Shadowing Practice: I make $32K/month from 3 simple, boring websites - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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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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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 227 sentences and 2797 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:26. The speaker talks fast, about 194 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| database noun | /ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/ | A collection of (usually) organized information in a regular structure, usually but not necessarily in a machine-readable format accessible by a computer. |
| solve verb | /sɒlv/ | To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out. |
| investor noun | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/ | A person who invests money in order to make a profit. |
| painful adjective | /ˈpeɪn.fl̩/ | Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental. |
| founder noun | /ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/ | One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.). |
| directory noun | /dɪˈɹɛktəɹi/ | A list of names, addresses etc, of specific classes of people or organizations, often in alphabetical order or in some classification. |
| startup noun | /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/ | The act or process of starting a process or machine. |
| angel noun | /ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/ | An incorporeal and holy or semidivine messenger from a deity or other divine entity, traditionally depicted as a youthful, winged figure in flowing robes. |
| manually adverb | /ˈmænj(u)əliː/ | By hand. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| curious adjective | /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ | Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying. |
| journalist noun | /ˈd͡ʒɝnəlɪst/ | The keeper of a personal journal, who writes in it regularly. |
| collect verb | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | To gather together; amass. |
| versus | /ˈvɝsəs/ | Against; in opposition to. |
| consistently adverb | /kənˈsɪstəntli/ | In a consistent manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| make over verb | To renovate or to convert to a different use, particularly houses, offices, or rooms within them. |
| pop up verb | To come up with a "pop" sound. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 46 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conversion /kənˈvɝʒən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, traction /ˈtɹæk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: directory /dɪˈɹɛktəɹi/, manually /ˈmænj(u)əliː/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/, portfolio /pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like database, solve, investor.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | We've been working · you've been searching · I've been seeing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if I like 10x this traffic would that · if you do it consistently, you will get |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have made · has been · you've been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are not complicated · can be turned · are categorized |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.