The Story
Marc Lou grew up in a family of engineers in France where the only thing that mattered was good grades and going to university. He was a bad kid with bad grades who didn't feel like he belonged. After barely attending lectures for four years, he graduated and watched The Social Network - and decided he was the next Mark Zuckerberg.
He lived with his parents, working as a waiter part-time for $10/hour, while spending a year building a "Tinder for sports lovers" app. He was so arrogant he wouldn't even tell people what he was working on because it was "too brilliant." After 365 days, he realized the app would never exist because he didn't have the skills to build it and it would never make money.
Everything crumbled. He threw away all the code in 24 hours, quit his girlfriend, and moved to South Korea.
In Korea, he joined a friend's AI startup with VC funding. They spent 6 months building a product that got zero customers. After that failed, Marc was broke - living in a 12 square meter apartment with cockroaches in the bathroom.
He tried selling couple mittens on the street (made $0 online, sold 30 in person). Then he built VirallyBot, a tool for escape rooms to get more customers. A marketer friend told him to sell before building. His first sales call lasted 42 minutes - he was sweating so much his armpits were drenched. The customer said "send me the invoice, I'll pay." He made her confirm twice.
VirallyBot grew to $4K/month. He moved to Bali, learned to surf, life was beautiful. Then COVID hit. Revenue went from $4K to $0 in 24 hours. Everything he built for two years disappeared.
Back in France at 28, married, zero revenue, he had a breakdown. One morning he started crying for no reason, then punched his wall four times without thinking. He'd never felt that bad before.
He applied for software engineering jobs and got one paying $9K/month - 9x what he'd been making. For the first time, he felt worthy. But after 6 months, he saw tweets from indie hackers building tiny projects solo and felt the desire for freedom again.
Then he got fired. Perfect timing.
The Transformation
Marc built a new identity: entrepreneur again, but different rules:
- •Never spend more than a month on a product
- •Never raise money
- •Never have employees
- •Build in public so even failures create an audience
He shipped 6 projects in 7 months: Mood2Movie, Habits Garden (10K users), a productivity tips ranker, a landing page generator, a link-in-bio tool. Revenue: $1K/month.
Then he shifted to "painkillers" (solving real problems) instead of "vitamins" (nice-to-haves). He started making viral skits - fake podcasts with Joe Rogan, fake movies with Leonardo DiCaprio. Revenue jumped to $4K/month.
The ShipFast Breakthrough
After building 10-15 products, Marc realized he was doing the same setup every time: landing page, payment button, email, accounts. He built a reusable code base in less than a week.
He told his wife: "Maybe we'll make $100."
He shipped it, went skating, came back 2 hours later: $500. Next day: $3-4K. First month: $40K. Black Friday: $8K in one day.
"When product-market fit hits, you can feel it. People were asking to pay me in crypto because their credit cards didn't work. Usually I'm trying to convince people to give me money. This time they were begging."
He couldn't sleep - just watching the Stripe dashboard go up. Pure bliss.
Revenue Growth
- •Month 1: $40K
- •Month 2 (Black Friday): $65K
- •Steady: ~$50K/month
- •After YouTube feature: $85K → $135K → $135K
- •Current: ~$80K/month
- •Total: $1.5M/year
Growth Strategy
- •Free tools marketing (logo generators with ShipFast banners)
- •Building in public on Twitter
- •Viral skits and content
- •YouTube features
- •Product Hunt launches
Key Insights
The Failure Reframe
- •"Each failure is not a failure if you don't give up"
- •"Each failure is a learning or a frustration for a future success"
- •"Unless I quit in the middle, all those failures will bring success later"
- •Failed 30 startups before winning
Painkillers vs Vitamins
- •Painkillers: People know their struggle, easy to sell
- •Vitamins: Fun but not necessary, hard to sell
- •Habits Garden (vitamin): 10K users, hard to monetize
- •ShipFast (painkiller): $1.5M/year
The Voice in Your Head
- •"There's a voice that's always overthinking, blocking you from making the first step"
- •"He's gonna find a good excuse for this idea to not work"
- •"He's gonna tell you the idea isn't perfect enough to launch"
- •Solution: Start anything. Make the smallest version as fast as you can.
Key Advice
- •Start now, ship fast
- •Build in public so even failures create audience
- •Learn where you're comfortable sharing (Twitter for text, TikTok for video, Instagram for images)
- •Blend building and sharing together
- •"If you don't quit, at some point you'll win. It's just a matter of not quitting before you win."
Resources
- •Twitter: https://x.com/marc_louvion
- •ShipFast: https://shipfa.st