This Simple Widget Makes $50K/Month
Tom Holliday tells Starter Story how he and his brother built Avenue, a simple booking widget for trades and mechanics that now makes $85,000 a month in Australian dollars, mostly through door-to-door sales.
The gist
-
Avenue embeds on a trade business's website and Google My Business profile, so customers can book or inquire without calling or emailing.
-
With no coding skills, Holliday hired a designer and two developers before any revenue, paid for by his 10-year agency's 70-plus hosting clients.
-
Early traction came from walking into every open business, switching from iPhones to iPads and brochures to show it lives on their website.
-
His main advice is to sell before you build: if people ask the price and will hand over cash, the idea is worth pursuing.
"AWS is $150, which I absolutely love because that's like the essential biggest part of our business — the hosting."
▶ Play at 9:198 creators recommend it, including Andrew Feldman, Chamath Palihapitiya, and Jonathan Fishner.
See all on the AWS page"Claude — everyone's using Claude, we're no different. We need it to survive at this point."
▶ Play at 9:45250 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Chris Koerner, and This Week in Startups.
See all on the Claude pageWhat they recommend · 4 picks
"Door-to-door sales, essentially — going and showing people our product. When you show someone the problem they have and you can explain it quite clearly, like 'You can't get sal..."
"Claude — everyone's using Claude, we're no different. We need it to survive at this point."
"Definitely sell before you build. I know it's said so many times, but customers don't care how much went into something sometimes. If you can get someone to commit before buildi..."
Made by someone on this episode
Also mentioned
Ads in this episode
HubSpot. They're paid, so we keep them out of the picks above.
See what Starter recommends without being paid →Related episodes
Episodes covering similar topics
More from Starter Story