How Tibo Sold over $10M in SaaS Products by Breaking All the Rules of Traditional Product Building

As I’ve often said, PMs and aspiring PMs can learn a lot from the scrappy, relentless mindset of solopreneurs and indie hackers. Today’s episode is a masterclass in just that.

In this podcast, he pulls back the curtain on rapid product validation, the perils of building on third-party platforms, leveraging AI to slash development costs, and why distribution — not just the product itself —is the ultimate key to success.

Agenda:

His initial journey and reflections — 00:00:41

Story behind shipping 11 products before mega hits — 00:13:25

Giving away 25% equity to a Twitter influencer — 00:18:58

The “hows” and “whys” of partnerships — 00:23:02

Getting suspended on LinkedIn — 00:28:14

Becoming Product Hunt Maker of the Year — 00:36:32

Going from paying $0 to paying $42K/mo for Twitter API costs — 00:45:16

Selling TweetHunter and Taplio to Lempire for $8 million — 00:51:44

Should you reduce prices to reduce churn? — 00:58:46

Acquiring new projects (Feather and Revid) — 01:01:01

Story behind getting kicked out of Beehiiv — 01:03:45

Why and how PMs should build with AI — 01:10:33

Building your personal brand a.k.a. distribution — 01:24:32

Why revenue is the best idea validation — 01:26:45

Criteria for deciding which ideas to build — 01:28:18

What do you think about the product manager role? — 01:41:14

Pros and cons of building in public — 01:44:37

Managing time as a product builder — 01:48:49

Brought to you by:

June.so: Customer analytics for product focused teams

Dovetail: The Fastest Way to Understand Your Customer

SectaLabs: Professional headshots from regular selfies

Where to find Tibo:

Twitter

Newsletter

Feather

Revid

To advertise in the podcast, email productgrowthppp at gmail dot com.

We have some great podcasts coming with Melissa Perri, Colin Lernell, and Andrew Capland. I’m so excited to share them with all of you.