Something is happening with yalc that i didn’t plan for.
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Quick context for those catching up. Last week i finished the Clay replacement challenge. Built a full clay alternative from my terminal in 30 days, open-sourced it, and thought i’d move on with my life. or so i thought…
Over 3000 people joined the waitlist. 91 github stars in 5 days (>100 now). The clay team themselves asked for access... I flew my team to malaga to ship features and somewhere between the mass onboarding sessions and the “wait this thing actually works better than what i’m paying $2K/month for” messages, the side project started feeling like a company.
So it has a name, a website, an offer, and partners now.
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The funnel is the part that’s making me feel a little crazy because the numbers don’t make sense yet they keep holding up.
We ran $250 in ad spend. total. that’s it. from that we got 20+ implementation calls booked in the first week. i’ve done enough paid acquisition to know that a CPL this low on calls (not clicks, not signups actual booked calls with real humans) is not normal. something about the positioning is hitting a nerve.
The rest of the funnel structure is simple: live webinars → community → implementation calls. The webinar creates the context and the trust. the community holds the conversation between sessions. the calls close.
Revenue so far: over $7K (partnership deal with a big brand + 2 paid implementations of Yalc +affiliation revenue from the first subs to API providers) and over 40k in pipeline just in the last 7 days.
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Talking about brands, inbound started coming in from some of the biggest brands in the GTM space. Not “hey cool project” messages. Real partnership asks. “how can we be part of this” conversations.
And honestly my instinct was to say yes to all of it because that’s what you do when big names knock, right?
But no. We’re being selective about this and i want to explain why.
Yalc is performance-first. the tools we recommend, the integrations we build, the stack we teach all of it has to be genuinely best-in-class. not “they gave us a rev share” best. not “they sponsored the community” best. actually, measurably, the best option for the user.
So we’ll partner with brands that earn the spot. and we’ll say no to the rest. even if their logos would look great on a landing page. (especially if their logos would look great on a landing page.)
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Next thursday we’re running another live webinar. same format that’s been working. i thought about framing it as “100 spots, limited” but that felt performative. it’s open. show up if it’s relevant to you.
What i’m realizing is that yalc isn’t a tool anymore. it’s becoming a full GTM education layer wrapped around open-source infrastructure. the code is the foundation but the real value is in the implementation, the “here’s exactly how to wire this into your stack and get results in week 1” part. that’s what the calls are for. that’s what people are paying for.
I genuinely did not see this coming 30 days ago. I was closing out a build challenge. now i’m pricing tiers and designing a community curriculum. The compound effect of building in public with a real deadline is something i still don’t fully understand but i’ve stopped questioning it.
On a side note, we’re also using Yalc to build complete GTM motions for our done for you clients. We design, run, manage, and iterate for them.
Building similar motions as what we’re currently running for Yalc ;).
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More soon. We’re moving faaaaaast
👊
O.
PS: We’re hiring a founding engineer, if you know what send them my way $2K commission if we end up hiring them.