Joe Apfelbaum taught himself web development and built a company without a finished product first. He validated Evy AI with a LinkedIn poll and checkout page, landing 100 pre-orders before writing any code. The product now has 20,000 users across 37 countries.
Chapters
My father really wanted me to become a rabbi. After becoming a rabbi, I realized it doesn't make me happy. I started learning how to build websites by hand. I learned how to write HTML code, and eventually people started paying me for websites. So I started doing a lot of skill development. After a while, my business got to the Inc. 500. We were doing millions of dollars in revenue because we've discovered this concept called recurring revenue. And I realized it's not about creating the perfect product, it's about execution and selling the product. So when I launched Evy AI, now we have 20,000 users in 37 countries around the world. But when we started it off, I put up a thing on LinkedIn And I put up a post, a poll, and I said, would you pay to access an assistant for LinkedIn that will help you comment, post, whatever? And 500 people voted on that poll. And for the people that said they would pay, I sent them a checkout page and 100 people paid. This is before I had any freaking software. I had no idea how to build it. I realized, I was like, if I can impact 1,000 people deeply, damn son, I lived a good life.