This isn’t the only pathway to a successful business, but it’s one of the cheat codes that I’ve used to grow our AppSumo Originals products<\/a> from zero to 1M+ users (including three products that have generated over $1M in revenue each).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there’s a crowded market with a lot of noise, most people see think the signal is to avoid.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But I think the opposite.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our most popular product ever, TidyCal<\/a>, came from a realization that a lot<\/em> of people use calendar tools. And I believed if I could find an angle and get a small percentage of people switch from Calendly and other calendar tools, it could grow into a successful business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, with 300K+ users and 5.2M+ events booked and millions in revenue generated, it’s our most successful product ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, I took that same mindset into another crowded industry: The job market.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I noticed a lot of people were looking for jobs. I’ve been through long job searches before, and I know how stressful it can be. I wanted to see if I could help people find a job, and eventually turn that into a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s the story of how I tried, and failed, to launch ReferCareers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a lot of people looking for jobs, and there’s a lot of advice out there on how to find a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I noticed that most of the job search tips and advice were to work harder, not smarter. Send applications non-stop, grind all day, and hope that it eventually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With so many people wanting jobs, I thought there could be a better way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When thinking about a crowded market, a core question is, “What’s my differentiator?”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, why would someone use your product or service over what they already have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why not keep doing what they’re doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why would they switch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The benefits to switch need to be compelling.<\/strong> Most entrepreneurs forget this, and assume their solution is so magical that everyone will want to just move over. Wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people would rather stay with the solution they have, even if it’s not perfect.<\/strong> So a new solution or product has to offer enough benefits to convince people to move over and break through the inertia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For job searching over the years, I’ve used a different approach than conventional wisdom to land multiple dream jobs: Networking and referrals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach originally started with Ramit Sethi. His advice on finding a job (including his course “Find Your Dream Job<\/a>“) was foundational in helping me approach job searching different. Since then, I’ve really enjoyed job search advice by by Kareem<\/a> (of Relentless), Ben (next play newsletter<\/a>), Alex Rechevskiy<\/a>, and my friend Chris Ming<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone knows<\/em> they should network and get referrals to increase their odds of a job, but instead they just click “Easy Apply” on LinkedIn and hope for the best. Eventually they get frustrated and settle, give up, or complain about how the job market is broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opportunity to help people in their job search is from referrals and networking.<\/strong> This was was my differentiator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make sure it wasn’t just a “me” success that is not grounded in reality, I did some cursory research using ChatGPT and Claude. And there was data to support, showing that people in tech who got referrals found a job 11% faster and increased their odds of finding a job by 4x.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thinking ahead to how this idea could turn into a business, I saw three potential paths for revenue.<\/strong> If I could get people using the platform, I could try a few different monetization strategies to see what hit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where most entrepreneurs stop, and it’s a mistake. They just assume that they can have an idea and a few ways to make money, and then, boom, build the product and get the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there are a lot<\/em> of missing steps in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you define the initial idea and potential monetization on a business, the next step is time to break down the approach into shorter timeframe goals. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use a methodology like the SMART framework, OKRs and rocks, or something else. Whatever you choose, define markers of success to stay focused on what matters.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Below are the milestones that I picked that were exciting to me and were indications that I could see being on the right path to eventually a successful full-time business:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2025 Goals<\/span> And once I started laying out the vision for the year, I had ideas on how we could automate if I was getting overwhelmed by the success (the best problem to have, and one I hoped I would):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideal automated flow:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I had the milestones established, I put together a loose idea of the website MVP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The focus was to put together the simplest solution that would push towards the goals using the 80\/20 (Pareto) principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This MVP website flow was done using the simple draw function in a Google Doc. It doesn’t need to be overly complex. Focusing on the core functionality, knowing that I can always iterate over time, is the way to avoid wasting time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (This idea was launched in February 2025, before Lovable\/Replit\/Claude Code became so good. If I were to do this now, I would take these simple flow requirements and vibe code a prototype.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n To further detail out the idea, I also wrote a very simple PRD (product requirement document) to fill in the gaps on the<\/strong> end-to-end approach<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of product people think PRDs need to be this massive multi-page documents, but PRDs can be really simple.<\/strong> Even the PRD I created for TidyCal, a product that has grown to millions of dollars in revenue, was a bulleted list of 13 features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the same Google Doc, I added website copy with a few variations of the headline and then very simple explanation copy:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal wasn’t to create perfect copy. It was to create benefit-driven, simple copy that got the point across 80% good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If an idea ultimately shows signal, it’s easy to revise and double-down on what’s working. Don’t waste time trying to perfect something before you prove that people use it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the best products I’ve ever created go through constant revisions as the product matures, so you’ll be revising it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I could get job searchers using the website, I had to first get jobs listed on the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Chart](\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dmkthinks-blog-refercareers-financechart-1024x808.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dmkthinks-blog-refercareers-1024x665.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nStep #1 – Define the differentiator, and launch the MVP<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Month 1 – Goal #1 – Get $5,250 from AppSumo referrals (AppSumo had a few open job listings that could promote myself to use my own product)
Month 2 – Goal #2 – Get 5+ other companies to list
Month 3 – Goal #3 – $1,000 in income per team member per month (I was starting this business with my friends Garrett<\/a> and Henrique<\/a>)
Q2 – Goal #4 – $2,500 per team member per month
Q3 – Goal #5 – $5,000 per team member per month
Q4 – Goal #6 – $10,000 per team member per month<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
![\"Flow](\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dmkthinks-blog-refercareers-processflow-1024x689.png\")
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![\"Website](\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dmkthinks-blog-refercareers-websitecopy-1024x587.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep #2 – Get the first companies listed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Referral](\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dmkthinks-blog-referralmessage-1024x863.png\")
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