Papermark · B2B · open-source DocSend alternative
Share your wins and losses publicly every month
First ~1,000 GitHub stars in 1-2 months; 8,900 stars now
Workedfounder-brandcommunity
What they did
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.
What happened
~1,000 GitHub stars in the first 1-2 months, which the founder took as validation; 8,900 stars per host today
- Stage
- Growth (Launch and early growth, 2023)
“So we were part of this like open source community, and I feel like that was vital in the beginning because we had each other's backs.”
“And then we shared obviously our wins, our our losses pretty much every month. And people like following a journey and seeing like where the story ends up.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Papermark: Tweet the idea first; build it over a weekend only if people engageTweet got 450 likes and 95K+ views; the launch went viral and users asked to pay
- Papermark: Build an open-source alternative to a well-known tool people dislikeNow ~$3M ARR; founder credits timing and a known, disliked incumbent
- Papermark: Post where your customers are, even if your following is elsewhereOne LinkedIn post reached ~250K views; helps but can't be tracked to revenue
- Papermark: Match the incumbent's must-have features before you expect people to switchUnder $1M for ~2 years; then $1M to $2M in four months once parity hit
- Papermark: Let customers put their own domain and brand on everything they shareFounder calls it a differentiator; no numbers
- Papermark: Keep a free plan forever when the big competitor drops theirs~100 signups a day and ~100 new paying customers a month
- Papermark: Make shared links use your domain unless users add their ownFounder says most growth is organic and word of mouth; 60K+ teams
- Papermark: Save a year of personal runway first, then bootstrap with a co-founderBootstrapped and profitable at ~$3M ARR; never considered quitting