WordPress

A trademark certificate appears in the mail 6 years later as a 'sign'

After an early Webflow trademark application was denied, Vlad gave up and assumed Weebly and WordPress had won. In late 2011, a Webflow trademark certificate showed up unexpectedly in his mailbox 5-6 years after the original submission — he read it as a sign to revisit the idea.

“and in my mailbox was a trademark certificate for Webflow, apparently out of nowhere. Exactly. This was like 5 or 6 years later after our initial submission, after we already got a denial saying like, hey, this is, you know, it's not going anywhere. So I saw that as a sign of like, "Okay, something has to be explored here."”

WordPress is 35% of the internet; Shopify only ~2% of e-com stores

Sam relays listener-cited stats: WordPress powers about 35% of the internet, while Shopify makes up only roughly 2% of the e-commerce store market, with WooCommerce actually far bigger.

“they go, Shopify only makes up 2% of the e-com like store market. Yeah. And WooCommerce is actually significant, way bigger, which is crazy to me, which is crazy to me.”

Ramon built a soap opera blog on WordPress and sold it for $9M

Shaan's favorite guest, Ramon, resonated because his path was relatable: no coding skill, started a WordPress blog about soap operas, grew it with Facebook traffic, and sold it for $9 million to a regular buyer, not via an investment bank.

“I started a blog. I used WordPress. I don't know how to code. I used, you know, kind of Facebook traffic to build it up. And, you know, the net result was he built a blog about soap operas and sold it for $9 million. And he sold it like to just a guy, not like, oh, I then had this investment bank that sold it to, you know, Amazon or whatever it was. Like it was just very relatable.”

Don't overthink pre-launch: ugly WordPress site in a couple hours

Ramon's playbook is to launch fast and ugly rather than perfect the pre-launch. He bought a WordPress theme, slapped on a simple logo, and shipped in a couple hours instead of spending months designing a business card and site that might fail anyway.

“this website I built in a couple hours was a WordPress theme, a very simple logo, because I'm a, I'm just a believer, like, trying a lot of different things fast, fast, and then see if something works. Then you, you know, optimize or make it better or make it look better or faster, things like that. But, you know, I try to prevent spending too much time in the pre-launch phase where, like, I made those mistakes too when I was younger.”

Steal thisShip an ugly v1 in hours and optimize only after you see traction; don't burn months perfecting a pre-launch.

Novoly: a Netflix-style app for short romance novels

Ramon and Sam Parr built Novoly, an app where people read or listen to short romantic stories. They validated it by putting an ugly WordPress site with a few stories in front of soap opera readers and saw fans begging for the next chapter.

“Novoly is actually a platform where where people can read short romantic stories, short romantic novels, books, on their iPhone or tablet, either read it or listen to it. So it's a book but also an audio version. Me and Sam came up with the idea, we were back and forth, we are really good friends, we always come up with weird and crazy ideas, and we came up with this idea when I still had the soap opera website and I still had access to all these readers.”

Steal thisValidate a new content product by funneling an existing audience to a bare-bones page and watching for organic demand.

Built the biggest soap blog without coding, writing, or watching soaps

Ramon couldn't code, wasn't a strong English writer, and had never seen a soap opera, so he bought a $49 WordPress theme and hired freelance writers. He built the most popular soap opera blog anyway by just doing the simple things.

“So I built a simple WordPress site. I bought a theme from ThemeForest, put it on WordPress, used photos.”

Novely: a 'push a button, get an emotion' romance fiction app

Ramon and Sam built Novely, an app for short romantic stories readable or listenable on phone. They validated it cheaply by putting up an ugly WordPress site, commissioning a few stories, and seeing readers beg for the next chapter in the comments.

“So same story, put a really ugly, simple WordPress site up, had somebody write a couple short romantic stories, and drove traffic to it, see the engagement, see if people like it or not. And the engagement was crazy. People were literally like begging in the comments, like, oh, we love this chapter, when is the next chapter, things like bad.”

Steal thisValidate a content product cheaply with an ugly landing page and a few sample pieces; let comment demand prove the market.