He Built A $2.5M/Year Business In 2 Years | Starter Story

September 14, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Carl Hughes built Draft.dev from a single page on his personal website into a $2.5 million/year business in roughly two years. The company creates technical content—blog posts, tutorials, and documentation—for companies that need to reach software engineers. Clients include Cloudflare, Dropbox, and Red Panda. But the episode is less about the business itself and more about how Hughes thinks about starting, scaling, and eventually buying businesses. He walks through the mechanics of finding a niche, getting first customers, structuring a service business, and why he now believes buying an existing company is faster than building one from scratch.

Finding a niche by combining interest and willingness to pay

Hughes did not set out with a formula for finding Draft.dev's niche. He started freelancing as a writer during COVID, posting a page called "Carl's Writing" on his personal site and sending it to people in his network. The niche—developer relations content—emerged organically from conversations. He had been a software engineer, so he understood the audience. He also discovered that companies were spending heavily on developer marketing but struggled to produce technically credible content in-house.

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What you'll learn

1 (01:26) **Carl Hughes and Draft.dev: The Business at a Glance** - Carl built a $2.5M/year technical content agency in two years. He introduces his company, Draft.dev, and explains the core service.
2 (02:29) **Carl’s Backstory: From Corporate Boredom to Freelance** - Carl describes his early career and the moment he realized he needed a different path.
3 (04:59) **Finding the Niche: Developer Relations Content** - Carl explains how he stumbled into the hyper-specific niche of developer relations (DevRel) content.
4 (06:13) **First Customers: The Power of a Network List** - Carl reveals the simple, repeatable system he used to land his first clients.
5 (08:53) **Marketing & Scaling to $2.5M** - Carl breaks down the three main channels that grew the business and his premium pricing strategy.
6 (10:37) **How Carl Learned the Skills to Scale** - Carl explains that his prior startup experience and a long history of failed side projects were the real education.
7 (13:47) **The Next Move: Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition** - Carl details his recent purchase of a second business and his long-term $100M goal.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

He Built A $2.5M/Year Business In 2 Years

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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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--------------- Keywords: bootstrap startup, startup tips, app flipping, digital products, make money online, tech business, startup advice, indie hacker

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