Jung's $200K zero admin CRM

Hey, it’s Guy & Farzan.

We had a 50th fancy dress party at the weekend. I strutted in wearing an animal print suit, top hat, and a gold chain with a stereo pendant swinging like a pendulum. Sandrita dazzled in hot pink and green. We arrive to discover everyone else in pretty low-key casual clothes. Overdressed? Spectacularly. We howled with laughter all night. Sometimes being out of place is exactly where you need to be.

Now, let's dive into this week's founder stories.

Reading time: 9.25 mins

In the mail today. 3 founder stories, 1 bit of founder advice, 1 quote

 Founder story 1 

Jung Kim: Building a zero-admin CRM and getting to $200K in revenue

"From surviving Hong Kong riots to $202K revenue: How Jung Kim's entrepreneurial heritage and resilience led to building an AI-powered CRM that eliminates a big admin pain.

The Journey
- Born into an entrepreneurial family with father and grandfather as business builders
- Educated internationally in New Zealand, Australia, and China before settling in Hong Kong
- Began career as a mobile game translator before pivoting to AI development
- Survived Hong Kong riots and COVID-19 by taking multiple jobs
- Returned to startups after five years in survival mode to launch Klipy
- Bootstrapped the business to $202K in annual revenue

The Evolution of Vision
- Started with an AI education platform (which failed)
- Developed an HR tech solution using AI for automated interviews
- Created a retail AI product for demographic data extraction
- Pivoted during crises to enterprise IT architecture consulting
- Launched Klipy as a Hubspot wrapper that auto-summarizes emails
- Evolved into a comprehensive zero-admin CRM for service businesses

Overcoming Obstacles
- Survived business collapse during Hong Kong riots and COVID-19
- Took multiple jobs (tutoring, food delivery, insurance sales) to stay afloat
- Initial targeting of enterprise/corporate salespeople didn't work
- Cold email campaigns failed due to poorly defined customer profile
- Had to pivot multiple times before finding product-market fit

Today's Impact
- $202,000 in annual revenue
- 1,546 SaaS subscribers
- 1,900 website visitors per month
- 5 employees
- Bootstrapped growth without external funding

Growth Strategies That Worked
- Product Hunt launch led to feature in Ben's Bites newsletter
- Focused on LinkedIn as primary distribution channel for B2B leads
- Created public product roadmap to communicate direction to potential users
- Developed specialized AI agents for specific sales tasks
- Targeted digital agency/professional service business owners

Key Milestones
- Started business in 2024
- First paying customers came from Ben's Bites newsletter feature
- Confirmed product-market fit with digital agencies and professional services
- Validated feature utilization through careful metrics tracking
- Successfully bootstrapped to over $200K in revenue

The Philosophy "I think it is extremely important to constantly attempt to measure and be able to know the dollar value of opportunity cost of not having the solution that the SaaS is providing. Most founders instead try to find a pricing that fits their cost."

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." - Bruce LeeRead the full story

Founder story 2

Inside the 1 man pizza shop making 150 pizzas a night (and works as a sports therapist in the day).

In Plymouth, Massachusetts, Aaron runs Edge Pizza, a one-man operation creating 150 Detroit-style pizzas nightly while working a full-time job as a physical therapist. His journey:

→ Started with just 40 pans and a subway bread oven in a converted pigeon coop
→ Sold out in 30 minutes on his first day
→ Now has customers driving from other states weekly
→ Still refuses to expand despite constant offers

The secret? A three-day pizza process with minimal ingredients: simple dough (flour, water, salt, yeast), a special cheese blend (whole milk mozzarella + Vermont white cheddar), and crushed tomatoes with no seasoning.

What makes it special is Aaron's commitment to perfection. After losing 160 pounds through gastric bypass, he learned to make every bite count. "If I open the box and it's not right, I ask them to wait a few minutes and make another one."

The result? A pizza so good that regular customer Paul says it "brought me back 50 years" to his grandmother's cooking.

Founder story 3

From 9-to-5 to $10M: How one writer built an online empire

How Dickie Bush transformed his early morning writing habit into a $10 Million business empire in just five years.

The Journey
- Started in 2019 in his early-mid 20s while working at a prestigious Wall Street job
- Began with a simple newsletter for coworkers at BlackRock
- Woke up at 4:30 AM to write for two hours before his hedge fund job
- Committed to writing and publishing content every day for 30 days
- A breakthrough tweet on day 27 got picked up by Naval Ravikant and went viral
- Transitioned from full-time finance to building multiple writing-focused businesses

The Evolution of Vision
- 2019: "I need an escape from the corporate trap"
- 2020: "Why limit myself to a corporate audience when the internet gives me access to millions?"
- 2021: "Help others build consistent writing habits through structured challenges"
- 2022: "Create an ecosystem of writing-related businesses"
- 2025: "Build a $10M business empire around writing skills and education"

Overcoming Obstacles
- Balanced demanding Wall Street job with building a side hustle
- Reduced 12-hour workdays to 3-4 hours to focus on writing and learning
- Faced uncertainty in pricing his services (initially undervalued his work)
- Needed to transition from ghostwriting to more scalable business models
- Had to learn to build and scale multiple businesses simultaneously

Today's Impact
- $10M projected revenue across all businesses in 2025
- Ship 30 for 30: $3M annual revenue
- The Premium Ghostwriting Academy: $5M annual revenue
- Write with AI: $500K annual revenue
- Typeshare: SaaS platform for writing and publishing online
- Built multiple income streams centred around writing education

Growth Strategies That Worked
- Consistent Daily Content: Committed to publishing daily, even when most posts went unnoticed
- Value-Based Pricing: Let the market determine his worth (received $5K when he expected $250)
- Community Building: Created Ship 30 for 30 as a collaborative writing challenge
- Strategic Partnerships: Partnered with Nicholas Cole to expand Ship 30 for 30
- Ecosystem Approach: Built complementary businesses that feed into each other

Key Milestones
- Started newsletter while working full-time in finance
- First viral tweet brought newsletter from 250 to 1,000 subscribers overnight
- First $5,000 freelance writing payment changed his perception of money and value
- Launched Ship 30 for 30 with a simple tweet, generating $30,000 in the first month
- Expanded into multiple writing-focused businesses creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem

The Philosophy "Success isn't about one big moment, but about showing up every day, learning from failures, and improving over time. Those who stay in the game the longest tend to win."

"The fastest way to monetize? Sell a skill. Writing is one example, but the principle applies broadly. Whether it's marketing, design, coding, consulting, or coaching, offering a service is the easiest way to start making money."

 Founder advice from John Rush

As a first time founder, just don’t do this:

- b2c
- Quit your main job to go all in with your startup
- Expect to make profits in your first 3 years
- Look for cofounder
- Build before you validated the idea
- Waste time designing your landing page
- Outsource
- Hire
- build and hope you’ll just pay for traffic once released
- try to make it prefect
- Move to SF
- Build 12 projects in 12 months
- be hype driven and jump from one shiny object to another
- Learn from coursebois who never successfully applied their own advice

Do this instead
- keep your main job or part time job to pay your bills
- Live cost efficient life
- Start with simple challenge first, e.g. a web directory or a micro saas
- Validate your idea first (by cold DMing or by building an Audience first)
- Don’t hire, try to do it all by yourself, even if you fail, it’ll be easie to hire people for this job later since you’ve tried
- Don’t chase cofounders, finding one is as difficult as finding a good wife. If it happens, good; but don’t depend on it, go solo
- Use nocode for your marketing website, it’ll simplify the marketing, e.g. unicorn platform works with seobot out of the box. But if you handcode your site, you can’t easily connect SEO and marketing tools to it
- instead of outsourcing the whole thing, outsource fixed priced small gigs
- Focus on organic marketing channels until you see it converts well and only then go for paid
- Focus on one product for at least one year. (don’t do 2 or more products simultaneously)
- learn from people who have achieved what you wanna achieve
- see it as a marathon, up to 10 or even 20 years

 A quote we loved

All done for today.

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See you in 7 days.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo