BUILDING A $2M ARR PRODUCT AFTER HIS $8M ARR PRODUCT FAILED OVERNIGHT

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

Checkout X replaced Shopify's checkout and grew to $8 million ARR. Then Shopify locked down checkout and the business died overnight. The same founder's second product, an AI sales agent for ecommerce called Zipchat, now does $167,000 a month across 700,000 conversations. The rebuild ran on different rules. He stayed lean until $50,000 MRR, absorbed roughly $20,000 a month in losses for almost a year, then took revenue-based financing instead of venture money. Against more than 100 lookalike Shopify apps, distribution runs on YouTube, SEO, partnerships, and over a million outbound emails a month.