Bootstrapping Testimonial to $13k MRR after many failed products - Damon Chen, Testimonial
Damon Chen, who is the founder of Testimonial, a product that collects video testimonials that he launched back in December 2020, and has grown it to $13k MRR since then. Damon quit his stable job of 8 years at Cisco to pursue his dream of building a better life for himself as an indie hacker. This didn’t come easily for Damon, as he launched several products which made 0 revenue before hitting big with Testimonial. He’s also built some other fantastic products, such as embed.so and channel.so, as well as acquiring Supportman off fellow Indie Hacker Noah Bragg.
What we covered in this episode:
- Damon's failed startup attempts
- Why he builds for fun
- Quitting his job and pivoting to Testimonial
- Using code from other projects
- How he went from 0 to 3k in 3 days
- Damon's approach to validation
- Growth tactics used to get to $13k MRR
- Having other projects for fun (Embed and Channel)
- Acquiring Supportman
- Growing his Twitter to 30k
Recommendations
- Book: Getting Acquired
- Podcast: My First Million
- Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels
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