BC TECH
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Today, 10 years ago, I launched BetaList 🤯

Since then we've…

🚀 Featured 15,000+ startups
💖 Reviewed 70,000+ submissions
😘 Welcomed 100,000+ registered users
💰 Generated almost $1M in revenue

⬇️ THREAD

 📅 It all started as a way to get publicity for an iPad app me and my friends were working on.

In 2010 it was hard to get press coverage as a bootstrapped startup.

This lead me to create "https://t.co/jL3uUNmhzx" (the .com was taken)
📢 TechCrunch (@alexia) wrote an article on it.

Back then, getting featured on TechCrunch was the equivalent of hitting #1 on Product Hunt.

https://t.co/2F2uJPvqSz
✍️ Couple years after, I wrote the origin story with the clickbait-title:

How I Tricked TechCrunch Into Writing About My Startup

Ironically it gained 60K views and drove even more visits than the TechCrunch article. Check it out for the full story.

https://t.co/BDtdFolTcc
💰 I didn't intend to monetize BetaList when I started.

But when established companies started asking how to get featured, I offered them paid advertising slots instead. Starting at $50/week and continuously doubling the price until they said no.

Today it's $1,500/week.
🤑 Expedited reviews. The second revenue model.

Over time more and more founders submitted their startup. So a backlog emerged and it could be days or sometimes weeks between submitting your startup and getting featured on the site…
… that's when founders started asking me if they could get featured sooner. For example, because they wanted to show growing signup metrics for an upcoming VC meeting.

I initially did this for free as a favor. But then too many founders wanted to skip the waiting queue…
… so that's when I asked a small payment of $15. Now fewer people asked. Mission accomplished. 😅

Until of course too many people were willing to pay $15. So just like with advertising I kept increasing the price. $199 today.
♻️ The product itself has stayed largely the same throughout all these years.

There have been redesigns and code rewrites, but fundamentally it's still the same concept today. Bringing early adopters and early-stage startups together.
⤴️ The biggest shift for me personally, was when I delegated daily operations to @rpish

This opened up time and energy for me to work on new ideas like https://t.co/9Gi1X9pqyB (community for makers) and https://t.co/fHfOVQmgBX (job board, a spin-off from BetaList)
📈 That's how BetaList turned from a side project into a business. Step by step.

But more importantly it was my way into the startup community. Turns out creating a platform for startups is a great way to establish yourself in the community and meet lot of amazing people.
📅 BetaList is still going strong today. Not growing as fast in the earlier years, but still helping hundreds of founders a month and generating increasing revenue year of year.

It has been and continues to be a very rewarding product to work on.
🙌 I can't possibly thank everybody that helped me along the way, but here's shout out specifically to the people who helped in the early years @rpish @didierv @jeffbayayo @sborsje @boris @espreedevora @levelsio @joepkuijper @fabian_markaban and many many more. Thank you!
Oh right, I should probably put the link in this thread right 😅

https://t.co/jnDaGepb9H – discover tomorrow's startups
https://t.co/gywnB67Zj3 – promote your own

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