The Story
Gil Hildebrand built Subscribr - an AI script writing tool for YouTube creators that generates $30K/month. But what makes his story remarkable isn't just the revenue - it's HOW he validated the idea: he made $20,000 before the product even existed.
Gil is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Squidoo (grew to $10M revenue, acquired), then built a crypto accounting startup (raised millions from VCs, sold). After exiting the VC world, he wanted to try bootstrapping.
While exploring YouTube and faceless channels, Gil realized script writing was a massive bottleneck. ChatGPT wasn't good enough for quality scripts. He bet that his experience as an entrepreneur and developer could help him build something better.
Instead of building first, Gil started a brand new X account with zero followers, followed everyone in the YouTube space, and created free valuable content. He ran viral giveaways to build an email list of 1,000+ people. Then he reached out individually to talk about his app idea.
When he felt confident, he launched a pre-sale: 50 lifetime licenses at an "absurdly low" price, with prices increasing every 10 licenses to create FOMO. It sold out in 2-3 days, generating $20K. The catch? He told buyers they could get a full refund anytime - even after the 60-day build period. This gave him validation AND pressure to deliver.
Key Insights
Why Pre-Sales Work
- •"The curse of being a software developer is falling in love with an idea"
- •Friends saying "I'd pay $20/month" is NOT real validation
- •The ONLY way to validate is to collect actual money
- •Pre-sales force you to build something people truly want
The Painkiller vs Vitamin Test
- •Vitamins are nice-to-have; painkillers are must-have
- •Pre-sales reveal if your product is a painkiller
- •If people won't pay upfront, they probably won't pay later
Pre-Sale Playbook
- •Build an audience first - Post raw, build-in-public content to establish trust
- •Set up email list - Communicate weekly, start dialogues, get feedback on ideas
- •Do the math - Calculate how many buyers you need, what conversion rate you need, how big your list needs to be
- •Execute the pre-sale aggressively:
- •7-day email sequence teasing benefits (not features)
- •Multiple emails on launch day
- •Reminders when pre-sale is ending
- •Fire on all social channels
- •Make an offer so good they can't say no - First 10 licenses might not even be profitable, but they validate demand
- •Offer money-back guarantee - Removes risk, increases conversions
Tech Stack
- •Claude Code (90% of code written with AI)
- •Laravel (PHP framework)
- •Digital Ocean (hosting)
- •AI compute: ~$3,500/month
- •Ads: ~$2,000/month
- •Other (web scraping, hosting, email): ~$1,500/month
Resources
- •Follow Gil: https://x.com/gilhildebrand
- •Subscribr: https://subscribr.ai/