I copied a business for sale and turned it into $20K/month

The number one question I get is, "How

do I come up with a good business idea?"

But the truth is, you don't have to. And

this video is proof. Meet Adrian, a solo

developer from Austin who had a

different approach. I copied a

successful app and now it makes me

$20,000 a month.

>> A year ago, he saw a successful app for

sale, but instead of buying it, he

rebuilt it himself and now it makes

$20,000 a month.

>> If something is working, you have a

moral obligation to copy it. I invited

Adrian onto the channel to share exactly

how he did it, including the specific

platform he used to find proven ideas,

his method to validate if an idea is

worth copying, and the playbook he would

use if he had to start over again today.

If you've been looking for the right

business idea, this episode might change

everything for you. I'm Pat Walls, and

this is Starter Story.

All right, Adrian, welcome to the

channel. Tell me about who you are, what

you built, and what's your story.

>> Hey, my name is Adrian. I'm a

soloreneur. I built a SAS to 20K a

month. And I found this idea not by

coming up with something new, but rather

I copied a successful app I found on an

online business brokerage and built it

myself.

>> Okay, cool. So, you built this API doing

$20,000 a month. Can you share a little

bit more about some of the numbers

behind it?

>> Sure. Yeah, so monthly revenue is about

20,000 a month right now. And it is a

credit based model. So you just pay for

credits and then use them. There's no

subscription. So right now we have 600

people who have paid but aren't

necessarily paying on a regular basis.

We do almost like 20 million API

requests a month right now.

>> Okay, cool. Before we get into how you

found this idea and kind of the genius

way that I think you did it. I do want

to understand a little bit more about

your background. How do you get to the

point where you build a SAS like this?

>> So I moved to SF wanting to be a part of

tech, learn how to code at this program

called App Academy. It was a code boot

camp. Then got a job in Utah as an

engineer for 3 years, always with the

goal of starting my own business. Then

quit with $30,000 in savings and then

freelanced, built a course, built some

products, but didn't have success until

I stuck with this one thing, which was

scrape creators. And then here we are

now. All right, Adrian, what I love

about your story is how you came up with

this idea and how you validated that

this was something that was worth

building. Before we get into all that,

can you share how you even come across

the idea to build a web scraping API?

>> Absolutely. One of my followers on

Twitter actually DM'd me telling me to

check out this listing for Micro Acquire

or Acquire.com. And it was a scraping

API. And the reason that he DM' me that

is because I already had a product that

had to do with social media. So, he

thought that I might be interested in

checking it out. Once I did, I saw the

numbers and was completely blown away. I

had no confidence myself that a scraping

API could make that much money. the fact

that they were only getting their

customers through SEO. I thought this is

the product for me. I'm going to do this

exact same thing.

>> Okay. So, you see this idea on Micro

Acquire, which lists business for sale.

You can kind of see how much money is

making or how much the business is

worth. How do you know that this is

something that you could replicate and

could potentially be successful?

>> Well, a couple of different things. One,

I had this skill set because I had been

studying scraping for 3 years. So, I had

already kind of built those APIs that

were hosted on this website. So

technically, I had the confidence that I

could build it. And then the reason that

I thought I could make money off of it

was because they were doing 30,000

monthly recurring. They were around for

3 years, only got their customers from

SEO, and they had less than 100

customers. So doing that math in my

head, I was like, I could probably do

that. And I have a little bit of a

presence on Twitter. So even if I just

message people on Twitter, I probably

could get there even without SEO.

>> Okay, cool. Well, you find this idea.

You think that is something that you

could potentially replicate. How do you

go about building this?

>> So I am a NodeJS developer. Everything

is written in JavaScript. So really it

was just a matter of hosting the APIs

like on a server. So I had them all in

one of my repos. So put those scrapers

on a Node.js server on render.com. So

then hosted the API there. For the

documentation, I just put that actually

in a notion doc and then a basic website

and then that was it. So, it was pretty

uh bare bones and it probably took uh

just a couple of weeks because I had

built that experience and those scrapers

for my previous three years of

experience and got my first customer a

few weeks later. Okay. So, you build

this, you get your first customer pretty

quickly. I think a lot of people

watching this may be similar to you

software developer. They have the skills

to build something like this. But the

hard part is getting customers, growing,

scaling this and replicating what this

business that you sort of cloned had

already done. So, how did you grow this

business? How did you get customers?

>> Uh, I hang out on Twitter a lot, so

people see me there. People have seen my

content. My first customer was just

because I scraped a company's site and

then the CTO actually commented on that

post. So, completely accident. And then

also, anytime someone has a launch video

that has anything to do with scraping

social media, then I comment saying,

"Hey, I'll give you 10K free credits if

you'll try my API." But the great thing

about a scraping API also is that you

don't have to have a lot of customers to

have a decent MR. So I have maybe like

12 who pay for the majority of that MR.

>> I love Adrian's strategy for copying

successful apps. But here's the thing,

he didn't just copy the idea. He got

creative and made his idea 1% better

than the rest. Nowadays, this creative

edge is what separates winners from

everyone else. And this is where the

HubSpot for Startups Creative AI use

cases database comes in handy. It's a

free database with over 100 creative

ways to use AI in your business. These

aren't the obvious AI apps that

everyone's already building. These are

the creative uses your competitors

haven't discovered yet that can give you

an unfair advantage. My favorite part is

the fact that they break down the list

by difficulty, business impact, and even

steps on how to get started with which

tools. Just find the one that resonates

with you and run with it. So, if you're

ready to join Adrian and start your own

SAS business, then download the free AI

differentiation database at the first

link right below in the description.

Thank you to HubSpot for Startups for

sponsoring this video. Now, let's get

back into it. I want to understand a

little bit more about this framework. If

you were to start over today in 2025 and

go to Microacquire and find another

idea, how would you do that? For people

watching, can you break it down step by

step? All right, this will be my

playbook if I was doing this again. Step

one, you're going to visit the micro

acquire marketplace. Step two, filter by

SAS. And then step three, filter by

asking price. So, we're not looking for

apps that aren't making any money.

That's not great. We're looking for

pre-validated ideas. So, increase that

asking price to at least 300,000 or you

can filter by annual recurring revenue,

whatever you want. All right, step four.

You're going to look for things that you

would be good at or a market that you

would know about. For example, I knew I

wanted to build a product that had

something to do with web scraping. That

was my niche. I was niching down for

that. You would want to build a product

that you have some sort of knowledge

about. All right, step five. We're going

to try to find the website. Obviously,

on Microquire, they don't list what the

website is, but we're going to reverse

engineer and try to find the actual

website. So, a lot of these SAS

businesses are really easy to find

because you can just Google what they

have in their listing. So in the title

or description, you can just Google part

of that and usually they're using like

their title or H1 or description

actually in the micro acquire

description. So it's pretty easy to find

or they actually list competitors if you

scroll down. So all you have to do a lot

of times the website will write blog

posts or pages that will say competitor

name and then alternative. So all you

need to Google is the competitor and

then alternative or alternatives. One of

those two ways will get you to the site

and then you can just view the site and

see if the copy is similar. Then boom,

you got the site. All right, step six.

Try to reverse engineer how they

acquired customers. This is arguably the

most important part. Not so hard to

build the product, but how are they

getting customers? So, for example, the

app that I was copying, I knew that they

got their customers mostly from SEO.

Read everything that you can on the

site, any information that they talk

about how they're acquiring customers.

Try to look up like the founder on

Twitter, LinkedIn. Try to find podcasts

or YouTube videos, any way that they

talk about the product or how to grow

the product. Step seven, actually build

the damn thing. Step eight, yeah, this

is just don't copy word for word. Don't

copy everything literally exactly. You

just want to copy the concept, the idea.

Step nine, don't get distracted with

other projects. Do something every

single day to promote or improve the

product. You know that this idea is

making money. So now you just have to

execute. do something every single day

to build the product or market it and I

guarantee you will make money. You will

be successful.

>> Okay. Thanks Adrian for sharing that

full playbook. I think that's awesome.

We haven't really talked yet about what

your API does specifically. You have

this sort of micro SASS API. Can you

just share what it does, how it works,

what type of customers use it?

>> Yeah, so it scrapes specifically social

media that can be Instagram, YouTube,

Twitter, uh and then we just scrape

public data. Got to say that for the

lawyers out there. We scrape social

media as well as like their ad libraries

as well. So the Facebook ad library,

LinkedIn ad library, etc. And this

obviously helps developers because

scraping is a pain in the butt. So we

scrape so you don't have to. We handle

all the infrastructure, proxy rotation,

etc. And who uses this tool is a lot of

like link and bio tools. Anyone who's

tracking analytics like short form

content. Yeah. So it's a credit based

system. So pay as you go. So we have

three payment plans right now. $10 for

5,000 credits, $50 for 25,000, and then

500,000 credits for $500. I think it

does well because it works. Like there's

a lot of scrapers out there, like social

media in particular, that break pretty

often. So with mine, I think people like

it because it's reliable and then if

it's not reliable, then I'll communicate

with people pretty frequently as well,

as well as it's really easy to get a

hold of me. Whereas a lot of developers

who build these sort of things, you

don't even have their email or a way to

contact them. Um, so I think that is

also helpful.

>> Okay, let's change topics a little bit.

I want to understand techstack. You're a

developer. You have a scraping pretty

technical type of product. How did you

build this? What's your tech stack?

>> Yeah, honestly, it's pretty

straightforward, pretty easy. So

everything is written in Node.js

JavaScript and it's just a bunch of HTTP

requests. So one important thing that I

use is this package called impit. It's

developed by ampify. So another scraping

framework. So you npm install input use

that for HTTP requests and then just a

lot of proxies. So I have four main ones

that I use which are Evomi core

residential which are the cheapest

residential out there do webshare and

massive and then I host everything on

render.com or I host subscripts on AWS

Lambda obviously I use cursor so that's

20 bucks a month and then superbase for

the database and then the front end is

astro uh plus react

>> and on a similar note I'm also curious

what are the costs to use all these

tools what does the profit margin look

like for your business

>> yeah margin is about 80% Most of it is

spent on proxies. So about $1,500 a

month right now is spent on proxies. And

I hire a developer in the Philippines to

monitor the API for outages at night. So

he's about $500. And then server costs

are about $400. Okay, cool. Thank you

for sharing that. Thank you for being

transparent about all that. That's

awesome. Last question that I want to

ask. We ask everyone who comes on

Starter Story, what would be your advice

for anyone watching this starting out in

2025 about how to do something like

you've done? Stop bouncing around ideas

and just pick one thing. Do it every

single day. Focus on it every single day

and you'll make it. Stop getting

distracted because that's exactly what

happened to me.

>> Cool. That's amazing. Adrian, thank you

for coming on. Thank you for sharing all

this, being super transparent. I love

the business you built. Thanks for

coming on and sharing everything.

>> Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

>> Big thanks to Adrian for coming on to

the channel. I love his story because it

flips the startup myth on its head.

Adrien didn't need to invent something

brand new. He just saw a model. He

copied it and he executed better and

that turned into a SAS that makes

$20,000 a month and effectively changed

his life. I think the lesson that anyone

can take from this is stop waiting for

that genius idea. Just start, build, and

keep improving. And you never know what

might happen. This is exactly why we

launched Starter Story Build, where we

will show you how to take your idea, use

AI to build it fast, and launch in just

a couple weeks. Even if you're starting

with no team, no money, and no clear

idea, if you want to finally build your

first app, launch it, and potentially

turn it into a profitable business,

well, head to the first link in the

description and check out Starter Story

Build. That's it for this episode, guys.

Thank you for watching. I hope you

enjoyed it. We'll see you in the next

one. Peace.