One Person Business: Potion
One Person Business: Potion
Custom Notion websites, $5k MRR after almost 2 years. Interview with the founder inside.
Potion, by Noah Bragg, allows you to easily create websites using Notion - fast, with custom domains, styles and great SEO.
Launched in 2021, Potion allows anyone to build websites on top of Notion. If you haven’t heard of it, you should check it out. That’s where I built the Building products for solopreneurs offer - with a little help from Gumroad as well.
The product is straightforward in terms of what it gives you and follows a common trend that can be seen online: leveraging well-known SaaS tools and creating an offering on top of those.
Potion does that in an extremely simple manner. “You need a website but don’t know how to build one? Well, Notion is easy to use, so here’s a way for you to use it to build a website for you”. Bam! Done and dusted.
On top of that, you can even integrate with other common SaaS tools to power your websites, like Google Analytics, Mailchimp or Buymeacoffee.
Pricing-wise, the offering is simple:
$12/month, 1 website: custom domain, custom styles, fast page speeds, great SEO, automatic SEO-friendly URLs;
$30/month, 3 websites: previous plan, password Protected Sites, custom 404 page, 3 sites
$60/month, 8 websites: previous plan, 8 websites.
Noah was kind enough to agree to answer some questions regarding his journey and Potion. Let’s get cracking then.
Some parts of this might have been edited for clarity, and changes have been approved by Noah.
What's your background? Did you already have the necessary skills to build Potion, or did you have to learn new ones?
I went to school for Computer Science. I spent about 4 years working at other companies writing software for mobile apps. I always had a side business during this time and always wanted to become an entrepreneur.
How many attempts (failed or not) did it take you to get to a product like Potion?
About 6 attempts. The micro SaaS before Potion I built up to $400 MRR and then sold for $27k. I built a coffee app for local coffee shops and spent a year and a half on that business. It didn't really work out though. We did end up selling it for $37k though. Those were little successes I had before Potion but everything else failed.
How did you come up with the idea for Potion?
I was looking for platforms to build on. I saw this as a great way for a solo indie hacker to build a business. More on my thoughts around this here.
I was looking at Notion because I really loved using it. I saw Notion users were already trying to create websites with Notion using a tool called Fruition, but it was difficult and you had to be technical. So I saw that there was a demand for a product like Potion. After doing more research into the idea and Notion community, I decided to start building it.
In terms of reach, how did you get your first customers? Are you still doing the same, or have you changed your strategy? If so, why?
I got my first 75 customers by building in public on Twitter. I love sharing and being transparent to help others on their journey, so building in public made a lot of sense for me. Plus Potion customers happen to be the same type of makers that typically like following in public. So that made a lot of sense. Twitter is still my biggest growth place today. But now Affiliates is very close to it and I have been working on SEO so that will hopefully be my biggest marketing source going forward.
What's your current MRR, and how long did it take you to get there?
$5k MRR. Took me 1.75 years to get to his point. I was part-time on Potion for the first year. and then went full time beginning of this year.
Are you still a solopreneur, or have you hired someone to help you? If so, why?
I'm still a solo entrepreneur. I really like the flexibility that it gives. I also like getting to learn about all parts of the business which I have to do when going solo.
If you could give one piece of advice to people jumping on the solopreneur bandwagon, what would that be?
Be patient and take your time. It takes a while to make a business work. If you put too much pressure on it, you might kill it. That's why I like starting a business on the side first. If you are persistent and keep working on your entrepreneurial journey, you will probably make it!
Thank you Noah for your availability to answer these questions. For the people reading this, I recommend you check Noah’s website for some more juicy content on what he has been up to.
Products built on top of Notion - for some inspiration
Looking for an idea to build a product or a service? Find your answer to this tweet and get cracking
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Until next time - Guilherme
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