I co-founded Repurpose Pie, a SaaS for Twitter creators that takes their tweets, converts them to videos and posts them automatically to TikTok (deployed), YouTube (coming soon) and Instagram (coming soon).
It hit $5500 MRR in 3 days of launch and I thought more people could copy our launch strategy to get similar results.
Here’s everything that went into building the app and launching it:
THE “IDEA/PROBLEM”:
My co-founder has a huge following on Twitter (LifeMathMoney, 380K+ followers).
He wanted to grow on other platforms to get more reach and protect himself from a social media ban (he posts controversial stuff sometimes).
While Twitter (X) is a great place to grow, social media companies can ban you at any time. It’s a big risk for any influencer who has only one big platform. You get banned once and lose an entire business.
He found that it was extremely time-consuming to write, manage multiple businesses AND create 3-5 videos for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube every single day.
So he did the simplest thing he could think of. He hired a video editor to take his tweets and turn them to videos.
The video editor:
- Took his tweets
- Added a cool background,
- Used text-to-speech AI to generate a voiceover
- Added trending music to the videos.
Within a few weeks, his TikTok account hit 10,000 followers. The simple tweet-videos definitely worked and he now had more reach than before.
But he was paying the guy $500 per month.
He discussed this problem with me and our third co-founder (ex-AWS) - the three of us have built other projects in the past (TeachYourselfCrypto and Copyright Samurai).
We decided to create a software that automated the entire process - take the tweet, create a video, and post it automatically.
So that's how the idea of Repurpose Pie was born.
VALIDATING THE IDEA AND GETTING A FEW USERS:
The first thing we did was make a quick and dirty video generator.Before we build anything else, I wanted to validate the idea.
I’ve been burned in the past where I built something no one wanted to use.
So we created the “Early Adopter Program”
I reached out to a few Twitter/X influencers and pitched the idea to them.
Here is our exact pitch:
I'm founding a new Saas Repurpose Pie that takes tweets, turns them into videos and posts them on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube automatically
This way, Twitter creators can repurpose their tweets and use them to grow on video-first platforms without any extra effort.
Here are few samples for you:
[attached samples]
This is not a screenshot software. Everything - The voice, the background, the speed, the font, etc. can be customised. You can also create a clone of your voice and use that! (instead of an AI voice)
I'm inviting a few accounts to subscribe as early adopters (you get 50% lifetime discount)
(Other early adopters who have joined are Ed latimore, BowTiedOx, PD Mangan, etc)
Would you be interested?
The response was tremendous (almost 50% paid on spot, 10% asked for an annual plan almost immediately)
We went all in and started developing the app. We sent the early customers their videos on telegram before the automations were built.
Sending people the videos on telegram was a great idea.
People would INSTANTLY give us feedback which we used to make the product better for them.
Validating the idea with the 50% off for life was a great idea.
Because of the early adopter program, we got:
- Cash to meet our initial expenses
- Real world feedback on how the videos performed
- What features are most valuable (usage statistics)
- Case studies and proof that the videos worked well (Users got millions of impressions and grew their accounts to thousands of followers in a few weeks) - This was insanely useful for launch
This helped us build the app based on what mattered to the users and what ACTUALLY WORKED IN THE REAL WORLD.
We added instruction videos. We made sure that the UI is intuitive and set the right expectations. We worked on features that moved the needle instead of “making it prettier” or “dark mode”.
It took us a few months to build out the rest of the app. In the meantime, we created a twitter account and started building up a WAITLIST for the software.
Because were were helping all these influencers grow everywhere, we had a lot of goodwill and we asked them to retweet our tweets and tweet their testimonials (eg. a post like "I’ve been using Repurposepie and it’s been helping me….")
Most of them do it. This helped us get the word out to a lot of people and we grew our waitlist to 1000+ people.
LAUNCH STRATEGY
The launch strategy was simple - LEVERAGE THE WAITLIST.
The software was ready to launch a week before BFCM.
Launching on Black Friday is always risky, because everyone and their mother has something to promote on Black Friday. We’d be fighting for top space in everyone’s inbox.
But launching after Black Friday would be worse (People generally take a break from purchasing anything new after Black Friday - “buying fatigue”) - so our choices were to launch on BFCM or wait a few weeks after BFCM to launch.
Instead of waiting for 2 whole weeks to launch, we decided to go ahead and launch ASAP.
Speed >>>>
Here’s everything we did during launch week:
- Test and retest the system to make sure everything works
- Build a sales page for launch
- Promote to the waitlist (we sent 10+ emails, one every 8-12 hours with useful content, testimonials, etc.)
- Promote on our twitter
- Ask our early adopters for testimonials and case studies
- Ask our early adopters to post on their X accounts (some of them have 500k+ followers so it helped quite a bit)
For the pricing strategy, we decided to charge $99 for the premium plan and $49 for the basic.
We did an exclusive launch discount of 40% off for the first 100 users.
I really wanted the launch to do well, and 40% off for life seemed like a sweet deal that could get all 100 spots filled.As soon as we launched, the sales started trickling in.
MOST of the people opted for the premium plan (This is because we asked our early adopters what features were most important and created our pricing accordingly)
A good chunk of people also brought the annual premium plan (which is almost $700 after discount).
It was a surreal feeling to see someone pay $700+ for our software without even testing it out!
We crossed the 5K MRR mark in 3 days (and almost $10k in gross revenue because many people paid annually).
I am super excited to add more features for our customers and build this company to something even bigger.
Next stop: $8333 MRR (IYKYK)
If I had to highlight the main lessons from building and launching this SaaS, it would be these:
- Find a problem that people are struggling with and solve it for them. Bonus points if you’re the target market yourself. In this case, we found a problem that many people were paying $500 for.
- Build an MVP and get paying customers BEFORE you spend months developing the application.
- Feedback from paying customers >>>> Random suggestions from people on the internet.
- Build what customers want, not what you think they want. How do you know what your customers want? Ask them. It’s that simple.
- Launch fast. If we waited for YouTube and Instagram to approve us, we wouldn’t have launched for another month. Instead, we decided to launch with just TikTok, and the launch still did well.
- Build a waitlist while you build out your product and start marketing. All it takes is a simple Carrd website and Google forms.
- Remember, getting customers is the most important thing. No SaleS, no SaaS.
What’s next for Repurpose Pie
We’re going to continue talking to our users and building features they want.
On popular request, here are the features we are currently working on:
- Auto-posting to YouTube and Instagram
- Ability to creating longer videos
- Adding music to videos
- Creating muted videos without voice overs
- More premade templates
Here's our website if you want to check it out (or roast my copy hahaha)
https://repurposepie.io/
It hit $5500 MRR in 3 days of launch and I thought more people could copy our launch strategy to get similar results.
Here’s everything that went into building the app and launching it:
THE “IDEA/PROBLEM”:
My co-founder has a huge following on Twitter (LifeMathMoney, 380K+ followers).
He wanted to grow on other platforms to get more reach and protect himself from a social media ban (he posts controversial stuff sometimes).
While Twitter (X) is a great place to grow, social media companies can ban you at any time. It’s a big risk for any influencer who has only one big platform. You get banned once and lose an entire business.
He found that it was extremely time-consuming to write, manage multiple businesses AND create 3-5 videos for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube every single day.
So he did the simplest thing he could think of. He hired a video editor to take his tweets and turn them to videos.
The video editor:
- Took his tweets
- Added a cool background,
- Used text-to-speech AI to generate a voiceover
- Added trending music to the videos.
Within a few weeks, his TikTok account hit 10,000 followers. The simple tweet-videos definitely worked and he now had more reach than before.
But he was paying the guy $500 per month.
He discussed this problem with me and our third co-founder (ex-AWS) - the three of us have built other projects in the past (TeachYourselfCrypto and Copyright Samurai).
We decided to create a software that automated the entire process - take the tweet, create a video, and post it automatically.
So that's how the idea of Repurpose Pie was born.
VALIDATING THE IDEA AND GETTING A FEW USERS:
The first thing we did was make a quick and dirty video generator.Before we build anything else, I wanted to validate the idea.
I’ve been burned in the past where I built something no one wanted to use.
So we created the “Early Adopter Program”
I reached out to a few Twitter/X influencers and pitched the idea to them.
Here is our exact pitch:
I'm founding a new Saas Repurpose Pie that takes tweets, turns them into videos and posts them on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube automatically
This way, Twitter creators can repurpose their tweets and use them to grow on video-first platforms without any extra effort.
Here are few samples for you:
[attached samples]
This is not a screenshot software. Everything - The voice, the background, the speed, the font, etc. can be customised. You can also create a clone of your voice and use that! (instead of an AI voice)
I'm inviting a few accounts to subscribe as early adopters (you get 50% lifetime discount)
(Other early adopters who have joined are Ed latimore, BowTiedOx, PD Mangan, etc)
Would you be interested?
The response was tremendous (almost 50% paid on spot, 10% asked for an annual plan almost immediately)
We went all in and started developing the app. We sent the early customers their videos on telegram before the automations were built.
Sending people the videos on telegram was a great idea.
People would INSTANTLY give us feedback which we used to make the product better for them.
Validating the idea with the 50% off for life was a great idea.
Because of the early adopter program, we got:
- Cash to meet our initial expenses
- Real world feedback on how the videos performed
- What features are most valuable (usage statistics)
- Case studies and proof that the videos worked well (Users got millions of impressions and grew their accounts to thousands of followers in a few weeks) - This was insanely useful for launch
This helped us build the app based on what mattered to the users and what ACTUALLY WORKED IN THE REAL WORLD.
We added instruction videos. We made sure that the UI is intuitive and set the right expectations. We worked on features that moved the needle instead of “making it prettier” or “dark mode”.
It took us a few months to build out the rest of the app. In the meantime, we created a twitter account and started building up a WAITLIST for the software.
Because were were helping all these influencers grow everywhere, we had a lot of goodwill and we asked them to retweet our tweets and tweet their testimonials (eg. a post like "I’ve been using Repurposepie and it’s been helping me….")
Most of them do it. This helped us get the word out to a lot of people and we grew our waitlist to 1000+ people.
LAUNCH STRATEGY
The launch strategy was simple - LEVERAGE THE WAITLIST.
The software was ready to launch a week before BFCM.
Launching on Black Friday is always risky, because everyone and their mother has something to promote on Black Friday. We’d be fighting for top space in everyone’s inbox.
But launching after Black Friday would be worse (People generally take a break from purchasing anything new after Black Friday - “buying fatigue”) - so our choices were to launch on BFCM or wait a few weeks after BFCM to launch.
Instead of waiting for 2 whole weeks to launch, we decided to go ahead and launch ASAP.
Speed >>>>
Here’s everything we did during launch week:
- Test and retest the system to make sure everything works
- Build a sales page for launch
- Promote to the waitlist (we sent 10+ emails, one every 8-12 hours with useful content, testimonials, etc.)
- Promote on our twitter
- Ask our early adopters for testimonials and case studies
- Ask our early adopters to post on their X accounts (some of them have 500k+ followers so it helped quite a bit)
For the pricing strategy, we decided to charge $99 for the premium plan and $49 for the basic.
We did an exclusive launch discount of 40% off for the first 100 users.
I really wanted the launch to do well, and 40% off for life seemed like a sweet deal that could get all 100 spots filled.As soon as we launched, the sales started trickling in.
MOST of the people opted for the premium plan (This is because we asked our early adopters what features were most important and created our pricing accordingly)
A good chunk of people also brought the annual premium plan (which is almost $700 after discount).
It was a surreal feeling to see someone pay $700+ for our software without even testing it out!
We crossed the 5K MRR mark in 3 days (and almost $10k in gross revenue because many people paid annually).
I am super excited to add more features for our customers and build this company to something even bigger.
Next stop: $8333 MRR (IYKYK)
If I had to highlight the main lessons from building and launching this SaaS, it would be these:
- Find a problem that people are struggling with and solve it for them. Bonus points if you’re the target market yourself. In this case, we found a problem that many people were paying $500 for.
- Build an MVP and get paying customers BEFORE you spend months developing the application.
- Feedback from paying customers >>>> Random suggestions from people on the internet.
- Build what customers want, not what you think they want. How do you know what your customers want? Ask them. It’s that simple.
- Launch fast. If we waited for YouTube and Instagram to approve us, we wouldn’t have launched for another month. Instead, we decided to launch with just TikTok, and the launch still did well.
- Build a waitlist while you build out your product and start marketing. All it takes is a simple Carrd website and Google forms.
- Remember, getting customers is the most important thing. No SaleS, no SaaS.
What’s next for Repurpose Pie
We’re going to continue talking to our users and building features they want.
On popular request, here are the features we are currently working on:
- Auto-posting to YouTube and Instagram
- Ability to creating longer videos
- Adding music to videos
- Creating muted videos without voice overs
- More premade templates
Here's our website if you want to check it out (or roast my copy hahaha)
https://repurposepie.io/
love the fast test and the project. I would love to help. Since you have many things planned do you need some extra help on the marketing side? I love organic growth and I'm working with some saas helping them to convert more.