The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Wed, 29 May 2024
Join us for the inaugural Tiny Team Awards with Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, as we celebrate tiny teams who have built amazing businesses. In this episode, we explore how these small teams have created products with outsized impact. Learn the tactics and frameworks these teams used to build impactful and worthwhile products. Discover insights from various industries, including consumer goods, software, and media. This episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration for entrepreneurs and product builders. Don't miss out on these valuable lessons from successful small teams!🚀 My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up to boringmarketing.comEpisode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro02:56 First Tiny Team Award: King Flipchart12:28 Second Tiny Team Award: Stardew Valley15:23 Third Tiny Team Award: A Profound Waste of Time19:51 Fourth Tiny Team Award: Carrd28:35 Fifth Tiny Team Award: Bobby Fingers To scale your revenue faster with conversion-focused creative sign up to https://designscientist.com
Like what makes this business really great for other people who want to create businesses with tiny teams is number one, you lock people into an ecosystem. Number two, the customer service is just exceptional. Number three, family business. Number four, it's niche. It's not for everyone. And they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world. And then last but not least, it's a dope name.
So there's something different about us today. We are wearing suits. Why are we wearing suits?
Greg, we are wearing suits today because we are introducing a new award for the industry. The entrepreneurial small business, business bootstrap industry.
And what's that award?
That award is... The Tiny Team Award.
And what does that mean?
It's an award we're going to give out maybe once per month, maybe once per quarter. Who knows?
Maybe once per lifetime.
Maybe once per lifetime. So like zero consistency at all. Listen, audience, don't expect any consistency here. It's an award we're going to give out to a company that has a team of less than 10 people, but that is very special.
It's like a company where you've maybe used their product or you've maybe seen their product around, but you didn't really know that it was just a tiny little team behind it. So it's a tiny team doing something big and special that you may or may not know about. They're like flying under the radar, that kind of thing, you know?
You think they're bigger than they are, but they're smaller.
Yes. Yes, exactly. You think they're going to be bigger than they are, but then it turns out, you think it's like a hundred people, but then it turns out to be two people.
Yeah. And it blows your mind and you just, you can't believe it. You're like, what? How is that even possible? Yeah.
Yeah. And it's super cool as well because they're often like family-owned businesses or like it's a couple or it's like a brother and sister or it's like two high school friends. And I just think that's like a nice heartwarming kind of story as well.
Or just lovers. Just some lovers.
Just lovers. Yeah. It could just be just lovers, you know? That's it. We just keep it like that.
All right. Let's dig in.
All right. So... The first Tiny Team Award for the Startup Ideas Podcast 2024 goes to King Flipchart.
Yay! Okay, but I don't know that business at all.
Good, good, good, good. Okay, so King flip chart. If you go to any Alex Hermosi video, if you've ever seen videos of Tony Robbins on stage, if you've ever seen basically any public speaker using a flip chart on a stage, This flip chart, if you look closer, has a little stamp on the bottom right-hand side, and it says King.
And this is because they are using a company called King Flipchart, which literally is two people doing one thing, and that is they make the world's biggest flip chart.
Okay, and a flip chart, flip chart meaning one of those things where you're just kind of like a whiteboard?
It's literally like a stand with really big pieces of paper on it that you can write on and then just turn them over to the next piece of paper. A flip chart.
And how well do you think these guys are doing?
Honestly, I don't know. And I've reached out to them to see if there's any way I can like, get that answer. I don't know the answer to that question. But the flip charts are very expensive. And literally every single person in the personal development space is using them.
Look at any Alex Hermosi video where he's like every second Alex Hermosi video, he's standing in front of two of these flip charts. And the paper refills, which are specific to these flip charts, cost $100 for one paper refill. And we're a tiny company, like my company is very small, and we're using like four to five of these paper refills per month.
So anybody who buys one of these flip charts is using that paper and essentially paying a monthly subscription to keep doing their events and using these flip charts. And they do pens.
So I'm looking right now, they charge for the King flip chart exclusive set. It's 13, 15 euros plus taxes. And that includes the foldable and portable flip chart. I think it probably includes a few refills and stuff like that. But I didn't realize it would be that expensive.
Yeah, it's expensive because it's like completely custom made. And the weird thing about it is, so I started seeing this flip chart on stage and the exact same thing happened to me. I was like, oh man, I need a flip chart that size. And so I started looking for a large flip chart. And eventually I was looking at all these different flip chart companies.
And most companies are not standalone flip chart companies. They do all sorts of other things. And eventually I went back to the video that I was watching. And again, I think it was Alex Hermosi or Russell Brunson or someone like that. And I zoomed in and I was like, King, what is King? And I figured out it's a two person company.
working out of italy and it's a sales and marketing expert uh and a like a furniture designer i think uh working together they're i believe a couple and they are the people who personally respond to you when you message them on the website so we had like an emergency two weeks ago because we were running an event at our office and we ran out of the flip chart paper And they're like, no problem.
We like expedite it to you. And it's just so nice to have this as like the most personalized experience ever. And I just love, I love the simplicity of it. It's like we make a flip chart. What else do you do? Nothing.
The end. I also recommend people go to, when you go to their website, if you go to the Team of King flip chart, and we'll put this on the YouTube video, it's just a picture of um, T Ziana and Sandro, just like looking deep into your soul. Yes. And it's, it's perfect.
And they just talk about like you, you start reading about the team and you really get a sense of like who these people are, why they, why they're doing what they're doing. It just feels so family business. And I feel like the trend around like the Amazonification of the internet. This is like the anti-trend around just like, this feels like you wanna support this business. Quick ad break.
Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO. And that's why I use boringmarketing.com. And that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
Absolutely. And that's exactly what I do as well. Like for me, once you buy one King flip chart, first of all, you're locked into the ecosystem, right? You can't find, you'd have to custom design or have a company custom design that paper size for you because it's humongous. But the other thing is I just want to keep supporting them. They're so nice.
It's just such a humble... Tiziana is the person who we talk to when we need new stuff. And honestly, one of my biggest challenges right now coming up in the summer is when I'm traveling around... And I don't have my king because I don't want to bring it onto the plane. What I'm going to have to do is literally buy a new one and have it shipped to the location that I go to.
And so I'm like super locked into the king universe. And they're just such a tiny company. I just love it. They deserve this tiny team award, which we need to make a little logo for so they can put it on their site.
They deserve this prestigious, very prestigious award.
And we're wearing tuxedos here.
That's right. Exactly. So congratulations. I know you've been wanting this from the day you've been born, Tiziana and Sandro. So congratulations. And just from a framework perspective, I'm trying to think, so what makes this business really great for other people who want to create businesses with tiny teams is number one, you lock people into an ecosystem.
Number two, the customer service is just exceptional. Number three, family business is Number four, it's niche. It's not for everyone. And they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world. So then you look it in, you're like, I want to be a king too. You know, I don't, I want to be a king. Tony Robbins is a king. And then last but not least, it's a dope name.
King flip chart. So it's just what I love about it is they've so you can buy flip charts from anywhere, right? You can go just Google flip charts, and I'm sure there's a million of them on Amazon. But they've locked themselves into this world of like direct response marketing and personal development.
where they basically now, and all of the testimonials on their website, and I'm sure way more people have thing flip charts, but they are focusing on the people in the personal development space. And it just keeps, it keep, yeah, it's like a niche within a niche because it's not just that it's, we're just doing flip charts.
It's we're just doing flip charts for the personal development on stage space, right? which is just so cool. It's a flip chart that's big enough to be on stage. That's what I think is so unbelievably specific and niche about it. And it does make me think like, what are like the normal stationary style things where you think that 3M has already cornered the market?
So 3M is the company that makes Post-it and all of these other things. And I actually have one of the 3M flip charts here. It's hidden in the background here. But this thing is like pretty expensive as well. But King flip chart came along and was like, what if it's the biggest though? You know?
Yep. I love it. I love it. I just love it. I love it. So that's award number one. I've got a tiny team award I want to give out.
All right. I'll lift it up again.
so for the second tiny team award ever to be given sip to that uh stardew valley oh my god what a fucking great i don't know if you want to beat that up but what we didn't know which ones we were going to bring to each other that is such a great one do you know about the story of stardew valley
I know about the story of Stardew Valley and I have it on here and have way too many hours on it.
So Stardew Valley is a farming game started by a guy by the name of Eric not try to pronounce it, Eric Barone or Eric Barone. I don't know if he's Italian. Maybe it's just the Italian flip chart got to me.
It's the flip chart family again. It's the son of the flip chart.
It's the son of the flip chart dynasty.
Yes.
So for the purpose of this award, we're going to call him Eric Barone. He's the one man developer behind $300 million of earnings of Stardew Valley. So Stardew Valley started, I think he started building it in 2011. So it took a few years, but basically it's this farming game. And he was the sole developer for the game. And not only was he the sole developer, he was the sole designer.
He even crafted the music for the game. that not many people know that. And it was this really cool concept where, you know, so many games, the trends were first person shooters, MMOs, killing people, fighting games. He did the complete opposite and created this like calming farming game. And he, what I love about the whole story, besides that he's a tiny team and he did it,
I mean, amazing that he created $300 million of value by himself, is the fact that, well, he just basically went against all best practices and all trends and just said, this is going to be a really cool game. I want to go and put this out here. And people said that it should be $60. He started charging $15. And you can even get Stardew Valley now for as cheap as $4.99.
So his, his, you know, I just, I love people who have a POV and it's just like, this needs to exist. Plus I'm a tiny team chef's kiss. So congratulations, Eric.
Very, very good one. Very, very good one. Okay. So, you know, before the episode, we didn't discuss how many awards we're giving out, uh, So I'm going to give out another award right now. Another Tiny Team Award. Staying in the video game space, I don't know if you've heard of the magazine called A Profound Waste of Time. Have you heard of it?
No, I have not.
Ah, ah, I'm very happy to hear that. So in the video game space, there is a magazine called A Profound Waste of Time. The guy who does it is a guy called Caspian Whistler. And Caspian Whistler is the person who not only is like putting together this entire magazine and finding all the artists and figuring out how to get all the interviews in there.
He's also the person who personally is messaging you when your magazine is stuck in delivery and was personally messaging my girlfriend back and forth over Christmas when she was trying to get me the three issues of the magazine. Super high quality, really amazing interviews from really crazy video game developers in there. Really like high-end video game developers.
Like, for example, the developers who created Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Really... I don't know if you can see, if you go to the website, apwot.com. Like, it's just... ludicrously high quality for one person to go in and actually take on a project of this size. It's ridiculously ambitious as well, similar to Stardew Valley, the amount of effort that goes into a project like this.
And I think what this and Stardew Valley have in common, what the two people who worked on these have in common, is that this is absolutely a labor of love where you never know if this is actually going to turn into a viable way of making money. But it's almost like an obsession that these people go down and actually start working on these things.
So my personal second but our third Tiny Team Award is going to the A Profound Waste of Time video game magazine. And how they do each episode, by the way, how they fund each issue, is by doing a Kickstarter for every issue. So that's also kind of cool. So they don't just bring out an issue. Every single issue gets funded through Kickstarter, which is kind of cool.
This is beautiful. I'm obsessed with this. The cover art is just absolutely stunning. It's like one of those things where You want to buy it and just frame it and put it on your walls. It's absolutely amazing. And it's actually one per customer. So it says, due to demand, it is not possible to order multiple of the same item in one transaction. So I just love the scarcity of it, too.
It does feel very community-oriented. This is a really, really good one. I wonder how much revenue they're bringing in for something like this.
Yeah, you can see on the Kickstarter pages how much each edition makes. So there's some transparency around that. But a lot of the all of the past issues that I bought were not through Kickstarter. So those wouldn't be included. So I guess you could check the Kickstarter pages. Like, for example, there was 100. If we look here to issue four or issue. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, OK.
It doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter because the impact that this is making. It's so cool. It's so cool. This is so cool.
It's so cool.
Yeah. This is too cool. This is too cool.
They're interviewing like the members of the Portal 2 team, the creator of Silent Hill. Come on. Come on.
Shoo-in.
This is shoo-in. Yeah. It's too much. I have them all around my apartment. I bought every, or my girlfriend got them to me as a gift, but they are so unbelievably beautiful. I love them so much.
All right. That was a good one. All right. I got, I got, I got, I got another one. When are we stopping? Like, is it, is it just like, we're stopping when, when it feels like we should stop.
Yeah, exactly. I'm like, shit, I'm waiting for you to run out of ideas and run out of one so that I don't have to have another one. You know what I mean?
You're talking to the wrong guy.
Oh, man. Yeah.
All right. So my second Tiny Team Award goes to AJ, the founder of Card, C-A-R-R-D. Are you familiar with Card?
No, I'm looking it up right now.
So if you go to C-A-R-R-D.co, it's basically these simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything. So a card is I got to know AJ through Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt. So he launched on Product Hunt. He was just like, I just need a way to create a one page card, one page website in a really simple way. And I think other people probably want that.
He launched on Product Hunt and went viral within that community. All of a sudden, as a one man developer, he's doing I think at least a million, a million and a half of ARR. Wow. And you know the cost with something like that. I mean, not very much. And what ended up happening is a lot of causes, like social causes, started using it.
And a lot of, for whatever reason, like K-pop stars started using it. So it's just like cool because number one, it's cool because he's a tiny team. It's him. And I think one other person, it's cool because it got popular. Like he didn't really do any marketing. It kind of just like blew up from the Product Hunt community and then spread to, you know, communities that needed it most.
I think the Black Lives Matter community used it a lot and that spread to other causes. And then K-pop stars started using it and that spread to other people who listen to K-pop. And I just thought it was cool that it's just some developer who created a one page. I think website builders are just cool too.
It's one of those categories where it's like people have been building website builders since the 90s. It's like, do we need another website builder? I guess we do.
That's what I'm thinking about. It's interesting. Probably you see this with your audience. I definitely see it with my tiny audience, is that if I would post something like this, you'd have one or two idiots in the comments being like, oh, so pointless. We don't need another one of these things.
And the point that you should be, when you see something like this, something like card, what I am thinking is, what the hell? How can you make something like this differentiated when there's a million different like one page, I don't know, there's a million different ways to make websites also for a very low price.
So I'm like, my gut reaction is to be like, why would you need another one of these? But actually the correct way to think about this is how is this actually working? And this is, I'm super curious about this because it absolutely does not appeal to me at all on first glance. But like, why do you think this works?
So firstly, go onto Twitter and just put in card and search and sort by latest. What you'll see is like every second people are tweeting about their card websites. And I think one of the reasons why this works is it's a status symbol within certain communities to have a card. Yeah. So it'll say like when you create a card, it'll be... It'll be gregeisenberg.car.co.
And within certain communities, like I mentioned, K-pop and causes, it's kind of like a flex.
But why? How did that happen? Was it an accident or was it cultivated?
I honestly think that it was organically cultivated. It wasn't like AJ... you know, I think he lives in like rural Tennessee. So I don't think he has the most amount of K-pop connections, you know? So it just, from that Product Hunt launch, I don't know, it just sort of spread and they saw the product and it felt cool and interesting and they liked the name.
In the best way possible, when I'm looking at these card pages, it reminds me of GeoCities. Was it called GeoCities or GeoCities? It reminds me of that sort of retro... If you look at... We talk a lot about anti-trends. It's like the anti-trend of Squarespace. Squarespace is all about high quality. Everything's aligned perfectly. The templates are beautiful. Whereas this has this more...
rugged, homemade GeoCities vibe. I wonder if that sort of retro energy is what also makes it work so well.
I also think that their business model is one of the reasons why it works. So most people, most website builders will charge $10, $20, $30, sometimes $50 a month for access to it. Guess what car it charges?
Zero.
No, not that tiny.
Well, it says on the landing page that it's a simple, free, fully responsive one-page site.
Oh, actually, you're right. It is free. You can create for free. But if you want the pro features, like multiple sites, no branding, widgets, embeds, Google Analytics, forms, if you want to connect it to Beehive or ConvertKit, something like that. you do have to pay for the advanced features. And it's only, yes, only $19 per year.
That's pretty, very affordable.
Yeah. I mean, that's, what is that?
It's less than $2 a month. $19, that's like one coffee, you know?
It's a tiny amount of dollars per year.
$19, that's like an espresso, you know?
$19 is like half an espresso.
$19.
That's like a water, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy you started talking about that because the comment section is going to be like so upset. And people get so upset about the prices of things.
But $19 is like the price. It's only the price of like a small glass of water.
It's like for Dasani water. It's about $19.
Yeah. You know, I think what we should do, you know, people don't watch every podcast. I think what we should cultivate on this podcast is a sense of being really out of touch with the rest of society. And when we see something like, oh, the Apple Vision Pro is only $3,800, like price of a coffee. Yeah.
totally don't like don't say it's a joke and just keep doing that until people think we're viciously out of touch totally i like this i like that a lot yeah i mean 3800 dollars to be completely disconnected from reality and for the price of a coffee it's a no-brainer
Yeah. Dude, it's like coffee. What does it cost approximately? I mean, I'm sure it's within the ballpark of $3,800, right? Right.
Yeah. It's in the ballpark, right? With tip, it's around $3,800.
It is your audience. Does your audience think we're both fully wearing a tuxedo or do you want... Where do they think it ends?
Yeah. I mean, I think they know we're... Well, are you wearing... What are you wearing underneath there?
I don't know. We just have to think about it. You're going to have to guess in the comments. You have to guess in the comments.
I mean, I was thinking about putting on pants, but then I was just like, what is the point?
Yeah. Can you see this ghostly shit happening behind me?
Yeah. What is happening behind there?
I hope your editor does one of those crash zooms whenever that happens. Stuff's just moving around in the background. Wow. That's scary. Okay. You just give your tiny business award.
Yes.
To card.
Yes. I give the tiny business award to card.co. Congrats.
I love that. I have another one. All right, we'll go, we'll do another one. I'll do one last one, okay? I'll do one last one. So I think there's an area we haven't gone into yet and it's Patreon businesses, like really small Patreon businesses. And I want to give an award to... A Patreon business.
And again, like maybe this person wouldn't like it to be called a Patreon business because it's he's a really amazing artist. But I want to give an award to Bobby Fingers. If you go to YouTube and search Bobby Fingers, my favorite video, the best video I've ever seen on the internet is called Jeff Bezos Rowing Boat.
If you watch this whole thing and don't think it's the best YouTube video you've ever seen, something's horribly wrong with you and you're a bad person. So Bobby Fingers has a Patreon account. And what I love about his Patreon and what he does in particular is that he's not like a person who's constantly putting out different... He's not constantly pumping out content.
He puts out like one video every couple of months. You have no indication of when it's about to come out. And then this video... is literally him making a diorama. Do you know what a diorama is?
No.
So it's, it's kind of hard. It's like a, it's like something happens in real life. So for example, um, uh, what's the guy's name in his most recent one, Fabio. So there's this, I think singer called Fabio and he was on a
or got hit in the face by a bird whichever way you say that around and there's like footage of that there's footage of him coming down from the roller coaster with a bloody nose and he's really pissed off and this guy Bobby Fingers he makes like a little model of that moment like a moment in time but like a physical model like a sculpture of the moment and
And his videos are like the making of these little sculptures, or in the case of the Jeff Bezos thing, he makes a boat, which is Jeff Bezos's face, but a massive working boat. And literally the strangest, most kind of confusing videos I've seen on the internet, the most like painstaking work, like we're looking, you're talking about a 30 minute video of
of the making of this goose, this diorama of a goose hitting this guy in the face. And just like the journeys he goes on while he's making this diorama and the weird things that he's saying while he's creating it. And... This is like, for me, a business that could have never existed outside of Patreon existing.
And I think Patreon really allows for single person teams or one or two person teams to monetize just their weirdness. And I love that. And I think it's super cool. I don't know how big... Bobby Fingers team is. I cannot imagine it's more than 10 people, but he gets another tiny team award from me in the content category. Let's add in categories now. Wow. You went there.
i can't believe you went there yeah content art category wow yeah yeah exactly yeah very very niche so bobby fingers honestly guys if you only get one thing from this uh from from this episode please and also something weird is happening i know this is not really interesting for the episode but i pay for his um patreon but like i can't use it. I don't know what's happening here.
So something's... Patreon, if you're listening to this, tell me what's up with that issue there. By the way, another example who I'm not going to give the tiny team award for, but one of the runners up. Have you seen Van Neistat's channel?
Yes, I have.
I love that. I love it.
I love that people now can take their weird little hobbies and if they're just consistent enough and just focused enough and willing to sort of push through this initial phase where just no one knows you, you can literally replace your job by showing a 30-minute video of you making a boat that's in the shape of Jeff Bezos' face and you never have to work for someone else again. So good.
So good.
How cool is that?
That is so good. That is so cool. So cool. That fires me up.
What'd you say?
That fires me up.
Yeah, you could quit whatever. I mean, you don't really have a job. You're kind of like creating your own jobs. But like if we just did this award ceremony every week and it's like $10 a week to listen to. I'm just kidding. That wouldn't be good.
And we make a magazine out of it.
Yes, yes. Imagine how little money we would make and how annoyed we would be.
All right, I'm going to refrain from...
one upping you with another tiny team award i think dude no no i can't i can't i want i want you to have the last word on this one and we'll do another one of these yeah um here listen i think what you should do is maybe someone on your team should make a not shitty looking version one of these and like we send it to the to the people who want it as like a cute thing totally or we just send them
that posted you know that we just you know even so here it is here you go yeah i think it would be uh if if you guys do this um please let me know if you get responses i think this could make some people's day or maybe they don't give a shit maybe they're like who are you losers how are you how dare you call
yeah my team tiny yeah exactly i'm six foot three okay i'm huge do you know how large my flip chart is yeah all right well jc this has been fun uh thank you and uh any any parting words um i'm so sweaty yeah the thing with suits is they really traps in the heat
And there's no air conditioning in Germany. Like in most German, I'm in a new building, like a new apartment. And there's still no air conditioning being built into apartments. And like, I'm just sludge.
Yeah. Well, they say higher quality of life in Europe, but no AC. I don't know. Hard to deal with that one.
Greg, we need to do an episode. This is a preview for what I think we should do as an episode in the future. Europe versus the US when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Yeah.
Biggest episode ever.
Totally. Did you see my tweet to Daniel Ek?
Yes. I have a lot to say about that topic. And have you had Peter Levels on this podcast yet?
No, he's like really hard to track down.
We got to get him. We got it. OK, we're going to do here. Here's live canvas strategy. You and me are going to do an episode on Europe versus the US entrepreneurship. We're going to talk about Peter Levels, European accelerationism, which is one of his his new kind of movement and his merch. And Peter will just have to He'll just have to come on, you know?
Yeah, he'll have no choice but to come on. Yeah, come on.
Come on, Peter. Yeah.
All right, man. It's been real. I'll catch you later. Thanks, everyone.
Bye. Bye.