I've made $3M with my 36 startups

Summary

Marc Lou describes building a portfolio of small internet businesses over 10 years, mostly as a solo founder. He says the ventures have generated $3 million, with 95% of that achieved in the last three years. The businesses are built and run without employees.

He prefers experimenting across multiple projects over focusing on just one, and credits years of trial and failure with building resilience, discipline, and optimism.

Business performance and metrics

• September 2026: He reports $217,000 in revenue, a 90% profit margin, and income from 16 sources. He calls it his best month as a solo entrepreneur; a Hyrox-related experiment nearly doubled his typical revenue.
• TrustMRR: The marketplace generated $53,000 that month, its best month to date.
• DataFast: Generated $31,000 that month and reached $30,000 MRR, also a record month.
• Portfolio goal: He hopes to reach $5 million over the next two years. Selling a startup could help him reach that figure, but he says he is reluctant to sell.
• Audience: His Twitter following reached 400,000. He says he did not set out to build an audience; he focused on making things and connecting with people online.
• Free book: A short account of his 10-year entrepreneurial journey had been downloaded by more than 9,000 people.

Strategies, processes, and experiments

• Build a portfolio through repeated experimentation. Lou says his first seven years of trying many things did not make him exceptional at any single skill, but the experience helped him develop capabilities that later supported a portfolio of businesses.
• Use a mix of recurring software and differentiated products.
  • He sees software revenue as relatively stable: DataFast has grown by roughly $1,000 in MRR per month recently, after taking about four months to reach $1,000 MRR.
  • DataFast’s reported monthly churn is 6–7%. Lou says revenue has continued to grow despite churn.
  • To address AI-related competitive risk, he is considering two approaches: build products that are difficult to replace with AI, as he believes TrustMRR is, or add features that capitalize on emerging trends.
• Adapt products to market trends. DataFast is developing an AI visibility feature and tracking AI-bot traffic, aiming to respond to growing interest in AI agents and bots. Lou plans to assess the effect on revenue after launch.
• Turn a small community feature into a larger product concept. He began building private chat groups for founders whose startup revenue has been verified. Members are grouped by business size—for example, a founder making $11,000 per month would join a group for businesses making $10,000–$100,000 per month. The initial version was free for founders who listed a startup on TrustMRR.
• Test monetization early. The chat-room concept expanded into a gamified founder community, with ideas such as quests, cooperative challenges, in-game currency, and paid promotional billboards. Lou tested sponsored spots; 8 of 10 available spots had been filled, and he said the app had become profitable.
• Prioritize sustainable solo operations. Lou presents the portfolio model as compatible with eight hours of sleep, daily exercise, and time with his wife. His account emphasizes high margins and limited staffing rather than scaling through a large team.

Practical takeaways

• Treat experimentation as a way to build transferable skills, not only as a search for an immediate winning product.
• Track recurring-revenue indicators such as MRR growth and churn to gauge software-business health.
• Respond to new technology by strengthening what is hard to copy and testing timely product features.
• Validate community and monetization concepts with small launches—such as a free initial version and a limited number of paid sponsor slots—before committing to a larger product vision.
• Audience growth can emerge from consistently sharing work rather than setting follower targets; Lou says his posts also led to customers and inspired other founders.

Presenter/source: Marc Lou, with brief participation from his wife.