My two apps made $30M - Starter Story

This video is an educational case study of one founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

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I built two companies doing over 30 million in sales by copying already successful businesses

Meet Will

After the real estate crash in 2008 he lost everything and had to start from scratch

We didn't see it coming and we just totally got crushed

Then he came across the opportunity to build a SaaS

but he didn't do it in the conventional way

Instead of reinventing the wheel and building something that didn't exist yet

he developed a framework that led him to make millions of dollars

This is kind of the cold email framework that we use for Uplead

and I think anyone can kind of use this and apply this to their business today

In this video Will shares his million dollar research framework

how to successfully copy lucrative businesses

and the one marketing strategy that's made him millions of dollars

The playbooks are already out there Most people just don't study them

Whether you're a seasoned builder or just getting started

this episode might blow your mind

All right let's get into it

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

All right welcome Will to the channel

Tell me about who you are what you built and what's your story

My name is Will Cannon

I built Uplead to over 30 million in sales

and I built SignatureLead to over 1 6 million users without raising a dime of funding

I did it all without reinventing the wheel

I took business models that already had product market fit

and I added my own little twist to them

Okay cool We're going to get all into this framework

of how you built these and took these proven markets

But first I want to understand a little bit more about your background

How do you get here to this place where you have these awesome software businesses

So at 19 me and my girlfriend who's now my wife started our first mortgage company

This was during the subprime mortgage boom

So there was mortgages being handed out left and right

and we were kind of new to the industry

We're like what's going on

We started making so much money we couldn't even believe it

And we thought we were on top of the world

This was 2005 2006 2007

Everything was going great

And then the mortgage crisis hit

We didn't see it coming and we just totally got crushed

So then it was time to rebuild

We were like hey what are we going to do next

When we had our mortgage company we were sending a lot of cold emails

to loan officers and real estate agents to recruit them

And we had a couple of people in our office that would ask us like

hey do you have a list of loan officers or a list of real estate agents

So we were kind of selling lists on the side

But we thought hey this could be a business

So we started diving into that further

That's what we did for about 10 years from 2007 ish to 2017

But we kept running into the same problem data quality

And that was kind of the aha moment

We're like hey there has to be a way or a software that can do this for us

So that was the thought behind Uplead

And that was our transition from 10 years of building an agency into SaaS

All right well before we get into these businesses that you've built

how you've grown them and the framework for finding these ideas for these proven markets

can you break down how you actually found the ideas

for your two big software companies that you run now

For Uplead we were building our agency

So the data quality from the vendors on the market at the time was around 50 to 60 accurate

We'd scrape the internet for data

And that data was also maybe 40 50 accurate

Every time we'd build a list we'd have to verify the emails

We'd have to send the phone number list to a call center we had in the Philippines

to verify the phone numbers

And that was kind of the aha moment

We're like hey why isn't there a tool that can just do this for us

Why isn't there a tool where I can go in I can punch in my ICP

I can say here's who I want to target

I click download or export and it'll download and verify the emails

and verify the phone numbers in real time

We didn't find any software

We decided to build it ourselves

For Signaturely which now has over 1 6 million users this is how we found the idea

This was 2020

And we saw everything was moving away from face to face

So we knew documents weren't being signed face to face anymore

They were being signed over the internet

So we looked this model up and we saw DocuSign was the biggest player in the game

They were public

They had a ton of revenue

But their product was complicated

It wasn't easy to use

We thought there has to be a better way

Why don't we build a simple easy to use version of DocuSign

that was so easy to use your grandmother could use it

That's how we knew this business could be successful

There was already proven product market fit

There was a need in the market for customers that wanted a simple version

of a tool that was already on the market

And we used our SEO and cold email and other skill sets to acquire customers profitably

Okay so you did this for two very successful businesses

You have this framework for finding ideas that are already proven

and then just going and building them doing them somewhat differently

Can you walk me through this framework so that someone watching could potentially do the same

Step one is I would look for markets that already have product market fit

I mean I'm not Steve Jobs

I had a 1 5 GPA growing up

So I thought it was a lot easier to go into a market that already has product market fit

Now that you found a market that you want to compete in

the next step is finding your unique angle putting a unique twist on it

It can't just be pricing

It can't just be hey we're like XYZ but a little bit more affordable

There has to be some unique twist to it

So go look at the one and two star reviews and see what people are complaining about

See what they dislike about the best players in the market

That's our twist

Our twist is what people dislike about the biggest companies in the space

because those are the easiest customers to go after and acquire

And that's step three acquiring customers profitably

Now this is the hardest part but if you can get this right you can build any business

This is the hardest part because you have to have a skill set here

whether it's cold email whether it's cold calling whether it's SEO whether it's ads

So my skill sets are around cold email cold calling SEO and a few others

I acquired all of these by reading books by watching YouTube videos

And step four is execution

Most people talk about building a business but actually building it is a lot harder

You're going to fail

You're going to have to get back up

You're going to have to keep going

In this playbook it might not work the first time

I failed at probably over 20 different businesses before having two successful businesses

I think that framework is awesome

I love that playbook

Clearly it's worked for you for two very successful businesses

But for anyone who's watching right now I think they might be wondering

how can I do this right now

What are the opportunities that can work in 2025

I'm sure you've come across a bunch of painful problems that you'd love to solve

but you don't have time for

What would you be building right now that the audience can learn from

One idea is a super simple CRM

Almost every business needs a CRM

It's a big market

It's fragmented

There's multiple companies doing billions of dollars in revenue

This is an area I would probably look at if I was building something new today

Number two I would say a payroll software for small businesses

You have a bunch of companies in the space

Again really fragmented multiple winners in this space

If you look at FreshBooks and their SEO strategy around templates and tools

I'd probably copy that playbook right there right

They've built the playbook for you

There's an SEO advantage I would have in that market

Number three I would say a website analytics tool

Every business needs to analyze their metrics their funnel

how much traffic they're getting to their website attribution ROI

Your market is almost infinite

And if you can tie in some new things right now around AI

around maybe mentions on LLMs within the analytics tool

I think that'd be a cool tool to start today

All right before we keep going here

I do got to call out something I've been seeing with a lot of founders right now

You're moving fast

Maybe you're close to product market fit or you're prepping for your next round

but then enterprise prospects start asking about your security compliance

and suddenly everything slows down

The reality is that in 2025 especially with AI

security expectations hit earlier and harder than ever

You can either get ahead of it or let it become the thing that kills your momentum

Vanta today's sponsor basically solves that entire headache

Instead of spending months figuring out SOC 2 compliance

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And here's what I really like about the platform

It's not just a one time setup

It keeps monitoring and updating as you scale

Fast growing startups like LangChain Rider and Cursor

trusted Vanta to build their security foundation early

which means they can focus on growth instead of getting stuck in compliance hell

Right now Vanta is offering 1 000 off for StarterStory viewers

So check out Vanta com slash StarterStory or click the first link in the description

Over 12 000 companies are already using Vanta to scale smarter

Huge thank you to Vanta for partnering with us at StarterStory

Let's dive back into the interview

I want to hear a little bit more about your businesses that you built

We haven't really talked about them yet

but can you share the two businesses that you built and software that are crushing it right now

What do they do How do they work And how are they doing

Uplead is a B2B data provider with real time verified emails

mobile numbers and buyer intent signals

Uplead has over 4 000 customers currently

It's done over 30 million in sales

and it gets over 100 000 visits to its website every month

And the other business I have is Signaturely

It's an e signature company

It's an easy and simple to use alternative to DocuSign

Signaturely has over 1 6 million users

It's done over 1 5 million in sales and it gets over 800 000 visits per month

Okay cool And those are amazing businesses

Beyond the framework for finding these ideas which we talked a bunch about

I'd also be curious to hear about how you actually grew and scaled these businesses

Can you tell me a little bit more about that

Uplead got its first 1 million in annual recurring revenue strictly from cold email

So this is kind of the cold email framework that we use for Uplead

And I think anyone can kind of use this and apply this to their business today

So here's the cold email that got us our first 1 million in ARR

I'll break it down

The subject line is hi first name So hi James

The first line is I was checking out your LinkedIn profile

and thought this could be of value to you

We built a tool called Uplead which is like ZoomInfo

but with real time email verification and we're really affordable

Are you open to trying it out at no cost

So the subject line is hi James It looks like it came from a real person

The intro is neutral and direct I saw your profile There's no hype there

The value prop is clear and familiar

We framed it against the biggest company in the market ZoomInfo but better

We told what our twist is

And then the ask are you open to trying it out at no cost

We try to make the ask so easy it's hard to say no

You don't need long emails You need short ones that feel human

And I think any business can take this

They can tweak those lines and they can send out the same cold email that we did

So from Signaturely we got from 0 to 1 6 million users mainly from SEO

We use the strategy around tools and templates

and ranking for them high in search in order to get our first customers

We built a free online signature tool where you can type or hand draw your signature

and you can download it

And then we push them to go use that to sign documents

So that was one of the tools we use as part of our funnel

And then we also wrote templates

So we wrote marketing agreements and construction agreements and landlord agreements

And we ranked a bunch of templates templates and contracts

And that was how we got our first thousand plus customers

OK well thanks for sharing that I mean SEO I love SEO

Big reason Starter Story grew as well

The last question that I have for you that we ask everyone who comes on Starter Story

you built these amazing businesses

What would you say to a younger Will if you could stand on his shoulder

shoulder and give him advice from when you were just starting out

You had the failed mortgage company

What would be your advice to someone just starting out like you

Have these big hairy audacious goals these crazy goals these moonshots right

I remember when I was first starting out

I thought if I could just make 5 000 a month that would be enough

And then you hit that and then you go to the next level

So have big goals

Another one is things are going to come up every day that get in your way

Don't sweat the small stuff Think about the big picture

Another piece of advice is you have to just keep going

You're going to fail You're going to have to get back up right

I failed at probably 15 20 different businesses before I built two that were super successful

Well thanks for coming on the channel

I appreciate you sharing your story and these amazing businesses that you built

Hope to have you on again sometime and see your businesses grow even more

So thanks for coming on

Thanks for having me Pat

Thanks again to Will for coming onto the channel and sharing his story

I love his approach to building businesses where it's not about creating a whole new category

but instead just adding a small twist on what's already out there

If you're looking to do something similar then definitely check out Starter Story Build

It's our program where we teach you how to use in demand AI coding tools

and go from an idea to a real working app in just a couple weeks

Having coding experience is not an obstacle to building real software products anymore

And if you want to build something

just click the link in the description to Starter Story Build and check it out

All right I hope you guys enjoyed the episode and found it valuable

I'll see you in the next one

Peace

Starter Story

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