John Rush made $2m in January 2024

How John Got Started

John is originally from a remote town in Turkey. So remote that they didn’t even have electricity until he was 8 years old.

When they finally did, he immediately discovered his love for technology. So he started toying with old TVs and radios and built other things like toy cars with motors and sold them.

At 13, his father bought him a laptop after John helped harvest potatoes for months to cover the cost.

Since they still didn’t have any internet, he taught himself how to code so he could build his own games.

A few years later he got accepted at a Norwegian university to study computer science.

This was his world. He spent all his days and nights learning. And building his first project called Rush Studio where he helped other programming students with their assignments.

While it was extremely profitable, he helped other students cheat which he wasn’t comfortable with. So he eventually sold it for 5 figures.

Before getting his degree, he started working for Norway’s incubator program called Startup Lab.

Between 2011 and 2017 he was involved in 30 startups.

Unfortunately, all of them were failing.

He did make some good profit here and there, though. For instance, he bought an icon startup in 2014 and sold it for 2× 6 months later.

In 2017 he sold another one for $5 million after building it for 3 months.

He kept trying to convince them to focus on profitability instead of massive growth. But neither founders nor investors were fond of that idea.

Instead, he started bootstrapping his own project in 2018, MarsX. This is a dev tool for applications that allows founders to launch much faster.

Instead of having to build everything from scratch, he provides templates so that you can launch in weeks.

But for the first year, John struggled to convince developers to use the tool.

They don’t get paid more if they’re more productive. So it wasn’t an attractive solution.

Using His Own Products

After struggling to get his first users, John realized that the best way to prove its worth was to use it himself.

So he started building projects in days instead of months.

The first one was SEO Bot. And then during the next few months, he built tools to replace his entire 10-person contractor team.

Here are all his projects:

And he’s not done, yet.

His goal is to build 100 projects by 2025.

And 1000 by 2026!

His ambitious goals attract attention.

How can a single person create so many profitable projects? Each project has 1 developer working on it. But other than that, John’s solo.

His secret is using MarsX.

He says that MarsX is great for no-code founders to build an MVP. As soon as you get confirmation from users that they want your product and you either make some revenue or get funding, you can bring on a developer who can continue building on MarsX.

This makes the platform very accessible for all types of founders. And he proves that by quickly building profitable products himself.

This is the best promotion.

The tools he built are so successful that he only has a waitlist for MarsX at the moment.

I’m not sure what his strategy is but he already has over 20,000 people signed up!

It says that they’re gradually onboarding new users. This creates a feeling of exclusivity and scarcity which is amazing to get people excited about getting access.

Building in Public

He quickly realized that he needed to publicly share his work to attract his ideal clients and users.

So he started documenting his journey on Twitter and Linkedin in March 2023.

He's been tweeting daily and sharing what he's currently working on.

And some thoughts on SaaS, AI and useful tools.

By the end of 2023, he's had a few viral threads.

Like:

And he actually uses the same content across platforms.

For instance, this is his one of his recent posts on Twitter:

And on Linkedin:

There are different people on both platforms.

That's an easy way to reach both.

Another place where his target audience hangs out is Reddit, which he only really picked up in 2024.

After a few removed posts, John found his groove and mostly posted in subreddits for startups & entrepreneurs.

This one went pretty viral:

But the cool thing is it's actually just a repurposed Twitter thread.

Cross-Promotion

Initially he thought MarsX would be perfect for developers.

But after showing his own projects, it attracted mostly no-code founders who wanted to improve their productivity.

But instead of using MarsX, they started signing up for all of John’s other tools.

Since all of his tools attract the same audience, cross-promotion became really easy.

E.g. if you used his SEO tool called SEOBot, you might also like his indexing tool called IndexRusher.

How You Can Replicate His Success

If you’re a founder who’s building a SaaS or an app, John is the perfect role model to follow.

Ideally, you should build something for people who are in a similar situation like you.

Then use it yourself and show how helpful it is in your own business and life.

The key to success for bootstrapped founders is publicly sharing their process and progress.

Here are 3 things that will accelerate your success most:

1. Launch your MVP asap and include users in the building process.

2. Share your journey on social media. Choose the platform your target audience is on. E.g. no-code founders are mostly on Twitter and Linkedin.

3. Do podcast interviews. That allows you to share your story with more people and positions yourself as an authority.