Hey, it's Jennie.
Most of the success stories I've shared in this newsletter have been fast ones. Someone grabs an idea, builds it in a few weeks, and gets traction almost immediately.
Today's story is the exact opposite. This is about someone who failed 6 or 7 times over 15 years.
His name is Anton. Every single time, he chased "completely original ideas" — things nobody had ever built before. He was convinced that the only way to succeed was to create something the world had never seen. And every single time? He ended up building products that nobody wanted.
So here's the question that kept bugging me.
Why did it take this guy so long?
If you look at the founders who succeeded quickly, they almost all started in markets where people were already spending money. They found validated demand and layered on one clear differentiator. Anton did the opposite. He kept running full speed into unproven territory, fueled by nothing but the belief that "it's never been done, so it must be a goldmine."
That's exactly why it took 15 years. An obsession with originality. The delusion that you have to invent something brand new — that's what created 7 failures.
His strategy with Letterly was the polar opposite of everything he'd done before.
AI transcription apps were everywhere. The tech was solid across the board. But Anton noticed something interesting. They all looked and felt like rough prototypes. The functionality was fine, but actually using them? Clunky. Confusing. Friction everywhere.
So instead of building something new, he took an already validated business model and focused entirely on making the experience dramatically better. The same approach that the fast success stories use — he just needed 7 failures to finally see it.
The result?
An app called Letterly that hit 300,000 downloads, 30,000 monthly active users, and 20,000 paid subscribers in just 2 years. Monthly revenue: $250,000.
If you go to letterly.app, the product page is dead simple. No walls of text. Just the core value, right there. And when you look at it, you immediately understand why people pay for this.