6 weeks, 1,900 EVs, $0 MRR

Six weeks ago I quit my job to build my own products.

Today I make $0 a month, and I've never been happier at work.

Here's where I stand.

The first two weeks: lost

I didn't start with a plan. I started with a blank page and three questions: where do I want this to go, what should I build, and how do I explain it to my family?

I answered two of them.

(The family is still working on it. So am I.)

The obvious first product

I've driven a Model 3 since 2021. I still remember buying it, staring at range numbers, charging curves and battery specs, and having no idea which ones actually mattered.

So the first idea was easy: a site that makes EV specs make sense. evpick.ai was born, in my head first.

Before writing any code, I used AI the other way round. I didn't ask Gemini and Claude for answers. I asked them to question me, so I could narrow down the features, the audience and the direction.

The code was never the hard part

I've been a software engineer for 16 years, so building it was the easy bit. AI just made it a lot faster: the first version of evpick shipped in one week.

The data is the real product

The hard part is getting good data and keeping it fresh.

• 1,900+ electric car versions

• 84 brands

• Still missing some (I'm working on it)

My SEO mistake 😬

One month after adding my first pages to the sitemap, Google started noticing me.

So I got greedy and pushed 10,000 pages at once.

Google didn't like that.

• Pages indexed: 22

• Pages not indexed: 10.8K

The good news is the pages that did get indexed are starting to work: 372 impressions, 13 clicks and a 3.5% click-through rate over the last month, with daily impressions climbing steeply this week.

Lesson learned: drip-feed your pages. Google trusts a site that grows, not one that shows up out of nowhere.

Now the marketing starts

I used to be the engineer who builds the thing and hopes someone finds it. Now I post on X and LinkedIn every day, and I even made a Threads account.

What I didn't expect is that when you actually care about what other people are building, they care back. They reply, they cheer you on, and some of them want you to win.

Here's X over the last few weeks:

• Impressions: 73.8K

• Engagements: 1.3K

• Replies: 403

• Profile visits: 386

In the age of AI, real content is what people are looking for. Being honest and open is my unfair advantage, and it's free.

My marketing advice if you're starting out:

1. Pick a few platforms. Only the ones where your customers actually hang out.

2. Go deep, not wide. Spend real time there every day.

3. Reply more than you post. Conversations build trust faster than broadcasts.

One tool that helped: I use Grok Bot to surface X posts my business accounts can reply to, and to suggest content ideas. That saves me hours every week.

What's next

I'm launching two new products in October. Both are about sport, the thing none of us should skip if we want to stay sane while building.

More in a few days.

The scoreboard

• Weeks as a full-time solopreneur: 6

• Products live: 1

• MRR: $0

• Regrets: 0

I was meant to do this. Now I just have to convince my wife 😆

Keep grinding,
Julien

P.S. If you drive an EV (or are about to buy one), check whether your car is on evpick.ai. If it's missing, reply and tell me. I'll add it.