A curated library of first-hand "first money" stories, mined and verified from 139 million podcast episodes. Every case is a named person telling their own story — with a verbatim quote and a traceable source episode. Below are 50 sample cases; the full library holds thousands more.
Founded and built Ideogram, a generative-AI image company that differentiated on accurate in-image text and released its first open-weights image model at 9.3B parameters.
“I don't know if you remember but the very first model was released three years ago and at the time, image generation was synonymous with Garbo text”
lifetime access to an online course
“online course because back in 2022 that was hot and so I built this course and I emailed these people so for people listening like this was not done yet it was an idea and so the next thing I do is the most important thing which is you you help you document what you're doing you help people for free and then you get your first dollar and so I reached out to these people on a hundred emails and I said hey guys I'm thi”
cricket protein bar
“basically a high-protein, grain-free, sugar-free, low-carb breakfast cereal. And one more challenge: these guys are trying to replicate the flavors of nostalgic breakfast cereals like cocoa puffs and fruit loops. And they're doing it at a time when the overall breakfast cereal market is in decline. But Magic Spoon has raised tens of millions of dollars from investors who also believe the future of natural foods is go”
Live acoustic-guitar performance and later circus musician/MC work
“trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim dot blog slash combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up, Derek Sivers, former musician, programmer, TED speaker, and circus clown who sold his first company, CD Baby. For twenty two million dollars and gave all the money to charit”
selling_terrariums_and_dish_gardens
“Hey, really quick before we start the show, the How I Built This book is now a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. So thank you to all of you who ordered it and for your support of this show. If you haven't picked it up and you want to learn the secrets of how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, How I Built This the book is for you. It's now available wherever books are sold and in most countries ar”
把自己经营十年的'帮创业者从零起步做公司'的孵化流程,用ChatGPT亲手编码进一个跑在Instagram DM里的AI机器人产品,让陌生人几个问题内自动生成pitch deck、网站、专属客服GPT,并在关键节点收$30继续下一步。
“he makes a thirty dollars payment, in this case to, to basically move on to the next step.”
Single family rental, mobile home park
“Get like some framing and some some general practicalities and advice to begin with, but you didn't knock out a house hack or a single family for your first deal. You kind of just swung for the fences. Okay, so no, my first one was a single family flip, and that was a JV that that one I barely count as my first deal because that was just like a it was a JV. I gave somebody money, we flipped it together. It was it was”
Unnamed company (Slack app developer)
“I think you might have insight into. I've co-founded a company with my friend. We're both developers, and we've built paid apps for Slack. We got some early traction, but we can't seem to get past four k MRR. We've tried many marketing things, but none really worked. After four years, yeah, it's a long time. We kind of want to give up. We know how to build products. We don't know how to sell them. Do you think it is ”
running Facebook and Instagram ads
“Ads officially the actual ads the first ads we really ran were at the very end of December twenty eighteen so right during Christmas which was nuts but I just had this goal that I said I'm gonna do it I have to get it done by the end of the year and I'm launching I don't care and if it actually does well during Christmas I know it's gonna do well other times too so that's what I went in with it and it took me about s”
Unnamed product
“Us and pre-order a book, then you will definitely get it because we have a successful company behind us, and we understand what it takes, and we have a background in publishing, and we have a background and an in-house team on on creating great content. So that's the first way that you can target the Kickstarter native audience of people that are actively backing projects on a consistent basis. But then there's anoth”
从企业销售高管职位辞职后,先靠16年healthcare startup增长经验做付费咨询变现,再转型为LinkedIn内容创作者,把'先1对1服务验证-再productize成低价产品-再随受众和信任扩大推高价课程'的路径跑通,建成个人solopreneur内容与课程事业
“My first product was fifty dollars.”
Lipstick
“Hey, really quick before we start the show, the How I Built This book is now a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. So thank you to all of you who ordered it and for your support of this show. If you haven't picked it up and you want to learn the secrets of how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, How I Built This the book is for you. It's now available wherever books are sold and in most countries ar”
Produced YouTube content on gardening topics
“One that really took off, that it actually got my channel monetized, was a video on propagating hydrangeas. So, yeah, that one took off last July, and you know, it it made my first my very first paycheck. I think that ever got from YouTube was like seven hundred dollars. I couldn't believe. Whoa! Right, I couldn't believe it, and it was because of that video. I mean, the algorithm picked it up and it promoted it, and”
selling local services, building a website, running ads, writing SEO blogs
“So starting this business, like I said, found like a product that I could sell. Found a guy who could install it, and then I just created like a little PowerPoint on my iPad. The pitch was like, "Hey, I'm installing these things down the road. I always like to have a chat with the neighbours to see if anyone'd be interested." I didn't sell any that first weekend, but I came away with probably like twenty five leads. ”
Poshmark automation script
“Subreddit, and I said, "Hey, I have this free script. It does X, Y, Z. Here's how to install it. Go wild. All I want is your email address, and then I want feedback. And through that post, I got 200 email addresses of people. I launched to that list of 200 email addresses once it was up and running, and I think I started out with like 400 MRR or something like that. I sold it at 30 bucks a month, and then it's really”
Action Academy
“Not too shabby for a brand new podcast, and as many of you know, I did that while I traveled around the world full time. So I was doing this from Greece, from Europe, from South America, from Singapore, all across the world, and it was super fun. So moving forward from that, what it ended up leading into was when I was in, I believe Budapest. I was in Budapest. Yeah, I started doing free coaching calls. So I was tryi”
Simple Link
“So sure until you said that last section, which is people taking care of that simple part of the market. I'm not technical. I'm not a coder. I always want to build products or quick landing pages. I'm a big user of Notion. So when I found out you could create websites with Notion and the cool stuff you can do it with a little bit of code injection, this layer on top, it makes my life much easier. And now my default w”
Minimum viable products (MVPs) and automation tools
“These visionaries had grand ideas but couldn't translate them into successful products. Build emerged as a solution, offering affordable ways for startups to build their initial products without hefty expenses. Their journey started humbly. Ayush, despite having a full-time job, took on the challenge to help a friend build a food delivery platform. He hired engineers in India, worked tirelessly during nights and week”
jerky
“Proud of it, I get rejected. Like I have, I had a good friend, and I was like, "Hey, could we do something?" He's like, "I don't think so." I was like, "Oh, that's cool." You know why? Because I really want to promote this. I really am proud of what I created. I do believe it helps. I'm seeing it help, and so it is a test of myself: Do I want to continue? And that with the jerky was like, "Okay, I want to prove these”
YouTube videos
“Blocks from you, I'm not doing this for free. So then I thought, well, I'll make videos on YouTube instead. I did it on CBS for 12 years, then I thought I'll make my own videos, and I did it for about a year. And my wife said, "What are you doing all this time, wasting all your energy on that? You're not getting any money out of it." I said, "I don't know, I'm having fun." Then YouTube contacted me when I had a milli”
GojiBerry
“the the code, and today we have one at marketing, one product, one doing the doing the code. Interesting. And when you say the code, you grew this app from zero to fifty kMR in six months, almost exclusively through cold outreach. How did you do that? So we targeted almost only the French market, which is really a small market, and then we expanded a bit in Spain, Germany. So how we did it is quite simple. I had a le”
wellness company
“Treadmill right now, which I have no idea why you're doing that. But tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story. Yeah, I am on a treadmill. Just got to keep it on brand. We make health and wellness apps, so I figured jump on the pod while walking on a treadmill. I'm Prash, and I built the wellness company. We make health and wellness apps. So I have three apps right now in the app store. Our ear”
Book 'The Standout', course 'Hat the Tech Interview'
“In engineering, because I needed that edge, I didn't have the CS degree, I didn't have you know years of background that other people interviewing for the same jobs did. So I needed to figure out ways to stand out. Did you make much money from that book, The Standout? I think about seventy thousand dollars. Was that mostly through Twitter? Yeah, mostly through Twitter. I had built an email list at the same time. I, I”
built an AI app that makes over thirty thousand dollars a month
“This idea, and I then knew I needed to get validation on it. So I set up a pre-sale. The pre-sale was 50 licenses of the software that are basically lifetime subscriptions to it, and it was at kind of an absurdly low price. I figured if I could sell these, that it was validation that this is actually a product that people would want to buy. The first 10 licenses were super, super cheap, and then every 10 after that w”
Coaching services, mentorship, or business strategy
“Doing this like cool stuff for a year, but he was like, he was earning ten ten k a month, and like that was okay. He's got a family, he's got kids. He wants to get a new hat. He wants to get a second house, but he's like, I don't know how to get there. And instead of just like saying, okay, let's do this, this, and this, I got him to dream. I got him to actually dream about the things that he wants. And four months l”
Beamhouse Leather
“Because you've got a little bit of platform risk there, if Etsy decide to cut off your traffic, but also you've got sort of inbuilt distribution from Etsy. Why did you go down that route and not whipping up a Shopify store like I did? So it was very quick to start on Etsy. It's very easy; you just have to make a listing. A lot of the traffic was already there, and there were already some competitors, like you said, t”
podcast
“It was a two-day sponsorship intensive about events, so it wasn't podcast specific. But I thought, okay, if I at least learn how to pitch sponsors, I'm sure I can tweak and apply and learn as I go about how they do it in the podcast world. So that's what I did, and it was my first. It was my largest investment at the time. It was eleven hundred and ninety-seven dollars, and I just remember talking it over with my hus”
user-generated content made with skincare and clothes she already owned
“thing that most people don't understand, brands need two things: one, influencers with audience to reach those audiences. Two, content creation. Creators to create content, the brands can post on its own channels and make completely different things. So an influencer sells their reach, their value is their followers. AUGC creator sells their content, their value is in what they create. So you can be a content creator”
AI service to renovate homes
“And some unique ways to reduce churn for your users. All right, let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story. Welcome, Pauline. Thank you for coming on. It's great to have you. Tell me about who you are and the business you built. Hi, I'm Pauline, and I built AI Creer. It's a service to renovate home in seconds thanks to AI. You just upload a picture to the service, you select a style, and a few second”
Online courses, masterminds, and video on demand content
“And a little bit of Facebook, but no ad promotion, nothing. That's how we do our cluster minds, and it's all organic. Nice. And we've grown our attendance. I can give you some numbers on that. Like for me, I used to have, I don't know. We started with like maybe twenty or thirty registrants or attendees that had interest. In uh, in October we just ran our biggest cluster mind, which hit nearly two hundred ticket sale”
matched-betting activity using a paid community/system
“Nah, never been a gambler. Hasn't hasn't interest me. Making money has though. So at the start of my journey, everything would piss me off. If something didn't go right, then or like a bet loss, I'd be so down. My first ever bet fair bet, it didn't go through or something. So my ten dollar bet on like my sports bet, I lost it and I was absolutely shut it. Yeah, how much you making your first six weeks? Do you remembe”
collective
“I had been trying for a couple of months to get people to respond to my emails, land my first funding strategy, get my first client, and I just wasn't getting anywhere. And it was so frustrating because it's like, how do you keep motivating yourself when no one else seems to care how great I'm going to be? I started doubting myself. Started thinking maybe I got to go back to in-person work. Some financial plans that ”
provided ticketing and credit card processing solutions for events
“During normal times, and of course, we had to go virtual, and so it was this a you know intended to help people like us that need virtual events. So it it started out of a need, certainly did, but not not the need that we're serving today. So we actually launched just over six years ago, and the the backstory is actually that my buddy and I we have been hosting these these beach parties like clam bakes and pig roasts”
Consignment shop
“We did sell it for around nine hundred, and you know I got a check for like four hundred fifty dollars. And for the consignment shop, now I had a really good experience with them. So if I am going to consign again, I'll do it there. I know I've also walked through the shop since that. I just didn't purchase anything, but it's a nice. They have nice stuff, so it's one of those things where a combination of Google ads ”
website design for small businesses
“bit about that later on in this episode. But today's question comes from Tharun, and this is a pretty straightforward question. But I'm interested to get your take on it, Aj, as you're new here on the show. Tharun says, "I want to start freelancing, but the biggest question in my head right now is how do I land my very first client." I'd love. To hear your story. So how do I land my very first client? I'm curious. Do”
Tool for repurposing blog posts into social media content
“There has to be a tool for this. So she built it herself using no-code tools. Exactly. She used Bubble for the front end and database, and Zapier to connect it to content sources and social platforms. Her first version was a single workflow: paste a blog URL, get three social posts. She launched it on Product Hunt and got 200 sign-ups in the first week. That's a great launch. But validation is one thing; getting peop”
provided dog poop scooping service
“Sell trade groups, but my first customer actually came from my personal Facebook. Wow! She she wanted me to come scoop after her two dogs. I went over there on a Wednesday. I was super super stoked. I charged her twenty dollars, and I was there for an hour because I didn't know any better, right? Yeah. So it was twenty bucks, even though it took me an hour because I didn't know what I was doing. The property was mass”
grass-fed meat snacks, beginning with homemade beef jerky
“got some great topics. In fact, the the interesting thing to me is is that we were thinking about you know how to how to approach this show. There really isn't one topic in particular that. Um, needs to be addressed. There's a lot of things going on here. A lot to get into. So I think we'll just bring him right on in. I'm sure you've heard of him. You know him. You love him. He's Mr. Saturday Night. Jason Burke grew ”
software and AI-enabled services intended to help businesses save or make money
“You can be a hairdresser at Supercuts, making twelve bucks an hour with you know plus tips, and you can afford everything you need. It levels the playing field, it opens it up to anyone. I just woke up and I said, you know what? I wonder if I could vibe code a piece of software, start today and have my first customer by the next day. And I ended up getting my first customer by the following Tuesday, and it was a fift”
Shop for Ducks
“I'd just lost my job due to COVID restructuring in the company I was working for, and I found an ad popped up for Techpixies on Facebook, and I had a look and I thought, oh yeah, this looks really interesting. Knowing that my husband's business, which is shop for ducks, whilst he sells a lot of ducks and we have a very successful website, we were doing very little with social media, and anything we were doing was ad ”
ran paid ads for book
“Or paid ads, and so I said, "How about this? I'll give you some budget, and thirty bucks a day. I think I gave him, and I said, 'Try to market my book, my SaaS playbook. Just run ads for it. See what you do.' So he created the copy. He used AI to help him, and he went in and clicked the buttons in the meta. I mean, you know, it's it's not pretty in there. It's hard to do, right? So he got it set up, and then he blew ”
keynote presentations, stage selling and business-presentation coaching
“We're about to have a really important conversation all about your avatar and who you're speaking to. In fact, I think if you implement what you're about to hear on this podcast, you could quite literally double your income this year. And so buckle up, it's going to be really good. Now before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to my book. I've had so many people share with me, write to me and just share and s”
Newsletter business focused on warehouse robotics
“Write about X. Then they try to make money later. She started with who has money to spend and what do they need. Exactly, and that's also how she avoided the classic side hustle trap of burning out. She wasn't trying to be everything to everyone. She had a very narrow niche: warehouse robotics, and she served it deeply. That's why she could write twice a week without spending 20 hours per issue. She set up systems. S”
Lincoln dealership
“Brand, where we were kind of rocking with what we had, you know, the the lineup wasn't going to change for a year or two. So nothing new to make videos on. That's why I stumbled upon upon this app called TikTok, and I seen there were some car sales guys making some funny content, some entertaining content, some educational content. Now that's pretty cool. I can do that. So I started making TikToks, and I was only on ”
Freedom Journal
“I said, hey, you can get in early, and I had about sixteen people buy from my list of a thousand, so I made eight thousand dollars from doing that tactic. Just asking people before I even created the course, is this something you would want to learn? Here is the modules. So, eight thousand dollars in pre sales is pretty great and all well and good if you have an existing audience. If you don't, you've got to get a li”
personal-finance coaching, later expanded into workshops and courses
“Let's talk about money and other taboo things entrepreneurs like to say. We talk about and keep a lot of the things behind the scene. Not today, we are talking with the financial feminist, her first hundred k, a person who I watched from a distance and expanded beyond entrepreneurship, beyond personal finance, and really stepped up as a voice for people to be represented in the financial markets. I couldn't be more e”
PDF guide 'Product to Profit', book, and evergreen product
“Book hundred million dollar offers by Alex Hermosy. The the subtitle is How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no. And in our business at Video Creators, I listened to the audio book first, and I'm like, Oh, this is so good! I had to buy the hard the hardcover copy of this, and then I bought one because it has so many pictures and illustrations in it. And then I bought one for everyone on my team, and I”
a mom blog monetized first through affiliate referrals and later through digital products
“Oh, thank you. I'm really happy to be here. I want to get your origin story. Give me a couple minutes. How did Becky Beach get to where she is being the AI powered business strategist and doing all these digital products and all the tons of things that you've done in your business today. Oh, sure, I love to. Well, I got started off as a mom blogger. I have a blog called MomBeach.com, which I started about ten years a”
creator income from influencer partnerships, UGC, affiliate work, group trips, digital products and coaching
“Hey guys, welcome back to Paid to Travel. Um, whose voice is this? Literally, whose voice is this? This is Maddie's producer, podcast producer Marie. So hey, hey y'all. Um, Maddie's on vacation in Scotland, literally gallivanting around, drinking beer, running around in the hills. So she still loves you guys. She'll be back, but in the meantime, we are going to feature an episode she did on my other clients' podcast,”
Planwell
“So their head of customer success spent a weekend building a simple dashboard that pulled data from their CRM, support tickets, and usage logs into one view. That sounds like every company's story—the weekend project that becomes the thing everyone relies on. Exactly. Within a month, the whole company was using it, and then a friend who runs a similar B2B SaaS saw it and asked if they could license it. That friend of”