How Felix grew Buildpad to $1k MRR

Company description

Helping 10,000+ founders build products that people actually want.

Building in public to get initial traction

Felix acquired his first users by posting on X (formerly Twitter), particularly in build-in-public and startup communities. He shared wins, updates, lessons learned, and the occasional meme. In the early stages, only a few users were needed, and every post or reply created an opportunity to reach someone new.

Reaching out to influencers and sponsoring content

Since organic content was already driving users, Felix doubled down by working with influencers. Instead of producing all the content himself, he paid others to create posts promoting the app. This scaled what was already working.

Word of mouth

Felix always made product quality his top priority. By focusing on surprising users with how good the app was, recommendations spread naturally. Over one-third of paying customers came directly from word of mouth.

Plain-text emails

Felix suspected that branded, heavily formatted emails felt impersonal and hurt engagement. After switching to plain-text emails, his open rates nearly doubled. A major win for user communication and retention.