On October 28, I saw this tweet from Pieter Levels.
He said a lot of people share fake MRR screenshots to get attention.
The next morning, I woke up still thinking about it. Because I share my own revenue publicly, and I care about trust. So I had an idea…
What if there were a place where founders could verify their revenue by connecting a read-only Stripe API key?
I just opened Cursor and said, “build this.”
Within hours, the first version was ready. It had only one headline, two buttons (one for adding a startup, one for searching), and a leaderboard showing real revenue.
The leaderboard just featured my 8 profitable startups on launch day
I launched it the next day by quoting Pieter’s original tweet. The tweet got 3,000+ likes, 2M+ views.
When I launched TrustMRR, I had no monetization plan.
At the bottom of the page, I added my 𝕏 handle and a link to my boilerplate, the same codebase I used to build this app in 24 hours. I also embedded DataFast’s real-time visitor globe for people to discover my little SaaS.
If you visit TrustMRR, you should see yourself in there!
I also added a few ad slots on the sidebar. At first, they promoted my own product. Then, just for fun, I opened a few empty ones for others to buy.
I priced them at $299/month. Within hours, half were sold.
As the tweet gained traction, I kept increasing the price — $699, $999, $1,499.
Within 3 days, every ad slot was gone, and my side project made $20,378.
It became the third fastest-growing project I’ve ever built (I’ve built more than 30).
It took me months to grow some of them. This one took a weekend. Ha, entrepreneurship!
After launch, I kept building whatever users asked for.
I didn’t know what the perfect product looked like, so I just listened.
For fun, I even made a mini-game called $1 vs $1M Startup, where players guess which verified startup makes more.
Soon, big startups started verifying their revenue. Some were making millions a year.
And then Gumroad joined. It felt unreal.
And that’s it.
No grand plan. No strategy.
Just an idea that solved a tiny problem, built fast, launched fast, and fueled by luck, timing, and curiosity.
Takeaways
- Simplicity wins. The landing page had one headline and two buttons. Nothing else.
- Treat your OG image like a YouTube thumbnail. It’s your first impression.
- Context matters. This only worked because I built it in response to Pieter’s tweet; it gave people a story.
- Show up and build. You can’t control luck, but you can increase your odds by playing (shipping) more often.
— Marc Lou
3 startups I built to help you: