AI Summary
5 min readHe Built A $2.5M/Year Business In 2 Years | Starter Story
Carl Hughes started Draft.dev in 2020 with nothing more than a single page on his personal website called "Carl's Writing." There was no company, no landing page, no website. He just sent that page around to people in his network and asked, "Would you pay me to write for you?" Within three months, he had more work than he could handle. Three years later, Draft.dev was doing over $2.5 million in annual revenue, with a full-time team of six or seven and hundreds of contractors across 54 countries.
Finding the niche and getting the first customers
Draft.dev creates technical content aimed at software engineers for marketing purposes. Clients buy packages of 12, 24, or 48 pieces of content—typically blog posts and tutorials—which Draft.dev produces using a pool of practicing software engineers as writers, paired with editors and full-time tech reviewers. The client list includes Red Panda, Cloudflare, and Dropbox—companies that need to build authority and trust with a highly technical audience.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction & Business Overview** - Carl Hughes built Draft.dev to $2.5M/year in two years, creating technical content for software engineers.
- 2 (01:27) **How the Service Works** - Draft.dev uses a pool of hundreds of software engineer contractors worldwide, paired with editors and full-time tech reviewers.
- 3 (02:36) **Backstory & Path to Entrepreneurship** - Carl studied mechanical engineering, hated corporate internships, and was inspired by his entrepreneur father and uncle.
- 4 (04:10) **Finding the Niche** - The niche wasn't intentional; it came from combining personal interest with customer willingness to pay.
- 5 (04:45) **Getting the First Customers** - Carl's "50-person network list" (a spreadsheet of contacts he maintained for years) was the key.
- 6 (05:36) **Team Structure & Scaling** - Started with a writer and editor; Carl did tech reviews himself, then hired a full-time engineer.
- 7 (06:22) **Marketing & Scaling to $2.5M** - Revenue splits roughly into thirds: referrals/word of mouth, organic search/social media, and cold outreach.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
He Built A $2.5M/Year Business In 2 Years
📚 Make Your First $1 (10x Faster) with Case Studies - https://www.starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=karl&yts=true
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In this video, I flew out to Chicago to meet Karl Hughes - a guy who built a $2,500,000 business in just 2 years. He shared how he literally got started without a landing page or a website - AND, how anyone can launch a profitable productized service with just one skill. He's also one of the most down to earth people I've met so far. Hope you guys enjoy!
Follow Karl 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/KarlLHughes
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