He Shipped 11 Products in Four Months. The Last Hit a $1 Million-a-Year Pace.
He posted every flop on Twitter, and each one left him with a bigger audience for the next try.
This Week in Startups · Jason turned $11 and one tweet into 1.1M views | E2311For the tenth time in about four months, Tibo Lou Lucas had a new product to announce on Twitter, and another dud on his hands.
Lucas, a software maker who later created Tweet Hunter, had already spent years failing. In 2021, he gave himself a blunt challenge: put out a fresh, tiny product each week until one caught on.
The rules were simple. He would build the product, post about it publicly while he worked, and then launch it to his following on Twitter. He said builders who share work there get engaged feedback from other people building things.
At first, it did not work. By his own account, he built a lot of bad products, one after another. But each launch left him slightly stronger, because each one added a few more followers and a little more attention. The audience from one flop carried into the next launch, and then the next, so his reach compounded even when his products did not sell.
Then came product number 11. He shipped Tweet Hunter, a tool for people trying to grow an audience on Twitter, and it caught on immediately. Within its first year, it was bringing in about $1 million a year, and it was eventually sold to another software company.
The lesson was not that the 11th idea was genius. His playbook was to build in public and let feedback decide what to keep. He stopped trying to predict the winner in advance, and he was willing to look unimpressive ten times to get one winner.
Questions people ask
What does "building in public" actually mean?
It means sharing what you are making while you make it, usually on social media, including progress updates, setbacks, and early versions. For software founders, that often includes demo videos, revenue numbers, and requests for feedback. The idea is to attract users and advice before the product is finished.
What did Tweet Hunter do?
Tweet Hunter was a subscription tool that helped creators grow on Twitter, now called X. It offered features for writing posts, scheduling them, finding ideas, and tracking what performed well. It was aimed at people trying to build an audience and sell products or services to that audience.
How can anyone build a whole product in a week?
A weekly product is usually tiny, often a single webpage that does one useful thing, built with existing templates and payment tools. Founders cut scope aggressively and reuse code from prior attempts. The goal is a testable version, not a polished company.