Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Devin
How I Made $65K in 3 Days
Watch the full episode“Don't try to create a new market, just work on the validated market. Go for products or markets which are actually generating revenue. Once you have identified the validated market, your next step should be to figure out your competitors, use their product day in day out, and try to come up with a 1% increment in the quality of the product.”
Don't create a new market — build a 1% better version of one that already prints money
After his last product shut down, Devin deliberately hunted for validated markets instead of inventing categories. He studied Taplio, Contentin, and AuthoredUp daily, mapped their flows, and asked where he could be 1% better. Content creation was the universally weak point — that single edge in a hungry market was enough.
“Around the same time GPT-3 was launched and it changed the whole content creation game because it was really good at mimicking the writing style of the user. So I created an MVP over the weekend and I really loved it because I was able to convert my own raw thoughts into LinkedIn-worthy posts.”
Build the MVP in a weekend around the single flow competitors were worst at
Devin didn't rebuild a full LinkedIn tool. He isolated the one feature his competitors were weakest at, wrapped GPT-3 around it, and had a working MVP in a weekend that he used on himself first. Scoping to a single high-leverage flow is what made a weekend MVP viable.
“We launched LTD only for 3 days. A very good way to ensure you're not overselling LTDs is just limit the time frame and also limit the number of users. We limited that to 300 users. We had 10 to 15 really happy LTD customers who actually talked about us on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Product Hunt.”
Run a 3-day, 300-seat LTD on a marketplace for $65K cash and 15 evangelists
Devin ran a tightly scoped LTD on RocketHub with three tiers ($79/$199/$299), a 3-day window, and a 300-user cap. RocketHub took 40% but brought their email list, Facebook and Instagram ads, and all marketing assets. The deal generated $65K and produced 10-15 evangelists who later powered the Product Hunt launch.
“One of the key things, these LTD customers actually helped us make our product launch better because they actually evangelized our product everywhere. I was not the only person talking about my product that day. We were able to become product of the week.”
Lifetime-deal buyers become the ambassador army for your Product Hunt launch
Devin sequenced launches deliberately: LTD first to build a base of paying, vocal customers, then Product Hunt months later with that base ready to upvote, comment, and share in WhatsApp groups. Product of the Week brought 50 more customers and shows why a paid launch can be the warm-up act, not the finale.
“Free users don't actually validate your product — they will just consume it and if something doesn't work they will just ghost you. Paid customers, because they have put real money in, will tell you exactly what is broken.”
Paying customers give brutal feedback; free users ghost
Devin pushes back on 'just give it away for feedback' advice. Of his 250+ LTD buyers, only ~10% became active long-term users but those gave brutally honest, unfiltered feedback over Intercom — some even tracked down team members directly. Real money in the door buys you real signal back out.
“We were really obsessed with our LTD customers. We used to spend like one or two hours every day on Intercom answering their questions, helping them through content creation. We sometimes used to help them manually and then used to convert those workflows into features inside Supergrow.”
Spend 1-2 hours/day on Intercom, then turn the manual workflows into features
Instead of guessing the roadmap, Devin used Intercom as a feature-discovery channel. He'd manually solve customer problems by hand, then productize the workflow that worked. Paired with Microsoft Clarity (session recordings) and Mixpanel (feature usage), this turned brutal LTD feedback into a compounding product.
“RocketHub took 40% of the cut, which translates to around $40,000 for us. Obviously it's a big cut, but at that moment we had only one or two customers — we had almost close to $0.”
Trade 40% of launch revenue for distribution you do not have — and time-box the offer
Devin handed RocketHub 40% of LTD revenue (~$40K of the $65K). Looks brutal until you index on counterfactuals — zero customers, no audience, no ad spend, no creative team. The cut bought him an email blast to a buyer list he could never reach, paid social ads, and professionally produced screenshots and videos he still uses today. A 3-day window and 300-seat cap kept the LTD from cannibalizing subscription economics.
“The basic pricing tier was $79, the second plan was $199 which is a pro plan, the third plan was the agency plan which was $299. So whoever bought the product back then they were getting like 4 to 5 years of value.”
Set LTD tiers at $79 / $199 / $299 to mirror your future subscription plans
Devin set the three LTD tiers to map directly to the eventual basic/pro/agency subscription tiers. Framing each LTD price as ~4-5 years of subscription value created the FOMO that drove the 3-day spike, while keeping the tier structure identical to the post-LTD subscription business they wanted to grow into.