Nine months in, one person, no outside money. I publish what I try and what it costs.
Run byMara KochThree emails went out on Tuesday. 214 new sign-ups are getting them and 209 are not, so we can compare the two groups. Ana pointed out that the day-three send lands in the middle of the US morning; we are keeping the timing anyway so the comparison stays clean.
Idea from a backer · run by the founderFour ideas came in, two made the shortlist. Backers preferred the email sequence over the pricing test, two to one, mostly because it is easy to undo. Budget locked at the whole pool.
Idea from a backer · run by the founderSupport doubled after a forum thread and I spent most of the week answering messages instead of building. Money made each month stayed inside its usual range. No experiment ran, so there is nothing to report.
The founder's own update · nobody else's ideaQuestions before the weekly call, arguments about which idea should run next, and the founder thinking out loud between updates. Open to anyone backing a solo founder, and closed to everyone else — including us, except where a decision it produced is published.
It opens with accounts. Until then there is nothing to sign in to and nothing to read, which is why there is no empty box here pretending otherwise.
You cannot write one here yet. Suggesting an experiment is what the upper tiers are for, and the form for it is not built — during the pilot, ideas reach a founder through whatever channel you already have with them. If you are paying for a tier that promises this, it is not working yet, and that is our fault rather than yours.
Backers weigh in and the founder decides. Votes advise; they never bind.
Search ads on those words will bring sign-ups in at €9 or less.
A launch post keeps sign-ups above 40 a week for four weeks.
People asked to invite a colleague right after their first successful export will refer at more than double that rate.
An email on day three showing one worked example gets at least 5 percentage points more people to stay past two weeks.
You are not backing them yet, so you are seeing the public version of this page.
Marked promises are not built yet. The pilot has no accounts, no ballot, no calendar and no second payment path, so anything needing one of those cannot be delivered however much you pay — if a founder honours it, that is them doing it by hand. We have left these on the tiers rather than quietly removing them, because deleting a promise would hide the gap from anyone who had already paid for it.
No backers yetNot open yet — this founder has no payment account connected, so no tier here can be bought today.Marked promises are not built yet. The pilot has no accounts, no ballot, no calendar and no second payment path, so anything needing one of those cannot be delivered however much you pay — if a founder honours it, that is them doing it by hand. We have left these on the tiers rather than quietly removing them, because deleting a promise would hide the gap from anyone who had already paid for it.
No backers yetNot open yet — this founder has no payment account connected, so no tier here can be bought today.Marked promises are not built yet. The pilot has no accounts, no ballot, no calendar and no second payment path, so anything needing one of those cannot be delivered however much you pay — if a founder honours it, that is them doing it by hand. We have left these on the tiers rather than quietly removing them, because deleting a promise would hide the gap from anyone who had already paid for it.
Co-funding contributions are separate one-off payments to specific approved experiments. Each one requires the founder's approval, and none is refundable once the experiment runs.
No backers yetNot open yet — this founder has no payment account connected, so no tier here can be bought today.Not for sale, at any price, today. If ownership ever becomes legally possible, this is where that conversation would start.
Joining the waitlist gets you an email. It is not an option, a promise, or a queue position.
Loyalty earns recognition and access only — a badge on your name, earlier access to call seats. Cancelling resets the streak; it never affects money already spent.
Named, not hidden. A page that concealed the existence of these would be presenting itself as the whole story; a page that showed them would make the tier meaningless.
Thesis never holds your money — the founder's own payment provider collects all of it, and we check how the experiment share is spent. The 15% platform line is what running this site would cost. There is no way to collect it during the pilot, so today that share stays with the founder too.