In short
- A 9-month failure taught the founder to validate in a week, not build for months. Erwin's prior product, Base Styles, died after nine months with ~100 trial users and $0 revenue; for Tailscan he gave himself one week to build something and post it on Twitter before writing another line of code.
- The Twitter test worked, and Product Hunt turned that interest into paying customers. The validation tweet pulled 570 likes and 82,000 impressions; five weeks later a discounted Product Hunt launch, extended through Black Friday/Cyber Monday, converted that audience into 84 paying customers.
- MRR grew 176% in four months — powered by five small channels running at once, not one big lever. From $580 (Mar 2023) to $1,600 (Aug 2023), driven by SEO, two newsletter sponsorships, creator mentions, build-in-public tweets, and a viral copycat incident that alone drove 2.5M impressions in a day.
- The transparency that built trust eventually had to be shut off. After 1.5 years of publishing exact revenue numbers, Erwin froze the Open Startup page because competitors were mining it — a reminder that a build-in-public asset can become a liability once a niche gets crowded.
The mechanism
Tailscan's growth chain runs: a nine-month failure taught the founder to validate an idea in a week instead of building it blind, which produced a Twitter response so far beyond expectations that scrambling to capture it (name, site, mailing list) created the audience a Product Hunt launch then converted into paying customers — and from there, a stack of small, verifiable channels (SEO, sponsorships, creator mentions, and an Open Startup page publishing real numbers) compounded into $1,600 MRR over roughly a year. Each link explains why the next held: validation produced an audience, the audience produced a launch, and the launch's early credibility is what made later transparency worth publishing — until that same transparency became legible enough for competitors to copy, and the founder had to reverse it.
A failed 9-month build taught the founder to test demand in a week before writing more code
Erwin's previous product, Base Styles, absorbed nine months of work and produced roughly 100 trial users and zero paying customers — a slow, expensive way to learn the idea didn't have a market. For Tailscan he inverted the sequence: build the smallest possible version in about a week, then post it on Twitter and let the audience's reaction (not his own conviction) decide whether to continue. That discipline is what turned an unfinished, unnamed prototype into a real signal before he'd sunk any real time into it.
Give myself a week to build something and showcase it on Twitter after to see if there is any interest.
The validation signal was strong enough that it forced a scramble — and that scramble, not a plan, produced the first paying customers
The single validation tweet returned 570 likes, 22,000 video views, and 82,000 impressions — far beyond what Erwin expected — which is exactly why he had no name, website, or mailing list ready yet. Racing to capture that attention (a name, a landing page, a mailing list) captured 125 email signups within days, and that pre-built audience is what a Product Hunt launch five weeks later converted into ~40 discount-driven customers, extended to 84 total once he stretched the promotion through Black Friday/Cyber Monday. The order matters: the audience existed before the product was finished, so the launch had something to convert.
570 likes, 22000 views on the video and 82000 impressions! What?! ... During the launch, about 40 people bought Tailscan. ... After Cyber Monday ended, Tailscan had a solid 84 customers.
Years of stacking small, verifiable channels (SEO, creators, sponsorships, open metrics) compounded into real MRR growth — until the same transparency that built trust became something competitors could mine
Between the Product Hunt launch and the $1,600 MRR mark, no single channel did the work: programmatic SEO pages, two paid newsletter sponsorships, unsolicited and paid creator mentions, an Open Startup metrics page, and a viral copycat incident all ran in parallel, together producing a 176% MRR increase in four months. The Open Startup page was central to that — it gave Erwin's build-in-public tweets something concrete (real dollar figures) to point to, which is what made them shareable rather than just self-promotional. But that same legibility is what let competitors read Tailscan's exact numbers for over a year, and once Erwin judged that cost had outgrown the benefit, he froze the page — the mechanism that built trust for 1.5 years didn't fail, it got outcompeted by its own transparency.
Tailscan has grown to $1,600 MRR. That's a 176% increase in 4 months! ... Competitors have been increasingly making use of this information, and because of this I am sad to announce that this page no longer shows financial metrics.
How it went
A 9-month failure and a 1-week reset
2022-08 → 2022-10Erwin abandoned his previous product, Base Styles, after nine months of work that produced roughly 100 trial users and no paying customers — a case study in building without validating demand first. He restarted with a deliberately narrow goal: build something in a week and post it on Twitter to see if anyone cared, rather than commit to another long build.
Twitter validation to Product Hunt launch
2022-10 → 2022-11The validation tweet returned 570 likes, 22,000 video views, and 82,000 impressions, forcing a scramble to name the product, stand up a landing page, and capture 125 email signups before a first version even existed. About four weeks after starting, Erwin shipped an admittedly rough first version and launched on Product Hunt (~300 upvotes, 400 subscribers) with a discount promotion, extended through Black Friday/Cyber Monday to reach 84 total paying customers at $49/year.
Stacking small channels: SEO, creators, sponsorships, and Open Startup transparency
2023-01 → 2023-08Erwin shipped quick updates and fixes, then in March 2023 launched the Open Startup page (MRR: $580) alongside a programmatic SEO push of 8,062 Tailwind class pages submitted to Google at once — a move he later called a mistake. Content creator mentions (an unsolicited YouTube video, a paid Twitter sponsorship), two newsletter sponsorships (~$250/month), and an unplanned viral incident (a copycat landing page that drove 2.5M impressions and 13,000 new visitors in a day) combined with steady SEO gains (250K monthly impressions, 3K clicks) to grow MRR to $1,600 by August 2023 — a 176% increase in four months. Pricing shifted from $49/year to $79 one-time (Core) plus $15/month Core+AI.
Tailscan 2's broken launch, a growth roller coaster, and the transparency reversal
2023-11 → 2024-09Tailscan 2 launched in November 2023 but was non-functional for three days due to a Chrome Web Store review delay — coinciding with the entire 24-hour Product Hunt launch window. The following months swung between -5% and +28% growth, which Erwin attributed to churn from monthly subscriptions, while the v2 launch and a shift toward perpetual licenses added $19,000 in revenue outside the MRR chart. Erwin started a second, unrelated product (Lexboost, for Dutch lawyers) in early 2024, and after more than 1.5 years of full transparency, froze the Open Startup page's financial metrics because competitors had begun using the published numbers.
Milestones
- 2022-08Base Styles (previous product) abandoned after 9 months: ~100 trial users, $0 revenue
- 2022-09Tailscan MVP built in ~1 week as a validation experiment
- 2022-10Twitter validation launch: 570 likes, 22K video views, 82K impressions, 125 email signups
- 2022-11Product Hunt launch (~300 upvotes, 400 subscribers); ~40 launch customers + 44 more via BF/CM extension = ~84 total; pricing $49/year
- 2023-01Two update versions released: 7 feature improvements plus a CSS-leaking bug fix
- 2023-03580Open Startup page published; programmatic SEO campaign begins (8,062 Tailwind class pages submitted at once)
- 2023-081600MRR grew $580→$1,600 (+176% in 4 months); SEO ~250K impressions/mo, 3K clicks; pricing changed to $79 one-time Core + $15/mo Core+AI; viral copycat incident (2.5M impressions, 13K visitors)
- 2023-111600Tailscan 2 launched but broken for 3 days (Chrome Webstore review delay) during the entire Product Hunt launch window
- 2023-121600Growth roller coaster: -2%, -5%, 0%, +18%, +28% months; perpetual license sales add $19K beyond the MRR chart
- 2024-011600New goals set (onboarding, knowledge base, native devtool integration); founder starts second product Lexboost
- 2024-091600Open Startup page frozen after ~1.5 years; financial metrics removed due to competitor use; homepage later claims 1,000+ users
Whether it fits you
Tailscan's loop depends on structural conditions tied to a fast-moving solo founder willing to run many small experiments and eventually give some of them up. Run it if these hold for you; the costs below are easy to underestimate.
What it needs
Your product idea is narrow enough to build and test in about a week
Tailscan's validation tweet worked because there was already a working, if embarrassing, prototype behind it — Erwin explicitly gave himself one week, not one quarter. Ideas that need months of infrastructure before there's anything to show don't get this fast a signal.
You can run several small, unglamorous channels in parallel instead of betting on one
No single channel produced the $580→$1,600 MRR jump — SEO, two newsletter sponsorships, creator mentions, and build-in-public content all ran at once. A founder who wants one clean growth lever to point to will find this messier than it sounds.
You're willing to publish real numbers, and to stop publishing them later without it looking like failure
The Open Startup page's credibility depended on the numbers being real; reversing that decision after 1.5 years required Erwin to publicly explain why transparency had stopped paying off. Founders who can't tolerate that kind of public reversal shouldn't start the transparency loop in the first place.
What it costs
Transparency has a shelf life, and you may have to revoke it in public
After more than 1.5 years of publishing exact MRR, Erwin froze the Open Startup page because competitors were using the data — a reversal that has to be explained to the same audience the transparency was built for.
Untested experiments can waste real effort, not just time
Submitting 8,062 programmatic SEO pages to Google at once mostly failed to get indexed and was called a mistake by the founder himself ('pretty bad... don't do what I did'). Running many small channels means some of them will be genuinely wasted effort, not just underperforming.
Subscription revenue without strong onboarding produces a volatile, not smooth, growth curve
After introducing monthly subscriptions, Tailscan had months of -2% and -5% growth alongside +18% and +28% months — a roller coaster the founder attributed to churn from monthly plans, requiring him to shift focus toward perpetual licenses and better onboarding.
The numbers we could verify
- mrr growth
- $580 → $1,600 MRR in 4 months (+176%), Mar–Aug 2023; later months swung -2%, -5%, 0%, +18%, +28% (roller coaster, late 2023)
- conversion
- not disclosed in sourced material
- churn
- Monthly churn spiked after introducing monthly subscriptions in 2023, producing negative-growth months; founder planned better onboarding and a knowledge base as a fix
- seo
- ~250,000 monthly Google impressions and ~3,000 clicks (27% branded / 73% organic) as of Aug 2023
- costs
- Two Tailwind newsletter sponsorships ~$250/month combined (stopped as too costly); tool stack: Bento, BrandBird, HelpKit, Simple Analytics, Tolt, Chartmogul, Vercel, Google Cloud, Namecheap, Google Workspace, Midjourney, WebStorm, Stripe, GitHub, X Pro, office space
Channels it actually used
- Twitter / X (build-in-public + MVP validation)
- Product Hunt (launch + v2 relaunch)
- programmatic SEO (Tailwind class pages)
- content creator mentions (YouTube, Twitter)
- paid newsletter sponsorships
- Open Startup public metrics page
- viral incident (unplanned)
- affiliate program
Our read
The popular framing of this case would be 'build in public drove Tailscan's growth' — but the more precise mechanism is validate-before-build (a week-long MVP test) followed by a stack of small, parallel channels, of which the Open Startup page was only one. Crediting 'build in public' alone would miss that the same transparency Erwin credits with building trust for 1.5 years is also the exact thing he had to shut off once it stopped paying for itself.
The 8,062-page SEO dump is a useful corrective to any narrative that programmatic SEO is a reliable, mechanical growth lever: Erwin's own retrospective calls it 'pretty bad,' and the lesson he draws — spread submissions out over time — is an operational fix, not a strategic pivot. It's a reminder that even sourced, founder-verified tactics can simply be executed badly.
The Open Startup reversal deserves more weight than a footnote: it's a rare, dated example of a founder explicitly naming when radical transparency stopped being worth its cost. Most teardowns of build-in-public founders only capture the adoption story, not the abandonment story — Tailscan has both, which makes it a useful caution against treating transparency as a one-way, permanent commitment.
Sources
- Starting the journey with Tailscan2023-03-04
- Tailscan updates and figuring out marketing2023-03-09
- Tailscan is now an Open Startup2023-03-31
- Tailscan updates - From $500 to $1,500 MRR and riding the wave2023-08-03
- Tailscan updates - New version and the SaaS roller coaster2024-01-03
- Open Startup - Tailscan (page, frozen)undated (frozen ~2024)
- @Erwin_AI on X/Twitter (founder profile)undated
- Tailscan homepage / pricing2026 (harvest date)
- Tailscan — Product Hunt listingundated
- James Q Quick — YouTube video on Tailscanundated
- @tomisloading — TikTok featuring Tailscanundated
