$2M from 2 websites for Adam

Hey - It's Farzan & Guy

Sydney was hot this weekend. I dragged Enzo (my Cavoodle) into the sea to cool off. He looked like a cute drowned rat after the swim. Then post-swim zoomies around the house. Let's get into the first Founderoo newsletter of 2025.

Reading time: 8.5 mins

In the mail today. 2 founder stories, 1 founder playbook, 1 founder tale, 1 tweet

 Founder story 1 

How Adam makes 
$22M/Year with 2 Websites

"I burned through every dollar I had saved. The second they found out what we were selling, eyes glazed over. No one cared."

Meet Adam Robinson, who bootstrapped Retention.com to $20M+ in revenue after multiple failed startups. Here's the nuts story.

See how Adam:
→ Grew to $1M ARR in just 16 weeks
→ Bootstrapped to $20M+ annual revenue
→ Built an initial MVP in 8 weeks
→ Started with just $5K in Facebook ads

The interesting part isn't the numbers, it's his unconventional journey:

On product validation:
"I wouldn't start building. I would try to sell first. Get someone to hand you a check before you build anything."

On business approaches:
- Spent 18 months building the wrong product
- Hired models for trade show - total failure
- Found breakthrough in identity tech
- Scaled through systematic testing

On growth strategy:
- Mocked up designs before coding
- Created $1K video sales letter
- Tested single features in isolation
- Built minimum viable everything

Contrarian insights:

On business difficulty:
"The ones that start hard stay hard. The ones that start easy stay easy. That's product-market fit."

On experimentation:
"Out of every 5 experiments, you might get zero wins at first. But soon you'll be batting one or two out of five."

On focus:
"Elon can focus on a few things. The rest of us are lucky if we can focus on one thing."

Key lessons learned:
- Start by selling, not building
- Speak to customers before writing code
- Use minimum tools possible ($0 CRM until $10M ARR)
- Keep expenses incredibly low

The future?
- Building distribution vehicles for new tech
- Scaling through thought leadership
- Creating creator ecosystems

My big learnings from Adam's story:
Success isn't about perfect execution, it's about a tonne of experimentation until you find what works. Then you double down hard.

Founder story 2

From Prison to $800K/Month: The Conbud Cannabis Story

Coss Marte transformed from serving time to serving customers. After being a three-time felon dealing illegal weed, he's now the CEO of Conbud, New York's first legal dispensary in the Lower East Side.

Key Journey Points:
- Started dealing at 13, was sentenced to 7 years in prison in 2009
- Created a successful prison-style fitness business (Conbody) after release
- Launched Conbud in 2021, invested $1.2M to start
- Now generates $800K monthly revenue with 72 employees across 4 locations
- Focuses on hiring justice-impacted individuals

The Numbers:
- Monthly Revenue: $800K
- Profit Margin: 13% ($100K/month)
- Current Locations: 4
- Employee Count: 72
- Initial Investment: $1.2M

Big Vision: Marte aims to capture 25% of the New York State cannabis market through strategic licensing deals and expansion.

Most Powerful Quote: "I still don't believe I wake up every day and I'm coming to get an actual tax-paying check for selling marijuana. It's crazy."

 Founder playbook 

Notion's Founder Story & Playbook: The Path to a $10B Company

The Foundation Ivan Zhao and Simon Last built Notion on complementary strengths - Ivan brought deep design and UX expertise, while Simon provided technical prowess in scalable systems. This combination proved crucial for building a complex yet user-friendly product.

The Vision They identified a clear problem: workplace tools were too fragmented. Their vision was to create a unified workspace combining notes, tasks, and databases seamlessly. But executing this vision required making tough decisions.

The Crisis & Pivot In 2014-2015, Notion hit a wall that would have killed most startups:
- Their initial tech stack (WebKit + CouchDB) proved fundamentally flawed
- Core performance issues plagued the product
- Made the brutal decision to lay off the entire team
- Ivan borrowed $150,000 from his mother to keep going
- Relocated to Kyoto, Japan for focused rebuilding

This moment exemplifies their most important lesson: the courage to start over when the foundation isn't right.

Growth Strategy Notion's success came from several key principles:

Product-Led Growth
- Built for natural virality through sharing
- Strong focus on user experience
- Continuous iteration based on feedback
- Emphasis on flexibility and customization

Community-First Approach
- Zero marketing spend - pure organic growth
- Fostered a strong user community
- Encouraged template sharing
- Built a presence on Product Hunt and social media

Smart Business Model
- Freemium approach that encouraged adoption
- Made powerful tools accessible to everyone
- Natural upgrade path as users grew
- Enterprise features for larger organizations

Results
- 35M+ users globally
- $10B valuation
- 4M+ paying customers
- Transformed how teams organize information

Key Lessons for Founders

Technical Foundation Matters
- Don't hesitate to rebuild if the foundation is wrong
- Think long-term about scalability
- Choose a technology stack based on vision, not just current needs

Product Market Fit Takes Time
- Focus on getting the product right before scaling
- Listen to early users intensively
- Be willing to iterate based on feedback

Growth Can Be Organic
- Strong product can drive word-of-mouth growth
- Community building can replace traditional marketing
- Focus on user experience over acquisition

Vision Should Be Flexible but Focused
- Keep core mission consistent
- Be flexible about implementation
- Let user needs guide product evolution

The story shows that startup success isn't always about rapid growth - sometimes it's about having the patience and resilience to build something truly transformative. Notion's journey from crisis to $10B valuation demonstrates the power of staying true to a vision while being willing to completely rethink its implementation.

Founder tale

The cautionary and sad tale of Ian and his previous company Bench.

(This is Ian’s words on how he was pushed out of a previous business he founded, by the VCs. The business was an accounting firm called Bench. Ian wrote this post on LinkedIn one week ago).

I’m very sad today to see that Bench Accounting has shut down.

I’ve avoided speaking publicly about Bench since just over 3 years ago when I was fired from the company I co-founded. I still don’t have a lot of appetite to talk about it tbh, but think at least a short statement is appropriate.

In November 2021 I went out for what I thought would be a regular lunch with one of my board members. We had just raised a Series C and turned down a highly lucrative acquisition offer. We had budding partnerships with companies like Shopify that were interested in the technology we were developing. We were winning.

The board member thanked me for bringing the company to this point, but that they would be bringing in a new professional CEO to “take the company to the next level.”

I had been battling with some of the board members over strategy. They wanted me to take the company in a new direction that I thought was a very bad idea. I wanted to continue with what was working and with what our partners had signed on to distribute. I was intransigent.

Rather than continuing to fight with me, they opted just to just replace me, thinking that they could run the company better themselves. I was totally convinced that their approach would destroy the company. I opted to resign from the board rather than fight. Because on the off-chance that I was wrong, I wanted to give them the best chances of succeeding.

I reasoned that if they were right and I’m just a wrong-headed founder who won’t listen, then I should just fully get out of the way so they can see their vision through. And on a personal level, I just didn’t think I could stand to watch them dismantle the company I had spent a decade building.

So I moved on. I started off fresh and built a new company (Teal). Earlier this year we successfully exited to Mercury.  Things are going well and I’m excited for what we’re up to.

I hope the story of Bench goes on to become a warning for VCs that think they can “upgrade” a company by replacing the founder. It never works.

(This post was written by Ian Crosby one week ago and posted to LinkedIn)

 A tweet we loved

That’s us for this week. Appreciate you taking the time out to read our ramblings.

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See you next Monday.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo