David Zitoun and his co-founder bootstrapped Submagic from zero to $1M ARR in just 90 daysβand hit $8M ARR within two years. They did it with no funding, no ads, and a team of just 14 people.
In this episode, David reveals the scrappy playbook behind their hyper-growth. He shares how they used "Y Combinator Co-Founder Match" to start 12 startups in 12 months (Submagic was the winner), how he recruited 50 TikTok affiliates in one week to drive massive traffic, and why they intentionally built an "ugly" MVP that did only one thing perfectly.
π Key Lessons
- π The 90-Day Sprint: How they went from $0 to $1M ARR in 3 months using a viral TikTok strategy.
- π― The "Affiliate Army": How David recruited 50 young content creators to post daily videos on TikTok, generating massive organic reach for free.
- π οΈ The "Ugly MVP" Rule: Why they launched a product that only did one thing (captions) with one template, and why perfectionism kills growth.
- π Breaking the $5M Plateau: What happened when growth stalled at $5M ARR and the counter-intuitive pricing change that fixed it.
- π€ Customer Obsession: How creating a WhatsApp group with early customers turned them into "Product Managers" who built the roadmap for free.
π Chapters
- Introduction & The "Opportunity" Quote
- The Origin: Solving the "Alex Hormozi Caption" Problem
- The YC Co-Founder Match Strategy
- The First Viral TikTok Video (Zero Followers)
- The Affiliate Army: How to Get 50 People Posting Daily
- Timing the Market: Why Being Early Matters
- The $5M Plateau: Fixing Churn to Keep Growing
- Launching "Magic Clips" (Repurposing Long Form Content)
- Lightning Round
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Resources:
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