How to become a solo-founder in 100 days

Just over 100 days to go

Welcome to 352 new subscribers who joined last week 👋

There are just over 100 days left in 2023

Most people who want to start a business will coast into the new year having made no progress.

But by setting a few deadlines for ourselves, we can

1. Test ideas

2. Launch a business

3. Get customers and monetize

4. Build credibility

5. Launch publicly

All within the next 100 days.

Up for the challenge?

Here are 6 steps (with week-by-week breakdown) on how to have a Tiny Empire running by the end of the year.

1. Find ideas

Deadline: End of September

Read newspapers, browse Reddit or Quora and look for common problems that people have.

I recommend reading last week’s guide on How to come up with the best startup ideas for my process for finding ideas that are actually good business ideas.

2. Test your ideas

Deadline: 1st week of October

You want to validate that people are willing to spend money on the idea. Not just that the idea is good, but that they will happily pay for it.

There are a few ways to do this:

• Create a landing page with waitlist or fake paywall

• Setup calls with people in the industry and ask them directly

• Post on social (doesn’t validate willingness to spend so not the best)

Don’t be scared to share ideas. People don’t want to steal them. The value is not the idea itself, but the execution of the idea.

3. Launch a very simple version

Deadline: 2nd week of October

Do as little work as possible. Use no-code tools where possible to build your 1st version.

Don’t use complex tools for the sake of it. Simplicity beats power when it comes to a 1-person business. Choose the simplest possible tool for the job. It can be better to use tools which provide off-the-shelf solutions, rather than building something bespoke.

For example, you could build a blog with a tool like Bubble but you would need to manually create all the functionality (commenting, guest authors, canonical links, SEO images etc). This is time consuming and is more likely to give you ongoing issues. Alternatively, you could use an off-the-shelf blogging platform like Ghost or Squarespace which take care of all the functionality for you. They have a team who keep it up to date, so you don’t need to worry about that, and you can spend all your time on the part that actually makes money, writing and growing the blog audience.

4. Find customers using social or sales

Deadline: Mid October until end of November

If it's B2B, do direct outreach via email or LinkedIn to attract the first few customers.

Create a simple sales pipeline with the following stages:

1. Interested (they’ve shown interest in your initial email)

2. Meeting booked (after sending them some sales materials, they have booked a meeting)

3. Confirmed

4. Invoiced

5. Closed

Take your potential clients through these stages as they show interest.

If your business has a B2C element (including things like communities, media companies etc) focus heavily on social content, dedicating a decent portion of your week to it. These companies have a longer route to monetization so you will have a harder time getting to monetization by 2024.

5. Gather reviews, case studies or testimonials

Deadline: December

Now that you have at least 1 (hopefully happy) customer, you can utilize that customer to help you get more. To do that, we look at what we can extract for our sales materials, e.g.:

1. A first client who will hopefully be happy with your product/service and lead to word-of-mouth referrals

2. A positive review you can add to your site + sales materials and possibly share on social media

3. A logo you could add to your website

4. An example of a previous client’s success story that you can share in sales emails

5. Work for your portfolio (if you’re a service business)

Now that you have a tiny bit of credibility with 1 customer and a positive review, you can capitalize on that as much as you can to get another client. With every happy client, repeat the process and add their positive reviews to your site + sales materials, constantly growing your credibility.

6. Results

100 days in, you should now have:

• A live site/app

• Early customers

• Reviews/Testimonials

Congratulations, you’ve built and monetized a business or side-project in 100 days and you’re starting 2024 with a business that is already making money and a strong foundation for a great Tiny Empire.

If you’re up for the challenge, let me know in the comments below.

If you found this useful, I share 15 years of startup learnings in 3-min guides every week. Subscribe now to get every guide for free.

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If you’re looking for more help

I offer 2 video courses which go into my full process for building a 1-person 6-figure business that works around your life, not the other way round. You can learn more about both of these below:

• Tiny Empires: Build a 6-figure business with no funding and no staff: This is very different to most business courses which are geared towards growth at all costs. The Tiny Empires method focuses on building a sustainable 1-person business by understanding the business models and strategies that work for small businesses and optimizing them using tools and systems. By the end of this course, you should have a clear step-by-step path from idea to revenue, to allow you to build a business which works around your life. Learn more

• Sales for Introverts (and people who don't like selling): This is not your average sales course. I don't use any salesmanship or sleazy tactics or endless unsolicited follow ups. Instead I focus on honesty, simplicity, human psychology and productive systems. By the end of this course, sales should no longer be a dreaded task and you will have actionable steps to become a sales master (even if you're shy). Learn more

• Hire me: A few times a year, I help founders build their projects using Bubble and other no-code tools. My speciality is lean, market-ready apps. I’ve sold 4 of my own companies that were built this way. I’m currently looking for my next project. If you would like my help, drop me an email