Founder Playbook · Starter Story
9 tactics from Julian Nom
How I Built It: $37K/Month Notion App
Watch the full episode“Building on a 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… Notion already had a huge community, people were really fans of the product — they had like a huge subreddit, tons of Facebook groups.”
Build on a platform with an existing fanbase — cannibalize their community instead of creating yours
Picking an existing platform with a passionate user base means you inherit their community instead of building one from scratch. Solving a sub-issue inside that ecosystem lets you ride attention from a hungry crowd already organised in subreddits and Facebook groups. Platform risk is real, but the distribution head start is worth it.
“My way of doing things is just to actually build a product, or at least an MVP for it, and then share it to as many people as I can and get instant feedback from the users.”
Ship the MVP and let users guide the iteration — talking to people is the real roadmap
The fastest way to validate is to build a small MVP and put it in front of as many people as possible to get instant feedback. Focusing on a project for a short, finite amount of time forces clarity on whether it's actually valuable — and talking to users is how the real feature list gets built.
“The best way of doing that as a technical person is to focus on the product and not on the technology. I've been using the exact same stack for the past 10 years… I have tons of small pieces of code I can reuse from one project to the other, and that really saves tons of time.”
Reuse the same stack for a decade — that is how a 6-day MVP becomes possible
Speed comes from removing technology decisions, not from picking the trendiest tools. Sticking with one stack for years means every new project starts with copied UI, auth, and boilerplate — only the core logic is left to build. A six-day MVP is the payoff of a decade of compounding.
“I published the project and then I just spammed all the Notion-related communities I could find online. Obviously there is Reddit, which is always a big one… but also another platform I found to be super useful — Facebook groups.”
Spam every niche community on launch — Reddit subs, Facebook groups, every Notion forum
Launching into every niche community where the target audience already gathers is how a free product gets its first thousand users. Reddit subreddits and Facebook groups normally reject self-promotion, but a free, genuinely useful tool tied to their platform of choice slips through. Volume of communities beats polish.
“As people started using it, they were building forms with Notion Forms and they were sharing the forms — because that's the purpose of a form builder. They embed it on their website, and because of this, people who fill the form get to see what you built.”
Engineer a viral loop into the product itself — every shared form becomes an ad
Distribution can be wired into the product so usage itself creates exposure. Every form built and shared becomes an ad seen by the recipient, who can click through to the tool. The same pattern works wherever users naturally share their output — turning each customer into a distribution channel.
“Hey, now this part of the product is paid — since you were there since the beginning, here's a 40% discount code that you can use for life.”
When you flip free to paid, grandfather early users with a lifetime discount
Free beta features were tagged with a Pro label warning users they would eventually become paid. When the paywall went live, longtime users got a lifetime discount code as a thank-you, softening the transition from free to subscription and protecting goodwill.
“This is a new product, I have 1/10th of the features they offer, so I need to be cheaper than all of them. And then over time I just experimented — I tried increasing the price slightly. I saw that it didn't really have any impact on the conversion.”
Price deliberately below incumbents at launch, then nudge prices up once traction is real
Pricing started deliberately under every competing form builder because the product had a fraction of their features. Once traction was real, prices were nudged up incrementally and conversion held steady — then more expensive plans were stacked on top.
“Within the product we have tons of buttons — they can click to report a bug, leave us some feedback, suggest a feature, or just talk to us. Really, since the beginning I've only built what people ask me to build.”
Plaster the product with feedback buttons and answer support yourself for a full year
The product is covered in buttons for bug reports, feedback, feature requests, and direct chat. The founder personally handled support for a full year — every shipped feature came from a user request, which both shaped the roadmap and surfaced bugs faster than any backlog.
“The most important thing you can do is start. If you spend too much time thinking about it and not doing anything, at some point you'll just get demotivated, and nothing's going to happen — the project's going to die.”
The most important thing you can do is start — momentum dies in the planning phase
Momentum dies in the planning phase, not the building phase. Shipping a small MVP fast generates the first users, first feedback, and the motivation needed to keep going. Overthinking guarantees the project never sees daylight.