Taking the leap and building a 6-figure-ARR portfolio
TL;DR: Pauline Clavelloux spent nearly a decade at IBM before COVID gave her the push to start building. Her first project—a crypto trading bot—failed as a business but succeeded as a personal learning experience, teaching her the joy of building and working independently. Her approach centers on a lean mindset: build fast (even if ugly), launch early, get feedback, improve only what matters, and quit if there's no traction. This helped her ship multiple products quickly. For IACrea, her AI-powered real estate marketing suite, the first version only supported one photo at a time—but it was enough to get first paying users. Distribution proved to be the hardest part. She learned that each product needs its own strategy: IACrea grew through Facebook groups, in-person events, and industry partnerships in real estate. Her other products (Feedbask, Subclip, Refindie) grew through social media and building in public. She consistently uses the same tech stack (Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, Vercel) across all products to minimize context-switching. Her advice emphasizes solving problems you personally experience—Feedbask was born from frustration with repetitive customer support questions. The portfolio approach lets multiple products compound over time, reducing the risk of betting everything on one idea while multiplying opportunities to find product-market fit.
Key Insights
- Portfolio approach reduces risk: with four active products, if one stagnates, others can still grow
- Distribution is harder than building: adapt your channel strategy (Facebook groups vs social media) to each product and audience
- Lean iteration cycle: build fast, launch early, improve based on feedback, quit if no traction
- Solve your own problems: building something you personally need gives you deep understanding and a fallback use case
- Consistent tech stack speeds development: same tools (Next.js, Supabase, Stripe) across all products reduces context-switching
Actionable Takeaways
- Build the simplest version that proves the concept—one feature is enough to validate demand
- Adapt distribution to each product's audience: B2B verticals need communities and events, horizontal products can leverage building in public
- Use the same tech stack across projects to speed up development and reduce learning overhead
- Build in public by sharing progress, failures, and learnings to attract early users and feedback
- When solving your own problem, you have a built-in use case even if monetization fails
Principles Validated (6)
Partner with people who already have your target audience
Pauline Clavelloux (Feedbask, Subclip, Refindie)
Use content marketing and SEO to build organic acquisition channels
Pauline Clavelloux (IACrea, Feedbask, Subclip, Refindie)
Use content marketing and SEO to build organic acquisition channels
Pauline Clavelloux (IACrea)