Amine Benjelloun

💌 Built (YC S20) to $1M ARR
🎥 Turn Calls Into Content
🚀 Test Ideas Fast
🎲 Startups for 🇲🇦

[Ilias Haddad @IliasHaddad3]

A new podcast episode of @yallaletscode, season 03, with @BenGeekly, a @ycombinator startup founder sharing his story from hacking in "Cyber Cafe" to co-founding @mailwarm and many more projects.

Full video: https://t.co/E1zMz4wrZ7
Spotify: https://t.co/n9frTWHHR5

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@tibo_maker You are missing Valuation in the context, anything has a price.
You are right, in this scenario you should not raise!
Unless someone gives a huge valuation that can make you billionaire in the next round.

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@ProductHunt @rajivayyangar This is tempting!

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@noahkagan If you are really bored go check my support ticket!
Zernio changed their pricing and now creating a new account with them is cheaper for me than using my Appsumo tier 4!
I don’t enjoy being a hater but Appsumo forced me to!

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@RaniadoesBiz How many emails per day is considered mass here ?

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@tibo_maker has a no-call policy but I called him anyway.
I learned this 3 things:
Validation ≠ Go-to-market:
Don't mix them. Validation is Reddit, DMs, hopping on calls with real people in your target. GTM is SEO, ads, distribution. Example: He doesn't touch SEO on a product before it's around $2k MRR with decent retention. Before that, you're optimizing acquisition for something that may not deserve it. After $2k MRR, SEO becomes a focus.

The right moment > the perfect product:
Revid caught the AI video wave. Mailwarm caught the email warming wave. If the category is already hot, you're proving you're better. If it isn't, you're convincing the world the problem exists.

For pricing, remove the choice:
The page that converts best isn't the one with the most options, it's the one where the decision is already made for the customer. The more options you put on a pricing page, the more cognitive load you create, and the more people leave to "think about it."

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@unredactedarc 🪞

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

Growing up in Tangier, I have seen people die to get past border limitations and get the same chance as others in Europe or US!

I am on a mission to make this borders tighter. US VCs can’t comprehend problems we are dealing with.

I have seen people building impressive tools from their phones, and dealing with payment without being bankable.

For example: in the last month alone; I gave access to stripe under my company name to 3 people and they started doing some MRR.

I want to start investing 5k$ checks in this companies where this small numbers matters. That’s Rolling Dice Club vision

@SalwaDemnati @MezzourR We would love to see @stripe in Morocco for builders, until then we are remotely creating companies in the US in less than 3days! @patrickc

[Rania Rimali @RaniadoesBiz]

When I was 15, I spent 6 months building an Android app in Kotlin (thank u @udemy) but when i tried to publish it on google play i discovered the most absurd thing EVER:

@GooglePlay don’t allow Moroccan developers to become merchants???? 🇲🇦🇲🇦

In other words, you couldn’t charge money for YOUR product because of where you were born

I tried finding a way around it and even asked a friend of my dad’s in France to publish it for me but eventually jst gave up.

I’m 21 now, building from 🇪🇸, and it’s craaaazy how much easier everything is.

“Supporting young African innovation” but can't even give us access to the same infrastructure, how sad!

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@unredactedarc Not Blaming, tagging appropriate people on a hope to discuss solutions!

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@meryemsaga Au-delà des délais, il faut permettre aux entreprises marocaines de bénéficier des systèmes de payement internationaux. Sinon on perd les entrepreneurs les plus ambitieux!

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@irachdaoui We should make it easy for Moroccans to charge outside the country. And even make it tax free! That money is earned elsewhere and will be spent in Morocco

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@tibo_maker I take the challenge.
Just subscribed

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@noahkagan @paletmiki can we find a solution with this? After buying a tier 4, now I need to pay 450$/month to get the same features someone is paying 6$/month for.
With my actual setup in @zernio : 10 accounts I 402$ extra by using my @AppSumo plan that I already payed for.

[Zernio @zernio]

📣We just changed how Zernio pricing works.

No more tiers. No more add-ons. Pay per connected account, every feature included.

First 2 accounts are free. After that, $6/mo per account and drops as you scale.

Analytics, comments, DMs, ads, webhooks. All included at every level.

https://t.co/o3QQcfSsMU

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@classonde Finding one person willing to say this does not work and here is exactly why, would teach you a lot more, but most young founders do not get honest feedback because people do not want to discourage them sadly.

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@hamed_shirbandi The internet changed things, but it changed them for everyone at the same time. Now one person can build and sell a product, but at the same time, thousands of other people can build almost the same thing in the same week.

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@Bouazizalex Do you need @deel to make it work?

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@stillgiddel Yes

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@tapeyy5 I get the you have to be the user part, but when your own use case evolves, do you rebuild the product around you or keep it stable for others?

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

@TVanWelsenes That’s a nice jump in launches in just a week. When users use the launch for you feature, do they still review each submission before it goes out or is it fully automated?

[Amine Benjelloun @BenGeekly]

As someone who focuses on building more, I decided to start capturing what I was already saying rather than creating content from scratch.
Every founder call, demo and meeting has content in it, you are already saying valuable things, just not recording them.
Which is why I built ProdShort so your meetings can become posts automatically. No composer, just you talking like you normally do.