Shadowing Practice: I make $32K/month from 3 simple, boring websites - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creando lección...
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I run a portfolio of bootstrap SaaS companies that generate about $32,000 in MRR today.
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This is Rashid, and he's a guy who's built three websites that make him over $30,000 every month.
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The reason why they work is because...
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But here's the interesting part.
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These websites are not complicated.
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They're actually quite simple, and they all kind of do the same thing.
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To build a successful database product, I think it's possible in 2026 and the way you can approach it is.
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So I asked Rashid to come onto the channel to break all this down.
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And in this episode, we're going to dive into the exact three websites
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that he's built and that make him over $30,000 a month, the non-obvious secret to why these websites work and how they make thousands of dollars every month.
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And we're going to go over his advice for anyone who wants to build websites like these right now in 2026.
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All right, let's dive in.
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I'm Pat Walls.
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This is Starter Story.
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All right, Rashid, I am pumped to have you onto the channel.
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Tell me about who you are, what websites you built, and what's your story?
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Hey, my name is Rashid, and I run a portfolio of bootstrap SaaS companies that generate about $32,000 in MRR today.
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And the main product is AngelMatch.
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It's an all-in-one solution that helps startup founders find investors to raise capital.
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And today I'm excited to share with you what lessons I learned along the way.
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Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
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Awesome.
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Well, I'm excited to talk all about these sites you built.
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I think they're super cool.
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Explain your three different websites in just a few sentences, how they work and how they make money.
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Let's start with AngelMatch.
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It's a database of like 125,000 angels and VCs.
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We primarily focus on helping early stage startups who are raising capital.
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The other one is InvestorHunt.
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It's just an investor database product.
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And the third one is Journalist Hunt.
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It's a database of 200,000 journalists, which helps small businesses and media companies find journalists to get press coverage.
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I love these kinds of websites.
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Get all this data, put it in one place, make it useful for people that need to raise money or whatever it is.
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There's so many cool ideas around this.
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We're going to get into it.
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But first, show me this is legit.
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Show me how much money these businesses are making.
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Could you do that?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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This one is Angel Match.
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We are at 29,000 MRR as of today.
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Active subscribers is 360 users.
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Our trial conversion rate is 33%.
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And as of now, Angel Match is bringing about 800 to 1,000 clicks per day across organic,
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referral, direct, and a little bit of paid Facebook ads.
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The prices for AngelMatch starts at $59 per month and we have a few thousand dollar prices as well.
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So it depends on how many investors you want to reach out per month.
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And this is InvestorHunt.
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It's making $2,800 as of today.
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For InvestorHunt, we don't do any marketing, it's just an SEO.
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Also for InvestorHunt, it's basically $57, $97 and $297.
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This is Journalist Hunt.
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It's making $260 for Journalist Hunt.
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We don't have that many users, but we see that people buy the basic and the middle tier, which ranges between $49 to $99 per month.
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I personally love Rashid's approach to building, and specifically these businesses that he's built.
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Why?
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Because these business ideas don't chase some crazy AI trend or something like that.
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They are just simple websites that actually work and have made money over the course of years.
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Because I think the real lesson behind this story and these businesses is that these businesses solve a painful problem.
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And in my opinion, that is the most important thing you can do
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when you come up with a business idea and you want to make money online.
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So you might be wondering, well, how do I find a painful problem to solve?
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How do I find my idea and where should I even look for this?
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Well, we've got something for you.
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We've been working with the team at HubSpot to put together a free database of over 90 painful problems
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that are worth solving right now in 2026.
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Each of these problems and pain points can be turned into real businesses
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and will even show you real businesses that are making money solving these problems right now.
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We're going to map out all the data you might need, customers, cost to start, days to launch, everything.
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So if you've been searching for business ideas and thinking about this idea of solving problems, then head to link in the description, download the database and you can get started.
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Oh yeah, and it's 100% free.
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All right, let's get back to the episode.
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I think these sites are super cool.
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So how do you get to this point where you have these three different websites that are crushing it, making over $30,000 a month?
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So I'm not a technical founder.
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I always relied on finding developers to build the websites.
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I studied finance in college and in my last year of college, me and my college friend decided to build a fintech investment app.
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We raised $100,000 from family and friends.
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I maxed out my credit cards, got some personal loans.
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So that money was not enough.
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So we had to raise capital from like professional investors, so-called angels and VCs.
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We decided to manually search through the internet and build like a list of investors to reach out to.
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And that list actually helped us get into calls with some of the big VC names at that time and big angels.
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That made me realize that first, cold emailing works, but second, finding the list of investors is such a tedious and time-consuming process. So yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, this is like super common.
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I see this with a lot of founders is they go to build a business.
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They experience some sort of problem while they're building this business.
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And then that problem that they experienced was really painful and annoying like this, trying to find investors that you end up building another business on top of that.
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So what did you do next?
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How did you build it?
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How did you take the next step after you saw this problem?
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That time we were like early stage founders ourselves.
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So we thought if it takes so much time and effort finding investors, maybe there are other founders out there who face the same problem.
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So we decided to test this theory that we had by launching a product and seeing if we can get any traction.
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So we built like 40,000 investors with a few people, and then we launched on Product Hunt.
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That month we made like $4,000 and we saw that a lot of founders actually had the kind of issue that we had.
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So this idea basically happened accidentally, like trying to solve our own problem.
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Nice.
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Obviously you launched this on Product Hunt, it was a cool new idea, made $4,000.
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But how did you actually grow this into a business that now makes over $30,000 a month and has been, you know, a full-time income?
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What was your marketing strategy for these sites?
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So one day I was sitting in front of my computer
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and I was looking at Google Analytics and I saw
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that we are getting like 60 clicks per day on AngelMatch
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and idea hit me so I was like thinking what
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if I like 10x this traffic would that translate into like 10xing my MRR
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and that's how I came across SEO we hired six content writers we started publishing blogs consistently.
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At the same time with the tech team, we were building and launching like free tools and all types of valuable content for our users.
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By doing that for like six months or eight months, our traffic started to grow.
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And then basically from $3,000 MRR to $20,000 MRR, we grew through SEO and added like meta ads.
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At highest point, we reached 43K in MRR.
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Okay, cool.
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Well, thank you for sharing that.
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As someone who's been successful in this space, you built three successful sites.
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What is the secret behind a successful directory database product that you've been so successful with?
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The reason why they work is because they all solve a problem for our target audience.
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We were targeting from the beginning, like early stage startups that are raising capital because we were ourselves early stage startup founders.
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So I think that positioning also worked for us.
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And also like there are tons of different database products.
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You can build like a real estate investor database you can build like stock traders or something.
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I think finding a niche is also important.
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So on that point, I'd be curious if you have any ideas, if you were to start another one, you have any ideas on like where would be a good opportunity to start in 2026
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based on everything you've seen and you're in the space?
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I think there are lots of ideas you can work on.
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You could build like a database of influencers that are categorized by maybe locations,
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audience size, what they post about and put a paywall behind it.
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I'm pretty sure people will be willing to pay for it.
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And another idea would be a newsletter database.
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You know, like there are lots of like sponsored content happening on newsletters and doing it manually takes time, right?
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So if you just can curate and build a database of that, that could work.
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Okay.
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I mean, yeah, those are two great ideas.
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Influencer database.
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I've been seeing a lot of these pop up.
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On that note, I'd be curious because you built multiple of these database sasses.
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If you had to start over right now, what would be your actual steps that you would take if you had to start over in 2026?
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To build a successful database product, the way you can approach it is through getting three things right.
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So first, actually coming up with a database product or directory product idea.
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You don't want to just start any kind of database or directory.
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You need to start those that solves a particular problem, right?
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Once you're building a database that solves a problem, the next step is start collecting the data and to get the data, you can manually build it like I did at the beginning.
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If you're tech savvy, maybe you can build some automated systems and collect that data.
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And the third step would be get as much eyeballs as you can, launch it and get the first feedback.
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If you see that someone is willing to pay for it, some people are signing up, you have a good signal.
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And I believe for directory and database products, SEO works very, very well.
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So I would focus on programmatic SEO.
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For us, it brings half of our revenue.
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And if you do it consistently, you will get there.
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If you are watching this far into the video, Rashid just gave up his sauce, which is programmatic SEO.
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Do a Google on that one.
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We also have some other videos on that.
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Let's switch topics a little bit and talk about TechStack.
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How specifically do you build a database SaaS in 2026?
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And what do you recommend tools to use?
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On the front end, we use Next.js.
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On the back end, we use Nest.js.
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We use PostgreSQL for database, and we use Ahrefs for SEO.
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For hosting, we use DigitalOcean, and we also use Niles, which powers our email outreach inside of AngelMatch.
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CloudFair to prevent bots from signing apps and for security.
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And we use Klaviyo for email flows and marketing.
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And finally, we use like J-Suite for emails.
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It's not expensive.
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It's like $62 per month on all apps.
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Awesome.
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Well, sounds like a pretty profitable business.
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Love that.
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The last question that we ask all founders who come on StarterStory, if you could go back in time before you had these successful apps,
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what would be your advice to yourself or for anyone watching this that is looking for that first right idea to build?
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I would say like, you should be patient, put in the word and never give up because there were like founders who were starting with me at that time.
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And they were like making a lot, a lot more than what we are making right now, but they gave up and I don't see them anymore.
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So I would say never give up, don't give up.
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That's great advice.
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What I love about this business, Rasheed, is we interview a lot of people who build apps that grow really, really fast, right?
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But what I love about this business is that it's not an AI trendy business.
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It's just a really, really solid business that will continue to grow
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and compound when a lot of people are building businesses that go like this and then go to zero.
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Thanks for coming on and sharing.
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I think it's going to inspire a lot of people.
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I'm sure there's going to be a lot of database products getting spun up after this video gets released.
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So thanks for coming on.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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Appreciate it.
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All right, Gus, producer of Starter Story.
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What do you think of Rashid and these three businesses he built?
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Well, one of the reasons I wanted to bring him on the channel is
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because it's super different than some of the other stuff we've been recently covering.
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I love that it was just like, I don't want to say old school business, because it's not like it's a brick and mortar or anything like that,
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but it feels like a little bit of a quote older type of business database information that's still successful
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and i thought
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that was the most interesting thing about it i think the
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question people are going to ask naturally is okay does this
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still work you know can i still do this obviously rasheed
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gave some ideas on what someone can go build things like
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that but what's kind of your opinion on something like this yeah no i think he made a good point
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that i might elaborate a little bit on which is like these work
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because they solve a painful problem when you're starting a startup you need to find investors or else everything's over.
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Your startup's going to go to zero and you're not going to make payroll.
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There's a very painful problem finding investors and businesses are willing to pay for that.
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And I think generally speaking, I don't think you're going to be successful with a directory or SaaS if it's not B2B.
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So if you're building a B2C, I don't know, here's a directory of dog trainers or something like that.
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That might be a little bit harder because he can charge $97 a month or whatever.
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I can't remember exactly what his pricing was, but it was something like that.
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So B2B, I think is really important.
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Yeah.
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A while back, we tweeted this thing.
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It was like bookamagician.com.
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Do you remember that case study?
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Yeah.
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But that's a good example, maybe of like a B2C thing that kind of didn't work versus something like this.
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I did or there's I know there's a lot of these popping up right now, like influencer databases.
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I've heard of like one called Side Shift that does kind of manages everything.
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Maybe that's like an example of something that doesn't work anymore versus something that is.
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So anyway, that's kind of what I was thinking about.
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Yeah, the influencer databases are actually really smart.
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I mean, influencers are sort of hard to find, hard to reach, and there are businesses that are booking those.
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So I think that is probably one of the reasons those work.
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Really, when it comes down to businesses like these, specifically his three successful database products, they solve a painful problem.
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And that is the best thing that you can do if you want to find a business idea, find a painful problem and solve it.
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So we're going to put in our description down there, our list of million dollar painful problems.
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You can check out a bunch of painful problems and you can see examples of businesses that solve those painful problems.
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That database is down there in the description.
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I think you'll find some interesting ideas from there.
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Maybe plug that into chat GPT or Claude, start playing around and find your database idea.
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All right, guys, we'll see you in the next one.
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Peace.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Este vídeo tiene 227 frases y 2797 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 14:26. El hablante habla rápido, unas 194 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 84 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| database sustantivo | /ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/ | base de datos, banco de datos |
| solve verbo | /sɒlv/ | resolver, solucionar |
| investor sustantivo | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/ | inversionista, inversor |
| painful adjetivo | /ˈpeɪn.fl̩/ | doloroso |
| founder sustantivo | /ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/ | fundador, fundadora |
| directory sustantivo | /dɪˈɹɛktəɹi/ | directorio |
| startup sustantivo | /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/ | arranque |
| angel sustantivo | /ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/ | ángel |
| manually adverbio | /ˈmænj(u)əliː/ | manualmente |
| lesson sustantivo | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | lección |
| curious adjetivo | /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ | curioso, tener curiosidad |
| journalist sustantivo | /ˈd͡ʒɝnəlɪst/ | diarista |
| collect verbo | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | juntar, recoger |
| versus | /ˈvɝsəs/ | contra, en vez de |
| consistently adverbio | /kənˈsɪstəntli/ | consistentemente |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| give up verbo | rendirse, entregar |
| come up with verbo | ingeniar, ingeniarse |
| make over verbo | reformar |
| pop up verbo | aparecerse |
| check out verbo | investigar, chequear |
| come across verbo | pasarse a |
| end up verbo | terminar, ir a parar |
| get back to verbo | responder / contestar (en un rato), volver / tornar a contactar |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 46 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, I'm, you're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: conversion /kənˈvɝʒən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, traction /ˈtɹæk.ʃən/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: directory /dɪˈɹɛktəɹi/, manually /ˈmænj(u)əliː/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/, portfolio /pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como database, solve, investor.
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa | We've been working · you've been searching · I've been seeing |
| Oraciones condicionales if + oración, will/would + verbo — una condición y su resultado | if I like 10x this traffic would that · if you do it consistently, you will get |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | have made · has been · who's been |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | anyone who wants · sauce, which is · people who build |
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.