Nov 7, 2024 · 17m · starter-story
How I Built It: $37K/Month Notion App
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this Starter Story interview, solopreneur Julian Nahum shares how he built Noteforms into a $37,000/month Notion micro-SaaS by launching in six days, leveraging platform ecosystems, and engineering product-led viral loops.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Pat holds 27.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Pat as informed peer 1.5 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 0.2 Pat pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Pat, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:05 Dismissing Product Hunt hype
Julian offers mild contrarian pushback against conventional startup wisdom by arguing that Product Hunt launches are largely overrated and yielded zero direct sales for his business.
Hardest push from Pat ▶ 2:13 Probing platform dependency riskPat specifically asks why building on top of an existing ecosystem like Notion is preferable to building standalone software.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:37 Explaining built-in viral distribution loopsJulian educates listeners and the host on creating organic viral loops by embedding branded links on public-facing form widgets.
Pat holds their own ▶ 4:52 Pat sharing his founder background and frameworkPat demonstrates his own entrepreneurial expertise by explaining how he built a seven-figure business while working full-time.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Pat as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Pat pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Origin of Noteforms and Launching in Six Days | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Pat asks standard foundational questions about building on top of existing platforms like Notion. Julian details his origin story, balancing the benefits of tapping into existing communities against platform risk. | |
| Rapid Idea Validation and Reusing Code Architecture | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Julian outlines his MVP rapid-building strategy and sticking to familiar tech stacks like Laravel. Pat inserts a personal anecdote and promo about building his own million-dollar business while working a full-time job. | |
| Customer Acquisition Channels and Initial Marketing Strategies | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Julian educates on channel distribution, offering contrarian insights on Product Hunt being overrated while highlighting high ROI on Reddit and Facebook groups. Pat prompts and listens attentively. | |
| Managing Customer Support and User-Driven Product Roadmaps | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Julian describes handling customer support himself before automating with AI and dedicated agents to guide feature development. Pat simply affirms the strategy and tees up the next topic. | |
| SaaS Pricing Iteration and Strategy | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Julian provides a breakdown of his SaaS economics, pricing experiments, AI tooling adoption, and operational cost breakdown. Pat guides the discussion via structured prompts. | |
| Core Advice for Aspiring Solopreneurs and Builders | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Pat asks the standard closing advice question. Julian shares actionable guidance on bias for action, talking openly about ideas, and managing perceived risk as a software engineer. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Nahum: Noteforms reaches nearly 100K users and $37K MRR
“We have close to a hundred K registered users, and now we are close to 37 K of monthly recurring revenue.”
Nahum: Built the initial Noteforms MVP in six days
“I just spent six days working on it, creating like a small MVP.”
Julian Nahum: Building SaaS on existing platforms is easier for solo founders
“Building around the platform is easier. You don't have to build the community around it. You can kind of cannibalize part of it and try to solve a sub issue, which is kind of what I did with Nodeforms, right? Notion already had a huge community. People were re…”
Nahum: Developers ship faster by recycling previous codebases and UI
“The more you build, I think the faster it is to build. Now, you know, like every time I'm starting a new project, I can just copy the code base from the previous project, keep all the UI and that kind of things. And I can just focus on the core logic and the v…”
Nahum has built projects using PHP and Laravel for ten years
“I've been using the exact same stack for the past 10 years, pretty much since I started coding. I'm actually using PHP, which a lot of developer likes to make fun of with this PHP framework called Laravel.”
Nahum: Noteforms made zero sales from its Product Hunt launch
“Like when I did the launch for node forms, I got, you know, like, of course more eyes on the products, but I think I didn't get a single sale from the launch.”
Noteforms only builds features that users explicitly request
“Since the beginning, I've only built what people ask me to build.”
Nahum: Noteforms labeled beta features 'Pro' before launching paid plans
“All of these features that I was adding, you know, a little pro tag. And when you clicked on it says, Hey, this is free for now because it's the beta, but whenever it will launch, it will become a paid feature.”
Julian Nahum: Raising Noteforms prices slightly did not reduce conversion rates
“I tried, you know, increasing the price slightly. I saw that it didn't really have any impact on the conversion. So I did it again.”
Selling software at $50 monthly is easier than $500 once
“I found that selling something for 50 dollars per month is much easier than selling one thing for 500 dollars one time.”
Nahum: AI tool Cursor roughly doubles his development speed
“There was very recently a hype about a new developer tool called Curso, which is kind of an AI-powered IDE, and I recently started using it, and honestly, I'm amazed, and it's literally like speeding up By maybe two my work nowadays”
Noteforms spends just $5,000 monthly for a four-person team
“With three people full-time and one person that's part-time. So the total salary for them is five K. So that excludes me.”