 🧵
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"Build audience before product" — But how do you do it?
Here's my take on how to do it using a mix of marketing & writing, based on 4 years of growing my own startups.
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Canva, Adobe, Zapier have all mastered SEO & scaled to millions of monthly visitors!
I created 7 such case studies so you can implement the learnings to grow your startup with SEO 🚀
Includes our own case study of scaling to 1M+/mo :)
A masterclass in SEO 🧵`
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Marketing your startup doesn't have to be expensive!
My startup makes $2 million in revenue without spending $$$ on paid ads.
If you're on a $0 marketing budget, here are 8 things you can do with links to my threads on how exactly to do it 👇
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My startup has grown from 0 to $3 million+ revenue without spending $$ on paid ads.
I have done $0 or low budget marketing, using online channels effectively to market my products.
Here's a list of 10 such channels. A mega thread on my learnings over 4 years 🧵
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It took me 4 yrs to grasp how to use online channels to market my product(s) & grow my startup to $1 mn+ revenue.
Here are my learnings from using 11 channels for marketing & growth.
Includes:
• When to use
• How to use
• Use it for
• Pro-tips
A mega thread 🧵
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3 startup rules to live by:
1. plan your marketing, before planning your product.
2. buildd your audience, before building your product.
3. sell your solution, before selling your product.
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I've done a 2-year MBA from the top business school in India. But I've learnt 10x about marketing while growing my startup to $3 million+ revenue in 4 years.
I regularly share my learnings & experiences in marketing my startup.
Here's a list of my top 13 marketing threads 🧵
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My 2 startups, Flexiple & Remote Tools, get 70K/month & 30K/month organic traffic.
SEO is crucial to get you reliable & consistent traffic.
Here's my secret framework to help you achieve that (works for new websites too) 🧵
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My startups get 1 million+/month organic traffic.
SEO is key to our marketing strategy, and I recommend the same for others.
But I always get asked, "SEO tools are expensive, are there low-cost options?"
So I'm sharing my list of 25 FREE SEO tools, curated over last 4 years 🧵
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A startup is not a 9-to-5 job. It's a 24x7 commitment.
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10 lessons I have learned working 5 years in marketing as a tech startup founder. 🧵
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My startup will make $2 million in revenue this year with $0 spend on paid marketing.
Our strategy to grow organically:
- SEO
- Launch on free platforms
- Build audience on social media
- Side projects as marketing departments
Paid channels isn't the only way to grow & scale!
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I have bootstrapped my startup from 0 to $2 million+ revenue.
Bootstrapping is an art. It requires you to be smart, patient & resilient.
Here are 8 lessons/principles I have learnt over last 4 years that show how bootstrapped founders must build their startup 🧵
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Build audience before product.
But how do you do it?
Here's how I've built an audience across channels and grown my startups from 0 to $2 million revenues.
Involves a mix of marketing & writing. 🧵
(1/11)
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My curated list of 25 FREE SEO tools, that will help in marketing your startup 👇
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I run a $3 million revenue startup.
My team is spread across the world.
I manage all of the operations from my desk at home.
It's just amazing how many opportunities there are, to run your own business — there can't be a better time!
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Learnt this the hard way at our startup:
1) Paid ads ≠ Marketing
2) Organic channels work great!
2019:
- Spent $15,000 on Google ads
- Result: 0 new revenue
2020 & 2021:
- Focused on SEO & social media
- Result: $700K to $3M revenue!
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29 SEO marketing lessons after growing my startups from 0 to $2 million in revenue & 400K/month organic traffic. 🧵
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Marketing strategies to kickstart your startup:
1. Start a newsletter
2. Build an email list
3. Blog with SEO focus
4. Build audience on social media
5. Share content on community websites
6. Interview on podcasts
7. Write guest posts
8. Offer free trials
9. Start a podcast
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In my final year at IIM A, I rejected a well-paying job offer from BCG to do my own startup.
The next 4 years were a rigorous test of my patience & ability to learn new skills.
So 2021 was super special, as we hit the milestone of $1M revenue.
Equally & more excited for 2022!
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21 product lessons after 4 years of growing my startup & 9 years of writing software 👇
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It takes an entire family to raise a founder & build a startup.
For first 3 years, I couldn't afford my rent & living expenses.
My parents helped me out for 2 years, and my wife covered our expenses after that.
To all those silent heroes 🥂
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Unpopular opinion: Your startup tech doesn't need to be fancy.
In our early years, we used a Google sheet to run our freelance marketplace & generated $100,000 revenue.
Even now, at $2 million revenue, our marketing website runs on a no-code builder that costs us $10/mo.
(1/4)
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I've worked 10 years in tech and built numerous apps. But my $3 million-revenue startup runs entirely on no-code tools.
There's no shame in using out-of-the-box solutions. On the contrary, I sleep more peacefully at night.
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Startup disaster:
1. Find an idea
2. Build a product
3. Figure ways to do marketing
Startup success:
1. Spot a problem
2. Build an audience
3. Ask & share what you learn
4. Build your product iteratively
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Golden rule at our startup:
We are not building it until there's a marketing plan ready.
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India finally gets a real unicorn startup!
BrowserStack raises $200 million to push its valuation to $4 billion.
For first 6 years, they did not raise any money and they have always been profitable.
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I worked 3 years as an engineer at Adobe & Amazon. Learnt tech, but wasn't satisfied.
Did MBA & explored consulting at BCG. Learnt business, but wasn't happy.
Founded my startup after that, when I was 26. Finally liked what I was doing.
It's never too late to do what you like.
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We've finally reached $1 million in revenue!
Took us 4 yrs, but we did it ENTIRELY bootstrapped :)
It was tough to quit the great work & pay at Adobe, Amazon & BCG. But deciding to build my company on my own terms was the best decision I've ever taken.
Next stop: $10 million🚀
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Marketing your startup with SEO:
1) Get the basics right
- Title, meta, h1s, h2s
- Page speed
- Mobile responsive
2) Build domain authority
- Write guest posts
- Submit to directories
- Launch on free platforms
3) Keyword focused blogs
- Low difficulty
- Low volume
- Long tail
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21 lessons in product building after 4 years of running my own startup & 9 years of writing software 🧵👇
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I have bootstrapped my startup to $2 million+ revenue in 4 years.
Being an engineer, my natural instinct initially was to build a product the moment I had an idea.
But I was SO WRONG.
As a startup founder, your focus should be to build a business and not fancy tech.
(1/5)
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I had a stable, well-paying job at Amazon.
I left that to do my MBA. Got another well-paying consulting job at BCG.
But I ditched all of that and did my own startup. Survived on my savings and a modest fellowship stipend for 2 years.
Yet it was one of my best life decisions.
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Marketing your startup & getting early traction is not easy.
Over last 4 years, I've launched my startups & 10+ products on multiple platforms while growing to $2mn revenues.
Here's my curated list of 25 startup launch platforms, compared across 5 parameters. 🧵
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Startup marketing strategies that work:
1. Start a newsletter
2. Blog with SEO focus
3. Interview on podcasts
4. Build audience on social media
5. Video content with focus on YouTube
6. Sharing content on community websites
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Our Startup, Flexiple, is now a $2 million+ business and in our early years, Google sheets was our MVP.
We generated $100,000 revenue and got great validation just using sheets!
Here are 8 things to keep in mind while you build your startup's MVP 🧵
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21 lessons in product building after 5 years of running my own startup & 10 years of writing software.
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Untold truth of startups:
You're always short of talent & you're always hiring.
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A simple productivity framework I use personally at work to focus and get more done daily for my startup 👇
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We hit a new milestone
@Flexipletweets
🚀
- $2 million revenue
- ENTIRELY bootstrapped
Our startup journey so far (ARR):
- $0 in 1 year
- $1 million in 4 years
- $2 million in next 4 months
Building my startup on my own terms 💪
Questions? Ask Me Anything 👇
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Career advice:
Work for a startup in your early years.
The amount of learning is exponential compared to working at a large company.
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Working 3 years at Adobe & Amazon made me realise:
1. I don't want to return to a corporate job
2. I want to make money, but on my own terms
I was so determined to make my startup work, that I didn't give up even after failing to earn a single $ for an entire year.
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Golden rule for startups:
Don't come up with reasons to say it won't work. Find ways to make it work.
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Our startup hit record revenue ($1 million) in Feb this year and then doubled it in next 4 months.
We achieved this while entirely working from home.
Great work can happen anywhere. Bosses who want everyone back in office are just in denial of this.
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My startups get 200K/month organic traffic.
Our SEO marketing strategy:
• Keyword focused blogs - Consistent traffic
• Guest posts - Build domain authority
• Internal links - SEO juice to all pages
• Stats & analysis - Links organically
• Guides - Links by outreach
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Working at a startup before building one yourself is a serious advantage.
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Bootstrapped companies can't scale ⇒ Mailchimp, bootstrapped for 20 years, sold for $12 billion.
Fully remote companies can't scale ⇒ GitLab, 1200-member all-remote company, IPOs for $15 billion.
Don't let others' skepticism drive what you should or should not be doing.
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Amazon's advertising business makes 3x revenue of Twitter, Snapchat & Pinterest combined!
More interestingly — It's set to overtake AWS, Amazon's cash cow, to become the most profitable business line.
I am doing a detailed breakdown on this. If you'd like a copy, reply with 👋
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Mailchimp's $12bn exit shows that you can build multi-billion dollar bootstrapped companies.
Bootstrapping is an art. It requires you to be smart, patient & resilient.
I've bootstrapped my startup to $3mn revenue and here's my take on how bootstrapped founders need to build 👇
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I have been building products & writing software for 10+ years.
For last 5 years, I have done it for my startups growing to $2 million+ revenue.
As a small team or startup, it is tough to consistently meet product goals & keep shipping.
Here's a 8-step framework I follow 👇
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I run 4 newsletters with 6000+ subscribers.
It has helped in marketing my startup, and growing to $3mn+ revenue.
But when I started in 2018, I had 0 online presence.
I went from 0 to 1259 subscribers. In a week. Without writing a word of content.
Full story of how I did it 🧵
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Startups MVPs don't need to be products.
Landing page, email newsletter, demo video — all qualify as startup MVPs.
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Our startups get 1.5M monthly SEO traffic!
We write quality content & do amazing optimisations. But that's not it.
We also have a solid marketing strategy for link building.
Today I am sharing 5 frameworks we use for internal linking 🧵
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Me in 2017:
1. Sees a problem
2. Builds a product
3. Expects everyone will use it
Me in 2021:
1. Sees a problem
2. Hack to validate if problem is worth solving
3. Generate interest by talking about problem & solution
4. Build, launch & marketing consistently
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At $2 million revenue, we do 0 outbound sales at our startup.
Our top sources of client leads:
• Repeat clients
• Referrals
• Google search (SEO)
• Twitter
• Product Hunt
• LinkedIn
Yes, you can grow & scale your startup entirely with inbound marketing!
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Marketing strategy for my startup, Remote Tools:
2018-2020
• Create quality content & hope it goes viral
• Result ⇒ 90,000 visitors in 2 years.
2021
• Razor focus on SEO
• Result ⇒ 680,000 visitors every month!
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10 lessons I have learned working 10 years in tech as a startup founder, engineer & product manager. 🧵
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7 principles I live by as I bootstrap my startup:
1) Cash flow is king
2) Make your first $ without worrying about process
3) Start as a service, build product later
4) Keep shipping
5) Spend wisely
6) Make it functional, then beautiful
7) Hire smartly (remote, part-time)
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The customer doesn’t care if your startup has a tech product or a manual process.
The only thing that matters is whether you solve their problem.
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The best marketing for your startup is done by your customers.
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Startup "ideas" book is worthless.
Rather people should maintain a journal of "problems".
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For my startup, Remote Tools:
• we wrote ~150 SEO blogs,
• during feb to sep 2021,
• average length of ~1000 words
From this:
• we get ~1M monthly traffic,
• 80% traffic comes from ~40 blogs
SEO is all about creating high-quality, well-researched content.
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ChatGPT is revolutionizing SEO!
Let's take a deep dive on why ChatGPT is the new SEO superpower.
9 ways to make the most of ChatGPT for SEO 🧵
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You're running out of excuses to launch your startup.
• Can't find a great idea ⇒ Pick a problem you face
• Quitting job is risky ⇒ Start a side-hustle
• Don't know to code ⇒ Use no-code tools
• Marketing is expensive ⇒ Use organic channels like SEO, Newsletter, Blog
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4 key things that scaled my startup's SEO traffic to 1M+:
1) Keywords — Low competition, high volume keywords
2) Quality content — Write for humans, optimise for Google
3) Internal links — SEO juice flowing across pages
4) Website authority — a) Guest posts b) Stats & guides
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If you want to scale your startup's marketing, you should STEAL Zapier's SEO playbook!
They get ~2M monthly visitors & have 50K+ automated landing pages 🤯
Launching a detailed guide on Zapier's SEO tomorrow. Subscribe below to get it in your inbox 👇
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SEO is one of the MOST reliable marketing channels!
We scaled our startups to 1.5M visits/month, and it continues to drive our revenue.
But to crack SEO, you first need the RIGHT MINDSET.
Over 5 years, I've accumulated 11 key learnings that will help you buildd this mindset 🧵
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At the end of 1st year of my startup, we had
- burnt $10,000,
- 2 useless products and,
- 0 customers
People often ask how we managed to still carry on and give it another shot.
Well, we just believed that things will work out. Some times, all you need is irrational optimism.
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I wish I had focused more on SEO & marketing and lesser on building the product.
— Every first-time startup founder
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SEO is a long-term investment for your startup, but the payoff is surely worth it :)
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Building your startup is a marathon, not a sprint.
For us, it took 2 years to be able to cover our monthly expenses. In the next 2 years, we reached $1 million in revenue and doubled that in just the next 4 months!
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SEO disaster:
1. Pick a topic you like
2. Write high-quality content
3. Research & stuff keywords
SEO success:
1. Find niche topics around your startup
2. Research low competition keywords
3. Write SEO optimised, high-quality content
4. Distribute & add internal links
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Unpopular opinion:
Startups are not all about moving & scaling fast.
Slowing down to grow in a controlled & repeatable way helps you buildd a profitable & sustainable business.
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If your product or service sucks, no amount of marketing or SEO can save your startup.
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Marketing your startup doesn't have to be expensive!
You can:
• Write guest posts
• Start a newsletter
• Publish SEO blogs
• Launch on free platforms
• Submit to startup directories
• Build audience on social media
• Engage on community websites
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SEO is NOT free marketing. You have to invest time, effort and money.
However, unlike paid ads, once you get results or traffic from SEO, it stays with you without any additional spend.
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To execute faster, you need a strong team at your startup. There's no way you can do everything by yourself.
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Your startup's marketing doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to be effective.
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As a founder who has built 2 startups & launched 10s of products, people often ask me, "How do you know an idea is worth working on?"
Well, today I am sharing the top 3 ways I've used to validate my ideas:
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The first step to building your own startup is to admit that you're crazy enough to do it.
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The best startup ideas don't come from looking for trends.
They come from solving your own problems.
Create something that YOU would be willing to use. You better understand the market for that product than anyone else.
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My startups get 1M+/month organic traffic.
Our SEO strategy:
1) Keyword focused blogs — Consistent traffic
2) Guides — Links by outreach
3) Stats & analysis — Links organically
4) Guest posts — Build domain authority
5) Internal links — SEO juice to all pages
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1) Marketing starts much before you even build the product.
You should start building your audience & letting people know about your product, much before you actually start building the product.
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I started my career chasing big companies & brands - Adobe, Amazon, BCG. But I wasn't happy.
After 5 years, I founded my startup and have enjoyed working every bit on it.
Startup isn't the only destination, but if you chase happiness, you will end up doing something you like.
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10 new "unicorns" in India in 2021, 6 in last 6 days.
I've never been able to grasp why huge loss-making businesses are celebrated & made heroes.
So for those who want to build a profitable business, here are 8 lessons from bootstrapping my startup to $1mn revenue in 4 years 🧵
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What focusing on SEO can do to your startup’s traffic:
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Simple SEO strategy for your startup:
1) List a set of topics in your niche
2) Get keyword list from a tool using (1) as seed keywords
3) Filter for high volume, low competition
4) Pick top keywords
5) Write SEO-optimised blogs & share w/ your audience
6) Evaluate & repeat 2-5
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4 excuses to overcome, to launch your startup NOW:
1/ Can't find a great idea ⇒ Pick a problem you face
2/ Quitting job is risky ⇒ Start a side-hustle
3/ Don't know to code ⇒ Use no-code tools
4/ Marketing is expensive ⇒ a) Start a blog or newsletter b) Focus on SEO
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Not every startup has to be a billion dollar unicorn.
People like me are happy building million dollar profitable businesses.
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The best way to silence your startup critics is to start making money.
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Out of 107 unicorns in India, only 20 are profitable!
FirstCry, an e-commerce baby products platform, is worth $2.7B.
- Rs 1700 Cr revenue
- Rs 215 Cr profits
- beats giants like Amazon & Flipkart!
But, how did FirstCry grow so massive in just 10 years? 👇
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There are limits to what you can build with No Code.
But until you reach those limits, do yourself a favour and use these tools at your startup.
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Start building an audience before you even think of building a product.
You don't need to quit your job for this. You can build audience on the side.
- Publish blogs.
- Start a newsletter.
- Write on social media.
(1/10)
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