Introduction

He is founder of Starter Story, a guy who defeated me in a game in which we both were playing without knowing about each other. To explain it more clearly, he was working on a similar startup Idea on which I was also working but we didn’t know about each other. In this video we will understand, what went wrong with me and what went right with him which lead to his success.

Over the next month, I'm building and launching the @starter_story community!

I've no idea how to do this right, but I plan on documenting my progress here.

Want to build:

💪 Something great
💵 Brings in MRR
🚀 Launch: 9/26/18

Any good resources/reading before I get started?

— Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) August 27, 2018

What is his backstory?

Back in 2018, while he was working at a Job, he dreamed about starting his business and quitting his job but he kept running into the same problem again and again. he didn’t know where to start, how to find good ideas, how to to make money and how to get customers and he wasn’t able to find this information anywhere online and that is where the startup story Idea was born a product that provides you with the highly researched case studies of successful startups.

About two years ago, I wrote my very first blog post and talked about some life goals and why I was starting @starter_story.

Always great to look back and really remember why you started.

(I'm pretty sure no one read it)

OG post: https://t.co/hGHXWqMF0y pic.twitter.com/XAWwbceBre

— Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) September 5, 2019

Shifting to my world,

Back in 2018, I was in my first year of college college and I dropped my first Idea after six months of building a Electric car company because I was short on funds and wasn’t able to raise funding. but, I didn’t stopped there and started looking for more problems. I spent 3 months looking here and there but wasn’t able to find any good idea. I researched on internet and found that around 42% of startups fail because they doesn’t have the market need and that was the lightning moment. I though why not build a community where problem facers can post about their problems and problems solvers can come up and choose to work on the problem which they are passionate about.

Building the product?

Patwalls, procrastinated for a couple of months, every time he used to walk up to the starbucks store but instead of on going inside. He went home and watch Netflix until one day he signed a contract with himself to do 2 hours of deep work regularly in the morning before going to office and that was the time He started to rise and in just a few weeks he released his product.

Day 10/100

2 hours and 45 minutes of deep work & done by 11AM!

Spent the whole time writing more of our course on how to find trends and business ideas.#deepwork100 pic.twitter.com/KGdf5wbN0A

— Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) December 5, 2022

Talking about me

I was new to the coding at point of time I didn’t knew how to code build stuff and where to deploy. Although, I was able to solve some leetcode problems in python at time but building a product was something new for me for the couple of months, I also procrastinated. I spend some time finding the co-founder but later decided that I will go all alone. Initially, I build the Android app as an MVP where people could post about their problem and worked out really well, I got around 500 users in span of 6 months but back in my mind I was more focused on building the webapp instead of Android app. So, I also started learning web-development, databases and everything and I released my first version after 1 year which was around Jun-Aug 2019 and at this point of time, Pat walls have surpassed me by a huge distance.

Our paths diverged

While he was doing deep work from starbucks regularly, he had released the project and have also achieved first traction through X and Reddit and at that point of time he was looking for ways to monetize this stuff until one day he received a mail from a company saying that they would like to sponsor his platform for $12000. and this was the out of blue moment for him. He decided to go all in to his problem leaving his job and building Starter story full time.

Whereas my side was a little different

After launching the website I was more caught up in the making the design more eye-pleasing which took 2-3 months and then I started looking for Investors at that point of time. I applied to YC 3 times and got rejected every-time. Later I build more features on the product like people can add their products, In addition to they they can also tell about their story in the timeline view. At that point of time, I did approached a couple of founders to add their story being a developer, I didn’t have any Idea how to convince them. So, I went on a call with them understood their story and added it on the website. That time I had no Idea how I will monetize it and as college was about to complete in 6 months and I was short on money. So, I decided that I will close this project(although I kept the website running) and get a job. Once I get a job, I will start working on some another Idea.

Fast Forward to 2024

I got to know about Patwalls and his product Starter Story and how he monetized it. I was really impressed by his journey and Jan 2023, I decided to leave the Job and start working on a new startup Idea that was Buildfast and I decided to build it in public on X. As, I have achieved some stable growth on buildfast, I decided to restart Voxup. Let’s see where it goes.