How to Clone a Software Tool, Make $3m Fast

Instead of building first, the founder (at his wife's suggestion) wrote a single tweet pitching an open-source DocSend alternative. The bar: if people like, share and comment, build it over the weekend. The tweet got traction immediately (450 likes, 95,000+ views per host), so he built the first version that weekend and shipped it, then posted the launch, which went viral again. He kept building on nights and weekends until the first customers asked if they could pay. He had only ~1,000 X followers at the time.

Picked a space nobody was building open source in: DocSend-style document sharing and data rooms. Rode the 2023 wave of commercial open-source alternatives to older SaaS (e.g. an open-source Calendly alternative). DocSend was known to everyone, disliked, and had stopped iterating after Dropbox acquired it. Customers usually already use a comparable tool, so they need no education. He urges founders to look at saturated, non-AI markets ripe for disruption rather than AI products that need behavior change.

Papermark was part of a small, informal commercial open-source community (many part-German founders) whose members backed each other's posts early on. Being open source meant everything, down to each line of code, was already public, so they shared wins and losses roughly every month; people like following a journey. The first ~1,000 stars came within 1-2 months off viral X posts.

Early traction came from X, but none of Papermark's customers are on Twitter; most are on LinkedIn, so founder posting shifted toward LinkedIn. One post reached about 250,000 views. LinkedIn is not a trackable conversion channel, but he says it helps because many customers are there. X is still where he is most active personally.

Buyers already knew what they wanted from incumbents; until Papermark had the one or two features they were hoping for, they still went to a competitor. The founder says differentiation does not matter until you are feature-complete, because nobody wants a half-baked product. Once the product was complete and offered at the same price point, switching became a no-brainer. Most growth came after that point.

Rather than changing user behavior, Papermark took its own spin on the incumbent's product through personalization and professionalization: a custom domain out of the box and full branding of the look and feel of data rooms and shared documents, while incumbents put their own brand front and center. Roadmap is driven by the founder's own experience with these tools and their minimum feature set.

Papermark offers a free version; some signups move into free trials and others stay free forever, which the founder is fine with, aiming to make getting started as easy as possible. DocSend eventually killed its free version, and none of the top players in the market offer one, which Papermark treats as an opening.

Papermark's 60,000+ teams share many document and data-room links. Unless a team adds a custom domain, links default to papermark.com. Recipients who have never heard of Papermark get a link forwarded, see the site, and check whether it fits them. Because most already use a comparable tool, they need no education; a good experience as a viewer leads to a good experience as an admin.

Before Papermark, both founders had good jobs and built a sizable savings buffer that carried them through the first year. The company is run by two co-founders, Marc and his wife, split 50/50 to avoid friction. No outside funding. Profits are largely reinvested in the product and in building distribution channels; they now pay themselves a proper salary.