How Yannick and his co-founder grew this Twitter tool into a 7-figure business
In this case study, we learn how Yannick Veys found his co-founder on IndieHackers and scaled this Twitter tool into a 7-figure thriving SaaS business!
Full name: Yannick Veys
Business: Hypefury
Started in: 2019
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/hypefury/
https://www.instagram.com/hypefuryhq
https://www.youtube.com/@Hypefury
Role: Co-Founder & CMO
Employees: 0
Who are you, and what’s the SaaS you’re working on?
I’m Yannick, and I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 15 years. In the past, I helped a Dutch startup grow to over 3M ARR.
Today, my focus is Hypefury. I co-founded it with Samy Dindane, and I manage all our marketing initiatives.
How did you come up with the idea?
I met my co-founder Samy on indiehackers. He came up with Hypefury to scratch his own itch. It was around August 2019 that scheduling had become mildly popular on Twitter, and he observed there was no tool to schedule threads. He tweeted about it.
That was it. There were no elaborate business plans, strategies, or anything. One weekend, he sat down and coded the MVP. He picked the name “Hypefury” from a GitHub name generator.
It was finished in 3 days, and he shared it with the first circle of users. When it started getting traction, he realized he wanted to grow into a business and set out to find someone who would take care of growth and marketing. He shared this on IndieHackers, and I saw potential in the app. That’s how we came together and started the business.
How did you validate the product?
Samy was in Jose Rosado’s paid community, where he got the first circle of users. When a couple of people tried Hypefury, they started suggesting features. It was then that Samy realized that that simple "fun" project has the potential to become bigger.
We get on calls with them, understand how they were using Hypefury, and what more they would need. We built and pivoted accordingly. One of the famous features - Autoplug, which was then copied by almost all Twitter SaaS, was recommended by our user Rougewealth. All in all, building fast and getting it in public helped validate Hypefury.
How did you launch the product?
There wasn’t an official launch. Samy launched Hypefury in his mastermind group, and it grew from there. Probably after more than a year, we finally got around to launching it on Product Hunt. (You should not launch on PH without traction. You won’t get enough upvotes from your customers/fans to rank in the top 5)
What were 3 ways you got the first customers to your product?
Getting in a paid community - People who join a paid community are serious about growing and are ideal users.
Getting on calls with trial users and understanding their needs - We got on a call with people who tried Hypefury, understood what they needed, and quickly built it. The easiest way to convert trial users to customers.
Word of Mouth - The first round of customers tweeted that they were trying Hypefury and found it helpful. That, in turn, got us more users.
What is the SaaS doing right now in terms of numbers?
We stopped sharing revenue numbers when competitors were popping up left and right. But we can say that we’re a 7-figure business with millions of revenue so far.
What’s the best growth hack or tactic to get new customers to your SaaS right now?
We started with just SEO and affiliate marketing. Doing affiliate marketing in the beginning is a great way to get more traction. You’re outsourcing your marketing to tons of people who you only have to pay when they sell something.
What is your biggest lesson learned thus far?
Your product has to be your best marketing tool.
There’s no amount of $$ that can substitute word of mouth.
If your product is good (and ours is), people will talk about it.
And when they do - they basically direct their audience to us, which means growth!
What are the 5 tools you use the most?
Hypefury: to manage our X, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts
ClickUp: for project management
Customer.io: to manage email marketing and send in-app messages
Notion: to coordinate the creation of new courses and other marketing materials
First Promoter: to manage our affiliate program
What’s 1 book you’d recommend to fellow founders?
I think the most underrated business book is “Fish!” by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen.
I think it’s especially useful when you start to have a team and you have to step up as a leader.
What’s your advice for (aspiring) founders in SaaS?
You can read all you want about starting and building a business. There’s only one thing that really matters: actually doing things.