How Katt Risen built and sold Domainiacs

From weekend build to snackquisition 🎉

Mar 23, 2023

Hello everyone 👋

Welcome to our 35 new subscribers, you’re great 🎉

Next week it’s the last Wednesday of the month, so that means it’s almost time for our next No-Code Garage Sale 🤗 Like the previous editions we received some great products to sell, so that’s going to be interesting again if you’re looking to acquire a No-Code product. And Katt Risen from No-Code Exits will join us with a special announcement 👀

Talking about her, today’s interview is about Domainiacs, the product Katt sold after our first event 🥳

Sharing today: How Katt Risen created and sold Domainiacs

I met Katt during the second No-Code MVP Bootcamp of Max Haining. Katt joined as a participant, and for me it was the first time as part of Max his team after I was a participant myself in the first edition.

Really excited about all the new possibilities we unlocked with this course, we stayed in touch to chat about No-Code opportunities. And although I’m not sure if I should be proud about this, but I’m afraid that inspired her to build Domainiacs too.. 🫣

In this edition:

💬 Interview with Katt Risen and Steve, the new owner of Domainiacs
🚀 An update about our Build To Sell Challenge for makers
⚡️ News about the upcoming Garage Sale (March ‘29)
⏰ Last chance for buyers to acquire current listings

Let’s go 🎉

Congrats with selling Domainiacs Katt 🎉

Thanks Harold 🤗
It wasn’t a big exit, so I call it a ‘snackquisition’ 😅
But I’m really happy that Steve wanted to take this over from me, so I can focus on the other projects I’m working on, like the one we’re going to announce next week 👀
I had a lot of fun building it though 😃

Cool. Can you tell us more about that?

I built this as part of the Build Weekend of 100 Days of No-Code. In the week before that, I did a workshop where I showcased how I built No-Code Guru, the product I built as a participant of the bootcamp and which got acquired later.

During that workshop I noticed that people really loved this dynamic and interactive product. This stayed in my head afterwards and made me think that I should maybe build some more products like that. So that’s what I went for when the Build Weekend started.

To find an idea, I looked into popular twitter memes. A tip I saw in a tweet from Dan Kulkov, where he mentioned that people often joke about problems they have. When I saw the one below I knew what to build. And I’m sure you relate to this meme too 😅

Haha, yes 🫣
How did you built it from there?

I approached it as a fun weekend project, so not too serious. I just wanted to have some fun while building something relatable. And I wanted to build it with Landbot again, to build another chatbot like No-Code Guru.

After tinkering with a couple of ideas I decided to go for a self assessment check to help domain addicts in facing up to the fact that they have a ‘problem’ 😅
Of course, I’m no specialist to help people with real addiction problems, so I wanted to make sure everyone understood it was primarily a fun side project.

Working along with the other participants of the weekend, and building in public was a lot of fun. And by the end of the weekend Domainiacs was live 🎉

It was really fun to follow back then 🎉
Why did you decide to sell it now?

In November I quit my job, to become a full-time indie maker. Therefore, it became more important for me to focus my time on projects that bring in revenue. One of them was No-Code Exits, which I started after No-Code Guru got acquired. This got some good traction from the start, so I decided to only work on projects that would help No-Code Exits grow or monetize.

I think the most underestimated part of building and launching products is marketing. With the audience interested in my newsletter, I now suddenly had an interesting distribution channel for new launches in the future, which is super powerful. However I believe it is important then to build products that are interesting for this same audience. So that is what I try to focus on now.

Domainiacs doesn’t fit in that picture for me, so I was happy to sell it to create more headspace for No-Code Exits 🙂

And you were happy to take this over, isn’t it Steve?

Yes 🙌 My wife visited the No-Code Garage Sale, and forward me the link of this product afterwards. She thinks I’m a Domainiac too 😅

And perhaps she’s right, because I have a habit of buying up domains quickly just in case I might need to use it the future. The theme of Domainiacs certainly aligned with that habit of buying domains unexpectedly, and it was a cool domain, so I wanted to get it. Ironically isn’t it? 😄

But jokes aside, I think I'm not the only person who buys domains with no purpose. So I believe I can build this out into an interesting product.

Which opportunities do you see for the product?

I think the current product is a fun way to attract people that bought too many domains. Once they are there, they will probably start thinking about all their domains. At least that was what I did. It will be interesting then to help these people, the domainiacs, with those domains. Whether that’s about developing their ideas for it, or selling redundant domains.

Potential avenues forward I see are for example affiliate links to various No-Code tools, to build your ideas on a domain, and tutorials or other methods to sell domains that are no longer needed.

What are your next steps now you acquired this chatbot?

First I want to build out the chat model that Katt built. Perhaps I can implement ChatGPT in that too, to make it more interesting for the users. My goal is to add potential revenue streams into the flow, but at the same time I don't want to make it annoying for users. So it should really add value, as I don’t want to fill the site with unrelated ads.

I don’t have real marketing plans yet. At this point I hope I can turn the chatbot into something with network effects, to encourage people to experiment with the it. After that I will think about other marketing activities.

I’m looking forward to try it out when it’s ready 🤗

You too? Follow Steve on Twitter, if you want to be the first to know when Domainiacs is ready to launch again.

And of course also give Katt a follow (@kattrisen), especially if you’re interested in more inspiring No-Code Exits 😃

Update Build To Sell Challenge 💡🚀💰

Curious which products our makers are building to sell next week?

Buyers pay attention, because here’s an update about the products of our challenge participants that you can acquire on March 29 👀

Hazel won the third prize of the No-Code Weekend with Savage Cards, the product she is creating together with ChatGPT. Her thread about this went viral with over 127K impressions so far ⚡️
Lee also won an award at the No-Code Weekend, for best Bubble Build with NocodeWorth 🙌
Zach participated in the weekend too, and received a lot of praise as well. His Notion template for sport coaches, Play In Motion, is ready to sell next week 😃
Charles has started setting up his Glide application for the marketplace he is building for startup communities
William is working on improving the reliability of the audio transcription for AudioTweet, using the Whisper API from OpenAI.
Eric is still waiting on access to the Twitter API and considering a pivot if that doesn’t come through quickly

We meet each Tuesday for a weekly standup,
and this week we had a lot to celebrate 🎉

No-Code Sale @nocodesale

Participants of our Build To Sell Challenge meet every Tuesday. Today we had something to celebrate 🥳 @SP4CESH1P5 was nominated as a finalist of the No Code Weekend, @LeeLaunches won the price of the best Bubble Build and @byhazellim became third in the overall ranking 🎉

Participants of the Build To Sell Challenge

Third No-Code Garage Sale (March ‘29) 📦

Every last Wednesday of the month, we host a No-Code Garage Sale.
Next week it’s time for the third edition 🎉

Here’s the latest news:

As a learning from last event, we are limiting the number of pitches to 5 pitches this time. That way, we can make sure that the event doesn’t run out of time 😅
As mentioned in her interview already, Katt Risen from No-Code Exits will join us too for an exciting announcement 👀
As you can tell from the update above, about the Build To Sell Challenge, there was a No Code Weekend last week 😃 As part of the partnership we mentioned last week, participants of this event are now invited to list their weekend build for sale. You can find an overview of all finalists here.
Another interesting event for makers is Half Day Build. To help makers monetize their build time we are partnering with them for this exciting challenge 👇
And another interesting partnership to announce here is the one with Microns.io.
Currently the deals that are closed after our the No-Code Garage Sale events are handled informally by the buyer and seller among each other. But in case the seller and/or buyer wants a more formal process for the transaction, Microns provides a great solution 🚀

Listing your product on Microns is free and without and commissions. In addition to that, they just launched a new transfer service, in case needed. Moreover, they have a big network of entrepreneurs and investors looking to acquire micro-startups, which will also get an invite for the No-Code Garage Sale 😃