Founder Playbook · Starter Story
9 tactics from Adrian
I Found a Business for Sale and Rebuilt It Into $20K/Month
Watch the full episode“We're not looking for apps that aren't making any money that's not great we're looking for pre-validated ideas so increase that asking price to at least 300,000 or you can filter by annual recurring revenue.”
Filter business broker listings for pre-validated ideas worth copying
Adrian's framework turns Acquire.com into a validation machine: if a SaaS is listed for $300K+, real money has already been proven in that market. Rather than testing a hypothesis, you're cloning a demonstrated outcome — cutting years off the validation phase.
“For the documentation I just put that actually in a notion doc and then a basic website and then that was it so it was pretty bare bones and it probably took just a couple of weeks.”
Ship with a Notion doc for docs and a basic site, nothing more
Adrian had his API live with customers in weeks because he refused to over-engineer the launch surface. A Node.js server on Render, a Notion doc for docs, and a minimal homepage were enough to get paying users. Perfecting the wrapper delayed nothing that mattered.
“the fact that they were only getting their customers through SEO i thought this is the product for me i'm going to do this exact same thing”
Validate a business idea by confirming it runs entirely on SEO
Adrian saw that the original scraping API had reached $30K MRR with fewer than 100 customers — all acquired purely through SEO. Rather than viewing SEO dependence as a weakness, he recognized it as a durable, low-cost acquisition channel he could replicate. The insight is to use SEO-driven revenue in acquisition broker listings as a filter for businesses worth cloning.
“I have a little bit of a presence on Twitter so even if I just message people on Twitter I probably could get there even without SEO”
Turn a small Twitter presence into your first customer acquisition channel
Before a single line of SEO content existed, Adrian's existing Twitter following gave him a fallback distribution channel. His first customer came accidentally — he posted about scraping a company's site and their CTO commented. He also proactively comments on launch posts in adjacent spaces, offering free credits to developers who trial his API.
“step six try to reverse engineer how they acquired customers this is arguably the most important part not so hard to build the product but how are they getting customers”
Reverse-engineer competitor acquisition channels before writing a single word
Adrian's step-by-step playbook treats customer acquisition research as the most critical phase — above even building the product. He recommends reading everything on the target site, finding the founder on Twitter and LinkedIn, and hunting for podcasts or YouTube videos where they've discussed growth. This content intelligence work surfaces the exact channels to model, so your own strategy starts with a proven blueprint rather than guesswork.
“it is a credit based model so you just pay for credits and then use them there's no subscription so right now we have 600 people who have paid but aren't necessarily paying on a regular basis... I have maybe like 12 who pay for the majority of that MRR”
Credit-based pricing lets a dozen power users drive most of your MRR
Adrian deliberately chose a credit/pay-as-you-go model instead of a recurring subscription, which lowered the barrier for developers to try the API. The real discovery was that roughly 12 heavy users drive the vast majority of $20K MRR, meaning the pricing structure naturally self-selects high-volume customers who scale their usage without needing plan upgrades or sales intervention.
“anytime someone has a launch video that has anything to do with scraping social media then I comment saying 'Hey I'll give you 10K free credits if you'll try my API.'”
Offer free credits on relevant launch posts to convert developers instantly
Rather than relying on a traditional onboarding funnel, Adrian intercepts developers at the exact moment they publicly announce a scraping-related project and hands them enough credits to experience real value immediately. This removes sign-up skepticism because the offer is contextually relevant and the prospective user has already demonstrated intent by launching a product in the space.
“I think people like it because it's reliable and then if it's not reliable then I'll communicate with people pretty frequently as well as it's really easy to get a hold of me whereas a lot of developers who build these sort of things you don't even have their email or a way to contact them”
Reliability and direct founder access build stickiness no competitor can match
In a commodity API market where scrapers break constantly, Adrian's retention edge isn't features — it's trust. He proactively communicates during outages and makes himself personally reachable, which developer customers deeply value because anonymous API providers give them no recourse when something breaks. This founder-as-support-channel dynamic is a durable retention moat a solo operator can maintain that a larger company would struggle to replicate authentically.
“Stop bouncing around ideas and just pick one thing. Do it every single day, focus on it every single day and you'll make it. Stop getting distracted because that's exactly what happened to me.”
Stop bouncing between ideas; daily execution on one thing builds success
Adrian spent years freelancing, building courses, and shipping products that went nowhere — not from lack of skill, but from lack of commitment. His turnaround came only when he locked onto one product and did something every day to either build it or market it. The compounding effect of consistent daily action on a pre-validated idea is what ultimately produced $20K/month.