Charlie Clark - How a solo founder took a side project from an idea to $300k+ ARR product!

👉🏼 About the Guest:

Charlie Clark is a software engineer, creative coder, & bootstrapped founder who has grown his short links product, Liinks, to $25K MRR just 3 years after it officially launched.

👉🏼 About the Host:

Sharath is a founder, creator, and community builder. He is also a serial maker who built and shipped 15+ projects using no-code tools. His SaaS product Shoutout generated $30k ARR, which was sold to a UK-based product studio. Prev, Sharath worked for world-changing startups like Product Hunt and On Deck, where he helped build and nurture communities. He also grew his audience on Twitter from 200 to 24,000 using give-first principles and creating high-value content. He recently sold his second SaaS product, GuestLab, and he is working on a startup idea while hosting this show.

👉🏼 Sponsor Corner:

Shoutout to Acquire.com for sponsoring The Undefeated Underdogs podcast! They’re the best online marketplace to buy/sell startups and I know many founders who have sold their businesses there. If you're looking to wind down your business and cash in some of your founder chips, check them out - https://try.acquire.com/sharath/

👉🏼 Description:

Listen in as Sharath and Charlie discuss being a bootstrapped founder, building in a saturated market, making your side project a full time job, and more!
 
👉🏼 Timestamps:

00:00: Episode Highlight00:35: Shoutout to Acquire.com03:01: Intro to Charlie Clark - founder of Liinks, a beautiful link-in-bio page to gather your socials, music, videos, and more04:52: Why is Liinks spelled with two ii's?05:28: Why short links are better07:35: Why Charlie set $25K MRR as a target to quit his full-time job11:07: How Charlie designed Liinks to be clean, yet fun15:41: How to convince people to buy your product20:35: Learnings as a second-time founder22:45: Why Liinks: Building in a saturated market27:20: How to know if you want to commit to your project full-time30:51: How to market in a saturated market36:25: How to make creator-led products profitable40:20: How Charlie made Liinks aesthetically pleasing 43:45: How working at Squarespace helped Liinks grow48:45: Frameworks Charlie uses for growth, design, and user retention50:10: How to balance user requests vs your own roadmap?53:51: How will AI impact the future of Liinks?58:08: Why Charlie chose the solo founder route1:00:55: Why Charlie bootstrapped Liinks vs raising venture capital1:02:53: Outro and closing thoughts

👉🏼 Resources:

Link to Acquire.com: https://try.acquire.com/sharath/

👉🏼 Where to find Charlie:

Liinks: https://www.liinks.co/Twitter: https://twitter.com/clarkcharlie03Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkcharlie03vsual: https://www.vsual.co/closingEmoji Book: http://emojibook.club/Colors of Motion: https://thecolorsofmotion.com/

👉🏼 Where to find Sharath:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/5harathYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@5harathWebsite: https://5harath.com/Newsletter: https://5harath.substack.com/Founder Gigs: https://foundergigs.com/