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How I Built & Grew CoverLetterGPT to 5,000 Users and $200 MRR

vincanger on October 25, 2023

Hey, I’m Vince… I’m a self-taught developer that changed careers during the Covid Pandemic. I did it because I wanted a better career,...
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Rudolf Olah • Edited

Amazing use of a batteries-included framework! There are a few others like that for Django/Python and Ruby on Rails that can give a headstart to product development:

Every product and startup needs auth, email sending, a way to accept payments and deployments. Great to see this!

  • $5.95 / month subscription with GPT-4
  • $2.95 / month subscription with GPT-3.5-turbo

The tiered pricing based on model is also very interesting.

What's the quality difference and are you upselling people into GPT-4 in some way?

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vincanger

Yep! Wasp is kinda like rails for js.

Nope. Not upselling. Most users just choose GPT4

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Will Pursell

This is exactly the story I was looking for!

I have really enjoyed playing around with different SAAS ideas and additionally integrating it with new technology (like GPT-3/4), but I have wanted to hear about others experiences as well.

The fact that the majority of your customers also prefer the more expensive subscription is also really interesting. I'll give Wasp a look!

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vincanger

nice!

yeah let me know if you try out the SaaS template and if there's anything I can do to improve it :)

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Dotenv

My first time coming across Wasp. I'm a big Rails fan. Wasp looks great!

What are you guys using for secret management in Wasp? It looks like simple .env files. Rails uses it's credentials files. Have you considered using .env.vault files for your framework users? They are sort of a combination of both - encrypted .env files.

I just wrote about them here the other day: dev.to/dotenv/what-is-a-envvault-f...

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vincanger

that's awesome. If you give it a try, let us know your thoughts in our discord. our todo app tutorial is a good start (~20mins): wasp-lang.dev/docs/tutorial/create

.env files seem to be good enough for most usecases at the moment. why would encrypting them be necessary when working locally?

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Martin Šošić

Env vault is interesting for sure, for easy sharing of secrets! We might give it a look at some point for sure -> once we get closer to the 1.0 release of Wasp!

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Matija Sosic

A very cool story, I always love reading about how something came to be from the day 0, thanks for sharing :)

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vincanger

thanks!

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Chris Gustin

Thanks for sharing! IndieHacking is what initially got me interested in web dev too. The idea of being able to learn the skills cheap or free, and then build cool products quickly and inexpensively, potentially for a nice payday, still gets me fired up to keep learning and progressing.

Appreciate you going into so much detail to share your journey, definitely inspires me to try and finish a few of the side projects I have in my head. Love the tip about open sourcing as a marketing tactic too.

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vincanger

That's great to hear! That's why I made the free SaaS template, to inspire others. Plus I learned so much from other open-source projects, so it's kinda my way to pay it forward.

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Nevo David

I also want to build and sell stuff.
Probably should use Wasp for it

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vincanger

cuts your dev time in half!

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Olu

As someone launching similar tool, this was a great post! What else would you do the market your product ?

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vincanger

Everything I mentioned in the article, including what I wrote in the future plans section :)

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Mihovil Ilakovac

Will you be doing some upselling on this project for your future projects? I know others do it successfully

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vincanger

possibly! another idea is to offer a white-label version of this for recruiters so they can use it as funnel to find new talent

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Lucas Lima do Nascimento

Really nice article as always, Vince! How did you figured out the first and second prices?

Looking forward to know the insights on pricing software services 👀

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vincanger

Thanks, Lucas!

the prices were just trial and error. I wasn't expecting so many users, so I felt I had nothing to lose and just went for it. I think I'll stick at the current prices though now

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Zach Sents

I wanted to laugh at posting about $200 MRR, then remembered I'm at $0.00000 MRR.

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vincanger

Since posting this I'm now at $220 MRR ;)

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Martin Šošić

Hah yeah, there is a big gap between 0 and something :D.

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AGT Institute

"Building and growing CoverLetterGPT to 5,000 users and $200 MRR is an inspiring journey! It's impressive how you've achieved this milestone. By the way, I'm also on a path of skill enhancement with agt.edu.pk/galleries/gallery/refri... to make a significant impact in the HVAC industry.