TalkNotes Founder Interview
Learn how Nico built an AI voice note taking app to $3.5K MRR in just a few months with paid advertising.
1. What's your startups name, what does it do, how long have you been working on it and (optional) your MRR?
TalkNotes! It's an AI VoiceNote app, I've been working on it since August 2023, and it's at $3500 MRR
2. What's your name and what were you doing before?
My name is Nico, and before that, I launched lots of apps. Before launching apps I was doing advertising and eCommerce.
3. How did you come up with your startup and it's name?
Honestly, I just took whatever domain name was available. I wanted something related to voice + note, talknotes was available so I took it!
4. Are you a programmer, if so, how did you learn and how long did it take?
I learned to code in around 2 months. I took a course about Python, Machine learning and making Webapps using Node. But this only gave me the basics, I think it easily took me a year to be comfortable enough to make anything I want.
5. How long did it take you to build a mvp, did you do any validation?
I made the MVP in 5 or 6 days I think. I posted on some online directories and Twitter, and validated the idea like that.
6. What was your launch like, what did you do, was it a success?
The first launch was mid-successful, but when I posted on ProductHunt it blew up!
7. How long did it take to get your first customer?
Under 24h after the launch!
8. What's your top marketing methods and how can others start doing them?
To validate ideas, definitely posting on Twitter and directories. To grow/scale, Meta ads has been my #1 channel.
Posting on Twitter and directories is pretty easy, you just need a good landing page and write a nice post. For ads it's a bit more complex, I have 7 years of experience in advertising, but I'd definitely recommend studying the kind of ads you get on your newsfeed
9. Whats the top 5 tools you use to run your startup?
- Nuxt + Tailwind! I started coding in vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, but recently switched to Nuxt/Tailwind and it's a game-changer, much faster!
- Cloudflare Pages! It's a 100% free hosting with unlimited bandwidth, perfect to go with Nuxt
- ChatGPT + Copilot. Pretty obvious now, but I use them for 80% of my tasks. Fron coding to writing content
- Milanote: No one know about this one but it's the absolute goat when it comes to organizing ideas and brainstorming. It's basically a virtual whiteboard. Absolutely love it.
- Plausible / Simple Analytics. Google Analytics is bloated af and. the new UI is terrible, so I ended up removing it completely and switched to those tools. Only downside is that they're privacy-first, so tracking is not 100% accurate.
10. What would you do differently if starting over?
I would focus on a product with a higher value. Talknotes have $12/month subscriptions, which isn't much when you need to spend $30-$50 in ads to get customers. I make the money back after a couple of months of subscription, but you need to manage cash flow properly.