I never raised a dollar and still built a $70k/month app

Hey there,

Two years ago, I was sketching an idea in a notebook.

Today, that idea does $70k/month.

Here's how I built Posted with no VC funding, no co-founder, and an outsourced team.

The Problem

When I was scaling Puff Count to $44k/month, I hit a wall.

I was making TikToks in my bedroom to grow the app. But I couldn't create enough content myself.

So I tried hiring creators and it sucked.

Creators with 5,000 followers wanted $2,000 for a 30-second TikTok.

Outrageous fees.
Constant back and forth.
No guarantee the content would work. 

The process was broken and I knew other brands felt this pain too.

The Solution

I loved 99designs. You launch a contest, designers compete and you only pay for the winner.

What if I could do that for creator content?

So I founded Posted.

Brands launch contests.
Creators compete for prize money.
Brands only pay for content that works.

How I Built It

Step 1: Build the MVP fast

I sketched the app on paper. Ran a 99designs contest for the UI.

Hired a dev team. We built the first version on Flutter. Fast, cheap, functional.

Step 2: Test with real users

Creators joined. Brands launched contests. Feedback flooded in.

The concept worked. But Flutter couldn't scale.

Step 3: Rebuild for scale

We rebuilt the entire app in React.

Lost two months. No new features. Just rebuilding.

Those two months almost broke me.

We had creators waiting. Brands asking when features would ship. And I was burning cash rebuilding something that already worked.

I thought about quitting. 

But I knew if I didn't fix the foundation now, Posted would never scale.

So I kept going.

Step 4: Focus on retention

Our goal: Get creators to their first payout.

Once a creator cashes out, they never leave.

We optimized everything around that moment.

Step 5: Use the product to scale the product

We ran our own contests on Posted to market Posted.

Put up $3,000 in prize money. Got 97 submissions. Thousands of new creators tried the app.

Our best-performing paid ad came from a creator who won one of our contests.

For brands, we spent $0 on ads. Every brand came from my YouTube, Twitter, or referrals.

The Results

11 months after launch: $70k/month. Some months we hit $90k.

40,000 creators on the platform.

Over $700,000 in gross revenue processed.

All bootstrapped. No VC money.

Look, if you've felt a pain point building your business, thousands of others probably have too.

That's your next app.

Learn how to build and scale your app to $10,000/mo

Peace,
Steven