// transcript — 402 segments
0:00 Intro
0:01 Cursive directory. We built it in a weekend and now it makes 35k per month.
0:07 >> This is Pontis, a developer bored on his flight to France when he spotted an
0:12 opportunity. The second he landed, he called his friend. They coded for 3
0:16 hours straight and launched a simple directory. >> When I landed, I called Victor and said,
0:20 "We need to build this directory for cursor rules." >> That 3-hour build is now doing $34,000 a
0:27 month with 99.8% 8% profit margins and they only work on it 3 hours a month.
0:32 >> We posted a site on X and it instantly took off. I have never seen something
0:35 like that before. [music] >> I thought directories were dead in 2025,
0:40 but Pontis has proved me wrong and showed me that anybody [music] can do
0:44 this. So, I brought Pontis on the channel to break down exactly how he did
0:48 it. In this video, we'll dive into exactly what tools he used to build a
0:54 $34,000 a month website in just 3 hours. the secret to why his directory took off
0:59 when many others don't and his advice for anyone building websites like this
1:04 right now. All right, this one is crazy. So, let's get into it. I'm Pat Walls and
1:09 this is Starter Story. Hey guys, I wanted to pop in here with a
1:13 very important message. Black Friday is around the corner and you know I'm going
1:16 to be doing something I probably shouldn't. To celebrate over 700,000
1:20 subscribers here on YouTube, I'm going to be giving away one of the best deals
1:24 we've ever done on Starter Story. Last year, our early bird Black Friday deal
1:29 sold out in less than 2 hours. And this year, I think it'll sell out in less
1:33 than one. And I don't want anyone of my subscribers on YouTube to miss this. So,
1:38 here's the deal. I've set up a VIP list where you will be notified about our
1:42 Black Friday deal before anyone else. And trust me, it's going to be one of
1:45 the best deals we've run in years with extras and bonuses I probably won't ever
1:50 do again. If you want to get notified as soon as it's live, just head to the
1:54 first link in the description and you can join that VIP list right now for
1:58 free. Thank you everyone for watching and supporting the channel. Let's get
2:02 into the video. All right, Pontis, welcome to the channel. Tell me about
2:05 who you are, what you built, and what's your story. Uh yeah, my name is Pontis
2:08 and together with my best friend Victor, we spent the past two years
2:12 bootstrapping our startup midday which is our long-term focus. Along the way,
2:15 we built the curs of the directory languin and several other open-source
2:19 projects. We love building in public, testing ideas quickly and showing that
2:22 even a small weekend project can turn into something big. One example that is
2:26 the directory we built, cursive directory. We build it in a weekend and
2:29 now it makes 35k [snorts] per month. >> Okay, cool. I mean you're building a lot
2:33 of cool stuff but what I really want to dive into is the directory. Can you
2:38 explain what a directory is and what your directory does? >> So basically a directory is of course
2:43 made for discoverability uh to find something that you're interesting in and
2:47 curs directory of course is made for for cursive developers to explore and find
2:52 new ideas. We grown the site to 49,000 registered users uh 2.2 million unique
2:57 visitors since launch and then of course we have a gross margin of 99.8% 8% uh
3:02 and operation cost is just under 500 bucks and of course it's open source.
3:07 All the rules are merged on in GitHub. So the maintenance cost is like 3 hours
3:10 per month and then we continue building our main startup. >> Well that's absolutely insane. You just
3:15 built this directory in a couple hours. Millions of people have visited. It's
3:19 made tens of thousands of dollars. I want to understand how do you even get
3:21 the idea to do something like this? >> The whole idea came up when I actually
3:25 took the flight down to move to France. It's a three-hour flight and I
3:28 downloaded a lot of videos to look on tech heavy stuff and I I downloaded some
3:32 cursor things and then I discovered this common pattern about rules. So, it was
3:36 kind of mind-blowing for me that there were no uh place to find these rules in
3:40 one specific place. Uh you could Google and find some obscure gist on GitHub or
3:46 some forums but no real clear answer to finding these rules in one place. And
3:50 that's basically how the idea came up. >> Okay, cool. So, you find this idea, it
3:53 doesn't exist yet. How do you go about building it? Both me and Victor has a
3:57 lot of experience building apps and websites through the years. So, uh we
4:01 knew exactly what we needed to do. I I I called Victor as soon as I landed on the
4:05 Airbnb uh and said to him like we need to create a directory for rules for
4:08 cursory rules. In just matter of minutes, he spun up Figma and started to
4:12 design while I started initial project with Nex.js and I created a hard-coded
4:17 JSON file with some rules that I found online and in matter of like an half an
4:21 hour we had something up in Versel uh ready to to click around on. I bought
4:26 the cursor directory domain uh which was a really really good domain according to
4:30 the site of course. So we built the site completing three hours and but then we
4:34 just continued to iterate. Victor and I have been working together for several
4:37 years. We already know our DNA in terms of design and code. So that helped a lot
4:40 of course. >> So I mean this is one of the reasons why
4:43 I wanted to bring you on the channel. The fact that you did it in 3 hours and
4:47 had the balls to actually launch it and ship it and maybe be okay with it not
4:50 feeling perfect. What would be your advice for anyone watching this that
4:54 wants to ship fast? >> Yeah, so of course I have this main
4:58 startup that we focus on day in and day out, right? We work a lot of hours.
5:02 Usually once a week or twice a week, we find these things that you can really do
5:06 really, really fast, but we hold off. But in this case, we didn't. And I think
5:09 that's something that comes like a thread through how we work. We find
5:13 these ideas and that comes together when you dial in and work fully on something
5:17 you're committed to and being out there and seeing a solution that you can do.
5:21 Well, yeah. I I think it's a combination of dialing in into what you're doing and
5:25 being out there and finding ideas at the same time. >> Okay, cool. I'm what I'm hearing there.
5:29 What I think is really cool is for the cursor directory, you didn't have a lot
5:33 of expectations and you just said screw it, I'm going to launch. So, that's
5:36 where I have a few more questions is, okay, yeah, sure. You build this, you
5:39 build it really fast. Nowadays, anybody can build stuff fast. How did you
5:42 actually launch this and get millions of users >> in the first week? That was also the
5:47 first week in France. Uh, so we did a bunch of different things. So I I posted
5:52 the the cursor directory uh on on X of course at the initial uh release. I mean
5:56 we're building public on X. We share everything we do all the way to the
6:00 code, right? We are fully open source. So I think we had like 1 million
6:04 impressions on one of the posts and of course we had several posts. So we have
6:08 a developer following uh from the beginning but then I also posted on
6:12 hacking news. We ended up on the on the front page and a lot of YouTubers
6:16 started to cover uh curs directly into the uh videos. So there were a lot of
6:21 coverage around cursor directory. We grow steadily because we share knowledge
6:25 along the way and I think that really tied together with cursor right it's
6:29 it's a developer focused uh community and we build this super fast we have
6:33 this tech heavy design approach. >> Okay so one thing I noticed about cursor
6:37 directory and your other startups when I was checking them out is the design. You
6:41 may not realize this but I feel like your design is a competitive advantage
6:45 here. When I go to cursor directory, this thing is beautifully designed and I
6:49 can imagine that was one reason why it kept getting shared to a bunch of other
6:52 people. So I want to ask you for anyone watching this, how to design beautiful
6:56 apps, how to do it quickly. What are the secrets to designing products? Well,
7:01 >> yeah. So basically we have a formula. Of course it helps a lot to have a great
7:04 designer as a co-founder. It it comes down to to the small things that are
7:08 also the hardest. Like keep it simple. Find something that you like. Stay with
7:13 pride and and and find the patterns and the tonality of of the websites that you
7:18 like and of course learn from others. Uh if I would start from the beginning, I
7:22 would probably find websites that I love and take bits from it and and learn from
7:27 that. Uh in this case, of course, we already have a design system. We already
7:31 have components that we can reuse from our previous startups. So it was much
7:35 much easier for us. There are a lot of great designers out there that you can
7:38 follow on X. It's a huge community that you can learn from. I usually tweet out
7:42 that design is more important than ever especially in this fast-paced AI
7:46 generated uh website world that we started to live in. Design will actually
7:50 be the things that puts you apart from the competitors right because it's easy
7:54 to create an website today but all of them usually looks the same. So, it's
7:57 not much that you need to be different on, but you need to find the tonality
8:01 and the angle that you believe in is right, and that's going to be your
8:03 advantage. >> What I love about Ponis' story is that he built the MVP of his app in just 3
8:11 hours. He did not overthink it. He just saw an opportunity and shipped it right
8:14 after he landed from his flight from France. This is proof that if you know
8:19 how to build with AI, you can move insanely fast. But here's the thing.
8:24 Most people waste weeks stuck in tutorials or second-guessing themselves.
8:28 [music] And this causes people to never actually ship. Well, this is exactly why
8:33 we created Starter Story Build. It is our program where you will build and
8:38 launch your project using just AI tools in a matter of weeks. You'll master how
8:42 to talk to AI. So, it will build apps for you. And the best part is that you
8:45 won't even be doing this alone. You'll be a part of a group of founders all
8:48 sharing feedback and staying accountable every single day. So, if you're ready to
8:52 finally ship your idea, head to the first link in the description to claim
8:55 your spot. We are starting our next cohort very soon, so be sure to go there
9:00 and claim your spot right now before it runs out. Okay, now let's get back to
9:04 the video. Okay, so another reason why I wanted to bring you on Pontis is I
9:07 haven't heard of a directory that has been crushing it in a long time. I
9:10 remember a couple years ago directories were kind of taking off. Nowadays, I
9:14 don't see that as often anymore. I thought directories were dead. Clearly,
9:17 that's not the case. So my question for you is do directories still work in 2025
9:22 or are they dead? Yeah, I mean I get these questions a lot like aren't
9:26 directors dead but it truly is director still is incredibly successful in 2025
9:31 especially if you build something for the right audience and and in this case
9:35 of course we we found the audience uh at the right time at the core directly
9:39 solves a timeless problem like you need to find something uh that you're
9:43 interested in and in this new AI world where we live in like cursor people are
9:47 starting to look through how to do things and find the right answers
9:51 [music] that's where directors is really really shine, right? It's a collection
9:54 of things that a bigger audience are interested in at the same time. And if
9:58 you can catch that wave, you're really going to find a lot of like visitors and
10:02 a lot of opportunities. [music] If you catch it, if you can own it, then
10:05 it's super powerful. >> Okay, cool, Pontis. Well, thank you for
10:08 Cursor Directory tool
10:08 sharing all that. I'd love if you actually pulled up your directory right
10:13 now and showed me how it works, how it looks, and what's the business model.
10:16 Could you pull it up right now? >> Okay, so yeah, this is directory. So,
10:19 you have a bunch of different rules. So you can go in and then you copy those
10:25 then you add that to your uh cursor uh rules in your editor. It's kind of
10:29 basic. You can filter on your like what you're interesting in. You can see the
10:32 popular ones. You can see off official ones and then of course you can search
10:37 for different things. We enable that you could register and create your own
10:41 account uh and be a member of the of the community. So you can post your own
10:45 stuff. People can vote uh on interesting things. But here's something that I can
10:49 just share whatever they are interesting in and get up votes. People can find the
10:54 jobs and uh companies can share their job ads. So it's a paid uh ad that they
11:00 pay to get listed some months after MCPS uh came along and that were also a thing
11:05 that made C directory really really fly. So that was the second way where we saw
11:09 a huge adoption of the site because we created this uh [music] MCP searchable
11:14 uh way to find and extend your cursor experience. Uh, and these are also
11:18 featured. So, you can pay to get them featured on the site. And then we also
11:21 made it possible to generate your own cursor rules tailored to your to your
11:26 website. In JavaScript, uh, you have this package JSON which defines all your
11:30 dependencies. You could just upload that and then you get your defined cursor
11:34 rules back to tailor that to you. Because we really really saw that
11:38 developers wanted to tailor their versions or their cursor experience, but
11:43 they didn't know how to start. this was a good way for developers to started
11:47 this to get the grasp of it. >> All right. Well, thank you for sharing
11:48 Lean tech stack
11:49 that. Looks awesome. I'd like to switch topics a little bit and talk about tech
11:53 stack. How did you actually build this app and what tools you use right now?
11:57 >> So, I think this is the important one like you should stick with something
12:02 that you know uh and already uh use uh every day, right? So, we stick what we
12:05 know. So, we chose Nex.js JS fully TypeScript shing components uh resend
12:12 for email uh open paniful analytics and just [music] connected with GitHub and
12:16 and shared it on on Verset. So Verset is our hosting provider. Payments we we use
12:20 polar which is a great merchant of record to handle uh payments uh
12:24 especially if you're Europe company. And then on the productivity side we we of
12:29 course use cursor to code uh notion for product management, GitHub for version
12:33 control. every tool we choose uh to share have the same philosophy like no
12:37 servers uh no friction just focus on building and shipping fast because
12:41 that's really what's matters right getting it out there to our users all in
12:47 all 525 bucks a month with a 99.8 eight gross margin. >> Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing
12:49 start something simple
12:50 that, being transparent about the numbers, that's an insane profit margin.
12:54 The last question that I have for you that we ask everyone who comes on
12:56 Starter Story, what advice would you have for anyone getting started right
12:59 now, whether they're building a directory or building cool SAS software
13:03 apps, whatever it is online, what would be your advice? >> Start. It sounds simple, but here's the
13:08 thing. When you start building and when you commit to something, you eventually
13:11 getting dialed in. You create your own luck by constantly finding ways to move
13:15 forward, shipping, sharing, and iterate. One thing will lead to another and
13:19 there's really no such thing as failure. When you build something, the worst
13:22 thing that can happen is you learn and then you take next step to find your
13:24 ways forward. >> Well, that's great advice. Thanks for
13:27 coming on the channel, Pontis, sharing all this amazing story, amazing
13:31 business, amazing stuff that you're building other than cursor directory.
13:34 So, thanks for coming on and sharing. >> Thanks for having me.
1:09 Special Announcement
1:09 this is Starter Story. Hey guys, I wanted to pop in here with a
1:13 very important message. Black Friday is around the corner and you know I'm going
1:16 to be doing something I probably shouldn't. To celebrate over 700,000
1:20 subscribers here on YouTube, I'm going to be giving away one of the best deals
1:24 we've ever done on Starter Story. Last year, our early bird Black Friday deal
1:29 sold out in less than 2 hours. And this year, I think it'll sell out in less
1:33 than one. And I don't want anyone of my subscribers on YouTube to miss this. So,
1:38 here's the deal. I've set up a VIP list where you will be notified about our
1:42 Black Friday deal before anyone else. And trust me, it's going to be one of
1:45 the best deals we've run in years with extras and bonuses I probably won't ever
1:50 do again. If you want to get notified as soon as it's live, just head to the
1:54 first link in the description and you can join that VIP list right now for
1:58 free. Thank you everyone for watching and supporting the channel. Let's get
2:02 into the video. All right, Pontis, welcome to the channel. Tell me about
2:05 who you are, what you built, and what's your story. Uh yeah, my name is Pontis
2:08 and together with my best friend Victor, we spent the past two years
2:12 bootstrapping our startup midday which is our long-term focus. Along the way,
2:15 we built the curs of the directory languin and several other open-source
2:19 projects. We love building in public, testing ideas quickly and showing that
2:22 even a small weekend project can turn into something big. One example that is
2:26 the directory we built, cursive directory. We build it in a weekend and
2:29 now it makes 35k [snorts] per month. >> Okay, cool. I mean you're building a lot
2:31 What is a directory?
2:33 of cool stuff but what I really want to dive into is the directory. Can you
2:38 explain what a directory is and what your directory does? >> So basically a directory is of course
2:43 made for discoverability uh to find something that you're interesting in and
2:47 curs directory of course is made for for cursive developers to explore and find
2:52 new ideas. We grown the site to 49,000 registered users uh 2.2 million unique
2:57 visitors since launch and then of course we have a gross margin of 99.8% 8% uh
3:02 and operation cost is just under 500 bucks and of course it's open source.
3:07 All the rules are merged on in GitHub. So the maintenance cost is like 3 hours
3:10 per month and then we continue building our main startup. >> Well that's absolutely insane. You just
3:13 How Pontus found the idea
3:15 built this directory in a couple hours. Millions of people have visited. It's
3:19 made tens of thousands of dollars. I want to understand how do you even get
3:21 the idea to do something like this? >> The whole idea came up when I actually
3:25 took the flight down to move to France. It's a three-hour flight and I
3:28 downloaded a lot of videos to look on tech heavy stuff and I I downloaded some
3:32 cursor things and then I discovered this common pattern about rules. So, it was
3:36 kind of mind-blowing for me that there were no uh place to find these rules in
3:40 one specific place. Uh you could Google and find some obscure gist on GitHub or
3:46 some forums but no real clear answer to finding these rules in one place. And
3:50 Building the MVP
3:50 that's basically how the idea came up. >> Okay, cool. So, you find this idea, it
3:53 doesn't exist yet. How do you go about building it? Both me and Victor has a
3:57 lot of experience building apps and websites through the years. So, uh we
4:01 knew exactly what we needed to do. I I I called Victor as soon as I landed on the
4:05 Airbnb uh and said to him like we need to create a directory for rules for
4:08 cursory rules. In just matter of minutes, he spun up Figma and started to
4:12 design while I started initial project with Nex.js and I created a hard-coded
4:17 JSON file with some rules that I found online and in matter of like an half an
4:21 hour we had something up in Versel uh ready to to click around on. I bought
4:26 the cursor directory domain uh which was a really really good domain according to
4:30 the site of course. So we built the site completing three hours and but then we
4:34 just continued to iterate. Victor and I have been working together for several
4:37 years. We already know our DNA in terms of design and code. So that helped a lot
4:40 of course. >> So I mean this is one of the reasons why
4:41 How he ships fast
4:43 I wanted to bring you on the channel. The fact that you did it in 3 hours and
4:47 had the balls to actually launch it and ship it and maybe be okay with it not
4:50 feeling perfect. What would be your advice for anyone watching this that
4:54 wants to ship fast? >> Yeah, so of course I have this main
4:58 startup that we focus on day in and day out, right? We work a lot of hours.
5:02 Usually once a week or twice a week, we find these things that you can really do
5:06 really, really fast, but we hold off. But in this case, we didn't. And I think
5:09 that's something that comes like a thread through how we work. We find
5:13 these ideas and that comes together when you dial in and work fully on something
5:17 you're committed to and being out there and seeing a solution that you can do.
5:21 Well, yeah. I I think it's a combination of dialing in into what you're doing and
5:25 being out there and finding ideas at the same time. >> Okay, cool. I'm what I'm hearing there.
5:27 Pontus' launch strategy
5:29 What I think is really cool is for the cursor directory, you didn't have a lot
5:33 of expectations and you just said screw it, I'm going to launch. So, that's
5:36 where I have a few more questions is, okay, yeah, sure. You build this, you
5:39 build it really fast. Nowadays, anybody can build stuff fast. How did you
5:42 actually launch this and get millions of users >> in the first week? That was also the
5:47 first week in France. Uh, so we did a bunch of different things. So I I posted
5:52 the the cursor directory uh on on X of course at the initial uh release. I mean
5:56 we're building public on X. We share everything we do all the way to the
6:00 code, right? We are fully open source. So I think we had like 1 million
6:04 impressions on one of the posts and of course we had several posts. So we have
6:08 a developer following uh from the beginning but then I also posted on
6:12 hacking news. We ended up on the on the front page and a lot of YouTubers
6:16 started to cover uh curs directly into the uh videos. So there were a lot of
6:21 coverage around cursor directory. We grow steadily because we share knowledge
6:25 along the way and I think that really tied together with cursor right it's
6:29 it's a developer focused uh community and we build this super fast we have
6:33 Designing with AI
6:33 this tech heavy design approach. >> Okay so one thing I noticed about cursor
6:37 directory and your other startups when I was checking them out is the design. You
6:41 may not realize this but I feel like your design is a competitive advantage
6:45 here. When I go to cursor directory, this thing is beautifully designed and I
6:49 can imagine that was one reason why it kept getting shared to a bunch of other
6:52 people. So I want to ask you for anyone watching this, how to design beautiful
6:56 apps, how to do it quickly. What are the secrets to designing products? Well,
7:01 >> yeah. So basically we have a formula. Of course it helps a lot to have a great
7:04 designer as a co-founder. It it comes down to to the small things that are
7:08 also the hardest. Like keep it simple. Find something that you like. Stay with
7:13 pride and and and find the patterns and the tonality of of the websites that you
7:18 like and of course learn from others. Uh if I would start from the beginning, I
7:22 would probably find websites that I love and take bits from it and and learn from
7:27 that. Uh in this case, of course, we already have a design system. We already
7:31 have components that we can reuse from our previous startups. So it was much
7:35 much easier for us. There are a lot of great designers out there that you can
7:38 follow on X. It's a huge community that you can learn from. I usually tweet out
7:42 that design is more important than ever especially in this fast-paced AI
7:46 generated uh website world that we started to live in. Design will actually
7:50 be the things that puts you apart from the competitors right because it's easy
7:54 to create an website today but all of them usually looks the same. So, it's
7:57 not much that you need to be different on, but you need to find the tonality
8:01 and the angle that you believe in is right, and that's going to be your
8:03 Check out Starter Story Build
8:03 advantage. >> What I love about Ponis' story is that he built the MVP of his app in just 3
8:11 hours. He did not overthink it. He just saw an opportunity and shipped it right
8:14 after he landed from his flight from France. This is proof that if you know
8:19 how to build with AI, you can move insanely fast. But here's the thing.
8:24 Most people waste weeks stuck in tutorials or second-guessing themselves.
8:28 [music] And this causes people to never actually ship. Well, this is exactly why
8:33 we created Starter Story Build. It is our program where you will build and
8:38 launch your project using just AI tools in a matter of weeks. You'll master how
8:42 to talk to AI. So, it will build apps for you. And the best part is that you
8:45 won't even be doing this alone. You'll be a part of a group of founders all
8:48 sharing feedback and staying accountable every single day. So, if you're ready to
8:52 finally ship your idea, head to the first link in the description to claim
8:55 your spot. We are starting our next cohort very soon, so be sure to go there
9:00 and claim your spot right now before it runs out. Okay, now let's get back to
9:04 Are directories dead in 2025?
9:04 the video. Okay, so another reason why I wanted to bring you on Pontis is I
9:07 haven't heard of a directory that has been crushing it in a long time. I
9:10 remember a couple years ago directories were kind of taking off. Nowadays, I
9:14 don't see that as often anymore. I thought directories were dead. Clearly,
9:17 that's not the case. So my question for you is do directories still work in 2025
9:22 or are they dead? Yeah, I mean I get these questions a lot like aren't
9:26 directors dead but it truly is director still is incredibly successful in 2025
9:31 especially if you build something for the right audience and and in this case
9:35 of course we we found the audience uh at the right time at the core directly
9:39 solves a timeless problem like you need to find something uh that you're
9:43 interested in and in this new AI world where we live in like cursor people are
9:47 starting to look through how to do things and find the right answers
9:51 [music] that's where directors is really really shine, right? It's a collection
9:54 of things that a bigger audience are interested in at the same time. And if
9:58 you can catch that wave, you're really going to find a lot of like visitors and
10:02 a lot of opportunities. [music] If you catch it, if you can own it, then
10:05 it's super powerful. >> Okay, cool, Pontis. Well, thank you for
10:08 sharing all that. I'd love if you actually pulled up your directory right
10:13 now and showed me how it works, how it looks, and what's the business model.
10:16 Could you pull it up right now? >> Okay, so yeah, this is directory. So,
10:19 you have a bunch of different rules. So you can go in and then you copy those
10:25 then you add that to your uh cursor uh rules in your editor. It's kind of
10:29 basic. You can filter on your like what you're interesting in. You can see the
10:32 popular ones. You can see off official ones and then of course you can search
10:37 for different things. We enable that you could register and create your own
10:41 account uh and be a member of the of the community. So you can post your own
10:45 stuff. People can vote uh on interesting things. But here's something that I can
10:49 just share whatever they are interesting in and get up votes. People can find the
10:54 jobs and uh companies can share their job ads. So it's a paid uh ad that they
11:00 pay to get listed some months after MCPS uh came along and that were also a thing
11:05 that made C directory really really fly. So that was the second way where we saw
11:09 a huge adoption of the site because we created this uh [music] MCP searchable
11:14 uh way to find and extend your cursor experience. Uh, and these are also
11:18 featured. So, you can pay to get them featured on the site. And then we also
11:21 made it possible to generate your own cursor rules tailored to your to your
11:26 website. In JavaScript, uh, you have this package JSON which defines all your
11:30 dependencies. You could just upload that and then you get your defined cursor
11:34 rules back to tailor that to you. Because we really really saw that
11:38 developers wanted to tailor their versions or their cursor experience, but
11:43 they didn't know how to start. this was a good way for developers to started
11:47 this to get the grasp of it. >> All right. Well, thank you for sharing
11:49 that. Looks awesome. I'd like to switch topics a little bit and talk about tech
11:53 stack. How did you actually build this app and what tools you use right now?
11:57 >> So, I think this is the important one like you should stick with something
12:02 that you know uh and already uh use uh every day, right? So, we stick what we
12:05 know. So, we chose Nex.js JS fully TypeScript shing components uh resend
12:12 for email uh open paniful analytics and just [music] connected with GitHub and
12:16 and shared it on on Verset. So Verset is our hosting provider. Payments we we use
12:20 polar which is a great merchant of record to handle uh payments uh
12:24 especially if you're Europe company. And then on the productivity side we we of
12:29 course use cursor to code uh notion for product management, GitHub for version
12:33 control. every tool we choose uh to share have the same philosophy like no
12:37 servers uh no friction just focus on building and shipping fast because
12:41 that's really what's matters right getting it out there to our users all in
12:47 all 525 bucks a month with a 99.8 eight gross margin. >> Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing
12:50 that, being transparent about the numbers, that's an insane profit margin.
12:54 The last question that I have for you that we ask everyone who comes on
12:56 Starter Story, what advice would you have for anyone getting started right
12:59 now, whether they're building a directory or building cool SAS software
13:03 apps, whatever it is online, what would be your advice? >> Start. It sounds simple, but here's the
13:08 thing. When you start building and when you commit to something, you eventually
13:11 getting dialed in. You create your own luck by constantly finding ways to move
13:15 forward, shipping, sharing, and iterate. One thing will lead to another and
13:19 there's really no such thing as failure. When you build something, the worst
13:22 thing that can happen is you learn and then you take next step to find your
13:24 ways forward. >> Well, that's great advice. Thanks for
13:27 coming on the channel, Pontis, sharing all this amazing story, amazing
13:31 business, amazing stuff that you're building other than cursor directory.
13:34 So, thanks for coming on and sharing. >> Thanks for having me.
13:37 >> Okay, first of all, that advice was amazing. Just get started. You don't
13:41 know if this directory that you build is going to be a complete flop or is going
13:46 to make $34,000 a month. There's no way to know that without actually getting
13:49 started building something and seeing what happens. It all starts with a
13:53 simple idea. And nowadays with what you can do with AI, an idea is all you need
13:57 to potentially build something that changes your life. This is why we
14:01 launched Starter Story Build, where we will help you take your idea from your
14:05 head, turn it into a real app using only AI tools in a matter of weeks. So, if
14:09 you're ready to launch your project and you're serious about actually building
14:12 something, head to the first link in the description to check out Starter Story
14:16 Build. All right, that's it for this episode. Thank you guys for watching.
14:18 We'll see you in [music] the next one.
