First sales always hit different

Last year, I met Hasan online. I was impressed by what he had achieved - growing a community of over 500k followers (Linkedin + X + Newsletter) in just a few months.
That kind of growth doesn’t happen by chance, it takes both talent and strategy.

What struck me even more was his kindness, and humility. That’s when I knew I wanted to collaborate with him.

The birth of an Idea

When you’re looking to build something—whether it’s a side hustle or a full-time business—it’s important to identify a gap or a need. For Hasan, his community was deeply passionate about AI and productivity hacks.
As for me, I use Google Sheets every day to manage data, workflows, and tasks.

That’s when the idea hit us: What if we combined AI with Google Sheets?

At first glance, it might not seem revolutionary, but the best ideas often aren’t. They’re simply about making something people already use more efficient, more intuitive, or more powerful.
In our case, we realized that people spend countless hours on Google Sheets, and by integrating AI, we could help them save time, automate tedious tasks, and unlock new ways to handle data.

Here’s the first lesson for anyone building a business: It’s not always about inventing something completely new. Often, it’s about improving or transforming something people already rely on. That’s exactly what we aimed to do with Cortexsheet.

From Concept to Creation

Once you have a solid idea, the next step is figuring out how to bring it to life. For us, it was about merging our expertise. Hasan knew how to engage and grow a community, while I had experience building SaaS with Constance. Don’t you know Constance? She’s one of the best CTO you can find.

Together, we started brainstorming what the tool would look like and how it could serve users.

In any collaboration, you need to play to your strengths. If you're working solo, it’s important to acknowledge what you're good at and where you might need help. Building a product requires different skills—development, marketing, customer service, and more. You don’t have to be an expert in all of them, but you do need to recognize when to bring in others to fill the gaps. And for this, collaboration is key.

For anyone starting a business, partnering with people who complement your skills can take your idea from good to great. For us, that meant combining my technical and SaaS experience with Hasan's distribution experience to build something that people would actually want to use.

Validating before the launch

Before any big launch, there’s always that moment of doubt. Is the product good enough? Will people see the value? We spent a lot of time testing Cortexsheet and use it ourselves, making sure it was easy to use and brought real benefits to users.

Here’s the second important takeaway: Always validate your product. Whether through a soft launch, beta testing, or direct feedback, you need to know how your product works in the real world.

Sometimes, that means making adjustments based on feedbacks or pivoting if you find that something isn’t resonating with users. In our case, we were lucky to receive strong initial feedback, which gave us the confidence to move forward, and the idea seemed validated as there are competitors.

The Launch: Bringing AI to Google Sheets

Today, I’m excited to announce that Cortexsheet is officially available for download on Google Sheets. 🚀

What makes this product special is that it combines the power of AI with one of the most widely used tools—Google Sheets. From automating data processing to generating insights, it’s designed to help people save time and work smarter.

We posted about it on X, LinkedIn, and we made the first sales !! 🎉🎉🎉

Key Lessons for Building Your Own Business

Now that Cortexsheet is live, I can reflect on some key lessons that could help you if you’re looking to start your own business:

1. Start with what you know.
   We built Cortexsheet based on tools we were already using every day. If you have expertise in a particular area, that’s where you should begin. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; just make something better.

2. Find the right collaborators.
   I couldn’t have done this without Hasan, people follow him for produtivity tips, he has the perfect audience, neither without Constance who ship even faster than Shipfa.st 😉.
   There’s no shame to build products with people, soloprener is difficult, and many of the well known started SaaS in team before going solo.
   —> Don’t hesitate to reach out to others who can complement your abilities.

3. Validate your idea.
   Before going all in, make sure there’s a market for your product. We tested Cortexsheet with early users to get feedback and ensure we were solving a real problem. This step is crucial—no matter how great your idea is, it won’t succeed if it doesn’t meet a need.

4. Embrace feedback.
   Don’t be afraid to iterate. Building a successful product is often about making improvements based on real user feedback. Be open to change, and be ready to adapt if necessary.

5. Launch even if it’s not perfect.
   Perfection can be the enemy of progress. We launched Cortexsheet knowing we would continue improving it over time if PMF is here. If you wait for everything to be 100% perfect, you might never launch. Get your product out there and let users help shape it.

Personal updates

• I have been interviewed by Starter Story, and I gave a lot of tips (with a French accent…But there are subtitles 😉 ) watch it there

• Not an update but if you read until there I wanted to let you know that I read all my replies as well. So let me know if there are topics you would like me to address for the next posts, this newsletter is for you