The Startup Series

@thestartupseries.bsky.social

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The Startup Series is a digital magazine spotlighting real stories from early-stage founders, creators, and innovators. From scrappy beginnings to scaling strategies, we break down how businesses actually get built.

📈 Facebook’s average CTR for lead-gen ads = 2.53% 📉 For traffic campaigns = 1.57% Only a few industries (arts, real estate, restaurants, travel) break the 2% mark consistently, so if you’re below average, tweak your copy. If you’re above it, scale it.
Another great graphic from Ale Estner - 10 actionable tips for founder-led sales success.
Facebook remains the larges platform for advertising, but TikTok isn't far behind.
ChatGPT now refers more traffic than Reddit (via Ahrefs).
Lemon8 hit 10 million downloads in months, before TikTok barely mentioned it, influencer word-of-mouth done right!
Alex Estner created this to help grow your business first to 10 customers, then to a 100. What do you think? Anything you agree or disagree with?
I have yet to see a better (or at least more enjoyable) marketing cheat sheet than this.
This is an incredible graph. If you're not in the top 10 search engine results, you have little to no chance of clicks from mobile searches.
💡 One-man SEO agency 💰 $11,500/month 📈 90% profit margin 👤 No team 🎯 No ads See how he did it → https://startupseries.io/one-man-seo-agency-11k-month/
Notion started as a simple notes app. Now it’s a workspace, a habit tracker, a business hub, whatever people make it.
From student frustration to a £4m+ brand. Sid Sethi took a broken pair of glasses and built Specscart into the UK’s fastest-growing eyewear company. https://startupseries.io/how-sid-sethi-built-a-4m-a-year-eyewear-brand-in-the-uk/
The foolproof start up path!
Live from the OpenAI server rooms as ChatGPT goes down..
ChatGPT is reportedly down for a lot of users..
Silicon Valley’s entire business model in one tweet.
Kristin Hanes sailed away from cubicle life and now makes $20,000 a month from a blog on a boat. https://startupseries.io/how-kristin-hanes-built-a-20000-a-month-blog-while-sailing-the-world/
Shelley Marmor STARTED with a blog about solo travel in Mexico and built it up to 5 blogs, making $55K a month with SEO, systems, and a healthy fear of alarm clocks. https://startupseries.io/shelley-marmor-blogs/
Angel Olavarria made his own skincare brand because nothing on the shelf worked. Bootstrapped it, formulated it himself, and scaled it to $115,000 a month with Amazon ads. Read how he did it: https://startupseries.io/angel-olavarria-strive/
At 22, Dylan Jacob dropped out of college and built Brümate, now it’s one of the biggest DTC drinkware brands in the US. Proof that warm beer really is a universal pain point. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/dylan-jacob-brumate/
Matt Moss built a private photo widget for his girlfriend and it turned into the most downloaded app in America. Romance isn’t dead, it’s just VC-funded now. https://startupseries.io/how-matt-moss-birthday-gift-became-an-app-with-50m-users/
Nicki Minaj used it to sell sneakers, other brands use it to skip the tech headache. UPPFIRST is now making $10K/month helping people sell without the chaos. https://startupseries.io/how-arnaud-touret-built-a-10000-a-month-ecommerce-platform/
Started with a cold email promising 100M views, now runs a 100-person team pumping out 26,000+ clips a month, with $5M+ ARR. Read how he did it: https://startupseries.io/how-logan-forsyth-grew-a-social-media-agency-to-5m-a-year/
Calday is proof that you don’t need a big idea. You just need to solve a small problem that annoys everyone. Like scheduling. $5K/month says it works. https://startupseries.io/how-calday-bootstrapped-to-5k-a-month-with-a-simple-scheduling-tool/
Craig writes about baseball and makes $280K a year. Do what you love (but don't forget to monetise it). https://startupseries.io/how-craig-calcaterra-built-a-280k-a-year-baseball-newsletter/
Most people complain about SEO. Vadim built a tool to do it for him, then started charging people for it. Now it makes $8,000 a month. This is how he did it - https://startupseries.io/seojuice-saas/
Another story where two friends say, “We should build something” It now earns $30,000 a year and growing. https://startupseries.io/how-two-guys-built-a-30k-a-year-stock-market-app-in-18-months/
Locked himself in a hotel, learned to code, built 17 apps in a year. Sold one for $200K. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-a-self-taught-coder-built-and-sold-talknotes-for-200k-in-just-11-months/
These guys built a Twitter thread editor to promote their startup. The editor went viral, so they pivoted to the thing they made by accident, now 150K+ creators use it. https://startupseries.io/how-typefully-went-from-a-side-project-to-a-saas-used-by-thousands-of-creators/
While everyone was arguing about no-code vs. full-code, Simon Hamp just quietly built a tool, launched it, and made $100K in 3 months. https://startupseries.io/how-simon-hamp-built-a-mobile-app-builder-made-100k-in-three-months/
Turns out people still hate scheduling things. So Calday made it slightly less painful, and now they’re making $5K a month. https://startupseries.io/how-calday-bootstrapped-to-5k-a-month-with-a-simple-scheduling-tool/
Most e-commerce platforms are busy adding features nobody asked for, these guys built one that just helps people sell things. Now it brings in $10,000 a month. https://startupseries.io/how-arnaud-touret-built-a-10000-a-month-ecommerce-platform/
Nathan Barry almost shut ConvertKit down, until he started cold-emailing bloggers. Now it makes $45m a year. Don't overlook cold outreach!
Sid Sethi didn’t invent a new lens, disrupt the supply chain, or pitch on Dragon’s Den. He just identified a pain point and built a profitable eyewear brand that now does $4M a year. https://startupseries.io/how-sid-sethi-built-a-4m-a-year-eyewear-brand-in-the-uk/
EDGE Skills is an AI startup that quietly grew to $58K a month helping people sound less robotic in emails. The irony is not lost. https://startupseries.io/how-edge-skills-grew-into-a-58k-a-month-ai-coaching-platform-in-3-years/
Craig Calcaterra turned his love of baseball into a newsletter. Now it makes $280,000 a year. Apparently writing about sports isn’t just for Twitter arguments. https://startupseries.io/how-craig-calcaterra-built-a-280k-a-year-baseball-newsletter/
Not every startup needs to be a billion-dollar rocket ship. This one quietly makes $30K a year helping people follow stock news. No drama. No pitch decks. Just working software. https://startupseries.io/how-two-guys-built-a-30k-a-year-stock-market-app-in-18-months/
Arvid Kahl built FeedbackPanda in his living room and managed to scaled it to $55K a month, then he sold it and wrote a book about it to help other bootstrapping founders. Now he's building http://podscan.fm in public and tweeting his journey.
Shelley Marmor’s empire: ✅ Solo travel blog ✅ SEO on lock ✅ 5 blogs, $55K a month She went from teaching English abroad to quietly printing cash online. You don’t need to go viral, you need to rank. Read how: https://startupseries.io/how-shelley-marmor-built-a-55k-month-travel
Justin Welsh built a $2M brand by writing online and selling what he learned, now he's scaling it to $5m. He might call it a “one-person business,” but it’s generating CEO money.
In four months, they generated nearly half a billion views without spending a cent on paid media, proving that the model worked. How the agency behind Iman Gadzhi and Grant Cardone built his business: https://startupseries.io/how-logan-forsyth-grew-a-social-media-agency-to-5m-a-year/
A great quote for a recent interview with Ken Griffin, famous investor behind Citadel.
Turning frustration into innovation, Sid Sethi built the UK's fastest-growing eyewear brand from a student startup to a $4M/year business. https://startupseries.io/how-sid-sethi-built-a-4m-a-year-eyewear-brand-in-the-uk/
While most were spending their money on airfryers and Stanley cups, Cahyo Subroto spent his money on a small SaaS he found on acquire.com. Fast forward 12 months and it's now making $1.7mil a year. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-mrscraper-became-a-million-dollar-business/
"I didn’t “tell” the world, I showed them", how Chiara Operto built a $58,000 a month AI coaching business: https://startupseries.io/how-edge-skills-grew-into-a-58k-a-month-ai-coaching-platform-in-3-years/
A quote that will resonate with all entrepreneurs, founders, builders and startups.
From teaching English in Mexico to earning $55K a month from 5 niche blogs, Shelley Marmor quietly built the dream. No audience. No ads. Just compound SEO. See how she did it: https://startupseries.io/how-shelley-marmor-built-a-55k-month-travel-blogging-business/
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Matt Moss made a widget so his girlfriend could see selfies on her homescreen. That side project became Locket. It hit 20M downloads and raised $12.5M. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-matt-moss-birthday-gift-became-an-app-with-50m-users/
Comfort is the enemy of progress.
She was laid off from radio, moved onto a sailboat with no running water, and started blogging from the café at her gym. Today, The Wayward Home earns up to $20K/month helping others live nomadically. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-kristin-hanes-built-a-20000-a-month-blog-whil
Is dropshipping dead? Not if you ask Cole Turner, who built a $2million e-commerce business while studying for his degree. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-a-cole-turner-built-a-2-million-dropshipping-business-while-finishing-his-degree/
Does anyone still call Elon lucky?
Despite struggling with SEO and search rankings, Avneesh Kohli has built his deal hunting app Savewise into a $25,000 a month business with hundreds of thousands of users. Read the full story: https://startupseries.io/how-one-founder-turned-a-deal-hunting-app-into-a-25k-a-month-business/
Canva’s first pitch deck was rejected by over 100 VCs. The founder, Melanie Perkins, kept building. Today: $26B valuation.
Angel Olavarria wasn’t a skincare expert, But after solving his own skin problems, he launched Strive, a men’s skincare brand now making $100K+ a month. Find out how he did, from the beginning: https://startupseries.io/how-angel-olavarria-built-a-1-million-mens-skincare-brand/
Pricing is always tricky for startups, but Cursor’s recent changes are a masterclass in what not to do! They have now apologised, but is it too little too late for some users are have they already managed to become an essential tool?