I recently came across an intriguing entrepreneur who made it big in the AI business. He is not a household name yet, but he turned everything around in just 10 months, and that gave me a real wake up call.
You see this a lot with successful founders. It is rarely about raw genius. The guy I am introducing today is named Mark, and he was just an ordinary guy like you and me, with no special advantages.
Yet he built incredible wealth. He did a few things differently. The way he created that difference was not even complicated. Stick with me through his story, because I think you will see a version of yourself in it.
Let me give you the quick rundown of Mark's life. He had the chance to get a cushy corporate job. He chose to start his own business instead.
Two years later every single business failed. He was left flat broke.
But then he realized three specific things. He launched 27 startups. Running one business is crazy enough. Running 27 at the same time blew my mind.
After he launched 27 startups, he met a beautiful Korean wife. Within 10 months he hit 100,000 subscribers. He cleared over 50,000 dollars a month in revenue.
What exactly was his secret?
Launch First
Mark hammered home one golden rule. Launch first.
He literally used this method to pump out 27 startups in two years. In his videos he constantly talks about getting the product out there. Fast. He begs people not to delay a launch just because something feels missing.
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| Explaining the golden rule of launching a startup within 72 hours |
His personal goal is to launch within 72 hours of getting an idea. He even went on YouTube Live. He built a SaaS product from scratch. It took him exactly 31 hours. He did it just to prove his point.
But Mark wasn't always wired this way. When you dig into his story, you see how he learned this lesson the hard way.
Back in his 20s Mark was not great at school. He watched Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He dreamed of building a startup. The problem was his coding skills were terrible.
He decided to start a business anyway. He bought over 150 hours of coding lectures. He tried to teach himself.
The result was a disaster. He failed to build a single working web service. Worse yet he had absolutely zero business sense. He got completely drunk on his own ideas. He wasted an entire year on useless paperwork and logo designs.
He was high on the illusion of being an entrepreneur. He had absolutely no idea how he was actually going to make money.
He gave up without making a single penny. Then he packed his bags. He moved to Seoul in South Korea.
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| The hand knitted couple gloves that resulted in zero online sales |
He tried a brand new business in Seoul. He randomly saw couple gloves on Facebook. He decided to build an online store selling them. The funny part is he did not look for a factory. He personally hired a Korean grandma. She knit 50 pairs of gloves by hand.
He took every last cent he had. He dumped it all into ads. The result was brutal. He got zero orders. A total failure.
He was stuck in a tiny room piled high with gloves. So he went out into the freezing streets of Seoul in the dead of winter. It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
He stopped random couples on the street. He managed to sell one or two pairs. He was so terrified to do this. He actually had to drink alcohol just to get the liquid courage to speak to them.
By late 2017 Mark was dead broke. He was all alone in a foreign land. Repeated failures had badly damaged his confidence. He fell into depression. He constantly asked himself why he kept failing.
He started working a part time job just to survive. That is when he set one tiny goal. Earn exactly 1 dollar online.
He dropped the grand Zuckerberg startup dreams entirely. He just wanted to make a single buck.
Sell It Before You Build It
Then something shifted. He created a new rule. Sell it before you build it.
He heard that Escape Rooms were struggling to get customers. He came up with a marketing app for Escape Room owners. The idea was simple. When a customer finishes the room the app automatically prompts them to post a verification on social media.
He had never sent a cold email in his life. But he just started emailing places. He asked if they would buy this idea. He emailed Escape Rooms all over the world.
Finally he got on a call with a manager of a small Escape Room in Australia. He spent 40 minutes pitching them online.
He got the green light.
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| Coding day and night to deliver the promised app after selling the idea first |
He did not even have a product yet. He stayed up day and night coding. He delivered the app he promised. That single app went on to make over 50,000 dollars in cumulative revenue over the next four years.
After endless failures he finally tasted real money. Mark says this was the moment he learned how to actually make money online.
You might be thinking you still need to know how to code. But Mark lacked coding skills early on. He started by validating his ideas using no code tools.
Even as his skills grew he still uses AI and automation for as much as possible today. He actively avoids the technical perfectionism trap. That trap always catches developer founders. He takes all that saved time and dumps it straight into marketing instead.
After tasting online revenue he got fired from his day job. Without any warning. But he figured it was actually a blessing.
Starting in 2022 he began executing one or two ideas every single month. That is how he ended up launching 27 different startups.
He did not make money right away. But he refused to quit. He kept pushing. That grit got him 100,000 YouTube subscribers in 10 months.
Mark constantly repeats that an ordinary person like him can do this. You do not need to be a genius developer. We live in an era where solving problems makes you money.
The mistakes he made early on are things anyone would do. His breakthrough was not some massive innovation. It all started by just making one single customer happy.
Build a Painkiller
He believes startup ideas must be painkillers. Not vitamins.
A vitamin is something that is nice to have. A painkiller is something that hurts if you do not take it. Business is ultimately about finding a cure for a specific pain.
This means building a vitamin solution like a habit tracker is a brutal uphill battle. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer. You do not hesitate to spend money on something you absolutely need. You think twice about something that is just nice to have.
So you need to build a painkiller solution people simply cannot ignore. And because it is a painkiller it does not even need to be perfect.
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| People with their hair on fire will buy a brick to put it out |
There is a great saying for this. People with their hair on fire will buy a brick to put it out. This led to his golden rule. One startup equals one feature.
When he builds a product he implements exactly one core feature. He aggressively throws away everything else. He actually built a product that only allowed customers to download their payment history as a PDF. He did not even include basic features like account deletion or password resets.
Getting it done is always better than getting it perfect. If you find yourself constantly delaying your own launch because you want everything to be flawless you are playing a losing game. Read more about this trap in my guide on Why Your Need for Perfection Is Killing Your Business.
Pragmatic Monetization
Even with this approach a majority of startups will fail. Mark knows the statistics well. He accepts that 90 percent of his own startups will flop.
He does not set sky high prices out of greed. He does not chase venture capital funding.
His goal is to quickly deliver small but certain value. Value that makes people willingly open their wallets. He much prefers selling to a large number of customers at a lower price point.
This practical approach allowed him to build products he could actually manage on his own.
I recognize this instinct in myself too, though in a much smaller way. Every time I have tried to add one more feature to my own web service before showing it to anyone, the launch just kept slipping. The one version I actually shipped was the embarrassingly simple one I almost did not release.
Because the products were so simple he was able to hit over 100,000 dollars a month in revenue. And he did it without hiring a single employee.
Never Compete on Product Alone
His outsized success was not because his ideas were brilliant. It was all driven by branding and marketing through content. If you are still relying on traditional ads to get customers you are missing out on the biggest shift in modern business. Discover exactly why building an audience is your greatest asset in my guide on Why Media Is the Most Powerful Business Leverage in the AI Era.
I built this very blog on that same bet, choosing to write in public instead of quietly polishing a feature nobody had asked for yet. Mark understood this exact leverage. Here is how he built his audience.
His content strategy is incredibly simple. He gathers fans with valuable free content. He uses that trust to naturally convert them into paying customers.
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| Building a massive audience by sharing the raw truth of startup failures on YouTube |
He used YouTube to share all the trial and error he faced as a founder. His channel went totally viral. His sales took off in a way he never expected.
He used the platform X as his personal diary. He kept everything 100 percent transparent.
He shared how he started. He showed exactly what he did. He showed exactly how much he made back then. He shows how much he makes right now. He revealed it all.
The beauty of this approach is he does not need to create a new account for every new product. He promotes everything under his own personal brand account.
He also promoted his products in his newsletter. There he shared incredible tips for beginner founders. He taught them how to discover ideas. He showed them how to get that first customer. He explained how to design a product.
He literally packaged his own hard earned know how and sold it as a product.
Great ideas and technically flawless products are everywhere. Look at any crowded marketplace and you will find them sitting right there. But here is the thing. Great ideas do not move markets. People move markets.
Mark's 27 startups succeeded because of his clear philosophy. Not because of some overwhelming technical dominance. Not because his products were unique. His success came from understanding one thing that most people never figure out. The market does not care about perfection. It cares about you.
This is what he learned in that tiny freezing room in Seoul. This is the real essence of making money online.
So take a hard look at yourself. Ask yourself if you have ever held back your best work just to chase the illusion of a perfect product. I know I have, more times than I would like to admit, and closing that gap is still the thing I am actively working on myself. That is the real gap between Mark and everyone else who wanted his success.
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