Cody Schneider isn’t your typical tech founder. With over 20 profitable online businesses generating millions in revenue, he’s mastered the art of identifying “huge demand” and building “simple offerings” on top of it. His latest venture, Landing Cat, skyrocketed from non-existent to $100,000 Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in just four weeks. Even a simple Chrome extension he built years ago still pays his monthly rent, pulling in $9,000 − $15,000 a month.
How does he do it? Cody’s model is refreshingly straightforward: build businesses on rising trends, always backed by data, and focus on what people are actually willing to pay for – saving time, making money, or gaining status. He believes in rapid experimentation: “I’m going to try 100 things, we’re going to see that 3% of that worked, and I’m going to put all of our resources – the time, money, and mental energy – into those things.”
Ready to learn his data-first approach to finding massive business opportunities without needing a “special skill”? Let’s dive into Cody’s playbook.
Cody's Core Philosophy: Scope the Waves and Solve Real Problems
Before we get into the “how,” it’s crucial to understand Cody’s mindset:
Scope the Waves: “Our job as founders is to scope waves,” Cody emphasizes. This means identifying rising trends and existing market demands. Don’t try to invent a problem to solve; find what people are already searching for and struggling with.
Validate with Data: Every idea should be backed by data. Are people searching for solutions to this problem? Is there existing competition (often a good sign of demand)?
Simple Offerings for Huge Demand: You don’t need a revolutionary, complex product. Often, a simple tool or service that solves a specific, high-demand problem can be incredibly lucrative.
Distribution is King: “I think that distribution is more important than product,” Cody states. A mediocre product with great distribution will often outperform a great product with no distribution.
Bias Towards Action & Experimentation: Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. Build, launch, test, and iterate quickly. Most experiments will fail, but the few that succeed can be game-changers.
Step-by-Step Guide: Your First $10,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Cody suggests a clear path for those starting out, aiming for that initial $10k MRR milestone.
Step 1: Identify Market Demand (Find the “Wave”)
Solve Your Own Problems: Cody’s successful Chrome extension started because he needed a data extraction tool for his e-commerce print-on-demand businesses. What repetitive tasks do you or people you know struggle with?
Keyword Research: Use tools like Keywords Everywhere, Semrush, or Ahrefs to find what people are searching for. Look for “long-tail keywords” (specific phrases) with decent search volume and clear intent (e.g., “how to convert video to blog post,” “Chrome extension for data extraction”). High search intent means people are actively looking for a solution.
Observe Existing Markets: If many people are already doing something (e.g., offering Google Ads management), it means there’s a market. Don’t be deterred by competition; it validates demand. Your job is to find a better way to execute or serve a specific niche within that market.
Step 2: Learn a High-Demand Skill (That’s Not Geographically Constrained)
You don’t need to be a coding genius. Many high-value services can be learned and delivered online:
Digital Marketing Services: Google Ads management, SEO for local businesses, content repurposing.
Productized Technical Services: Building simple Chrome extensions, Shopify app development, AI-powered workflow automation.
Specialized Content Creation: Newsletter writing for founders, technical writing, video editing for specific niches.
Step 3: Build in Public & Establish Distribution EARLY
This is crucial and often overlooked. Cody advises:
Document Your Learning Journey: As you learn your new skill, create content about it. “Everything that you learn, just literally make a YouTube video of that exact thing and put it on your channel… in public.”
Use Simple Tools: Record tutorials or explanations using tools like Loom.
Solve the Cold Start Problem: By consistently sharing your knowledge, you’ll naturally attract an audience interested in that skill. This becomes your initial distribution channel. If you do this for 180 days, Cody guarantees you’ll get subscribers, views, and potentially your first client or sale.
Step 4: Offer a Productized Service
Once you have a skill and some initial audience (even small), productize your service.
Define a Clear Offer: Instead of “I do Google Ads,” offer “Google Ads Management for Automotive Shops, including X, Y, Z for $3,000/month.”
Attract Clients: Your “build in public” content will start to attract people who see your expertise but don’t want to do the work themselves. They’ll reach out. Cody notes, “If you make a video a day… I guarantee you can get three people to pay you $3,000 a month.”
Step 5: Systemize Client Acquisition with Cold Outreach (If Needed)
If inbound leads from your content aren’t enough, or you want to scale faster, implement a targeted cold outreach strategy. Cody details a specific stack:
Get URLs/Leads:
Fiverr/Upwork: Hire someone to scrape lists of businesses in your niche (e.g., “all automotive shops in Denver”).
Outscraper (AppSumo): A tool to scrape Google Search/Maps results for business information.
Find Emails:
Hunter.io: Finds email addresses associated with a website domain.
Phantom Buster: Automates scraping websites (including social media like LinkedIn) to find contact information and emails.
Validate Emails:
Zerobounce or Million Verifier: Cleans your email list to remove invalid emails and reduce bounce rates, protecting your domain reputation.
Send Cold Emails:
Instantly.ai or Smart Lead: Platforms designed for cold email outreach, allowing you to manage multiple sending domains and inboxes.
Domain Strategy: Buy multiple variations of your company domain (e.g., company.com, trycompany.com, getcompany.com) from registrars like Porkbun or use services like Mail Reef that provide warmed-up inboxes. Cody suggests around 30 domains with 5 inboxes each for larger campaigns.
Craft Your Message: Offer clear value. You’re not just selling a service; you’re solving a problem. Reference your public content as proof of expertise.
Scaling Beyond $10k MRR: Reinvesting and Making Bigger Bets
Once you have consistent cash flow from your initial offerings:
Reinvest: Use the profits to experiment with new ideas, tools, and marketing channels.
Identify Deeper Problems: Working closely with your initial clients will reveal more significant pain points. This is where SaaS ideas or more sophisticated productized services emerge. For example, Cody’s work with Rupa Health led to the creation of Swell AI for content repurposing, which then led to Draft Horse AI for SEO content generation.
Make Calculated “Big Bets”: These are often based on identifying resource-intensive processes that many businesses face. Cody asks, “Can I cut that resource intensity down by, say, 10% of what it was previously, and then I charge them 10% of whatever they’re paying currently?” Landing Cat is an example of this, programmatically creating thousands of SEO-optimized landing pages for e-commerce stores.
Multi-preneurship: Embrace having multiple small, profitable ventures. “These things can limp along,” Cody says, referring to his older projects. Not every business needs to be a unicorn. A portfolio of cash-flowing assets provides stability and funds for new experiments.
High-Probability Business Ideas from Cody Schneider
Cody constantly “scopes waves.” Here are a few areas he sees significant opportunity in:
Niche Chrome Extensions: Especially for data extraction or automating repetitive browser tasks. Look for high search volume for specific “Chrome extension for X” keywords.
Productized Content Repurposing for B2B/Founders: Many companies have a backlog of webinars, podcasts, and videos. Offer a service to turn this into blog posts, social media clips, e-books, and newsletters.
Target “Old School” Industries: Farmers, car washes, CrossFit gyms, local service businesses. Many are underserved by modern digital marketing and automation. If you have a connection or domain knowledge, there’s immense opportunity.
App Store Opportunities: For large platforms like WordPress (plugins), Shopify (apps), or even Zoom (apps). Find a missing integration or a common pain point for users of these platforms.
Unstructured to Structured Data Solutions: AI is making it easier to extract valuable insights from unstructured data (video, audio, long texts). Businesses that can help companies organize and analyze this data will thrive. Examples: horse betting streams, legal document analysis.
Newsletter Services for Founders: Help founders create and grow their personal brand newsletters by interviewing them and turning the transcripts into compelling content.
Cody's Favorite Tools for Building & Scaling
Cody leverages a variety of tools. Here are some highlights:
Keyword Research & SEO:
Keywords Everywhere: Browser extension for quick keyword volume checks. (Entry-level)
Semrush / Ahrefs: Comprehensive SEO and keyword research platforms. (For deeper analysis)
Content & Design:
Swell AI: (His own tool) Turns audio/video into transcripts, clips, summaries, blog posts.
Draft Horse AI: (His own tool) Generates SEO-optimized articles from keywords.
Figma: Collaborative design tool for UI/UX and graphics.
Playground.com: AI-powered graphic design tool.
Loom: Easy screen and video recording for tutorials and “build in public” content.
Website & Landing Pages:
Webflow: Powerful no-code/low-code website builder.
Landing Cat: (His own tool) Programmatically creates e-commerce landing pages.
Data & Analytics:
Supermetrics: Data pipeline tool to pull data from various sources (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.) into a single dashboard (like Google Looker Studio).
Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio): Free tool for creating data visualizations and dashboards.
Outreach & Lead Generation:
Fiverr / Upwork: For hiring freelancers for tasks like lead list generation.
Outscraper: Scrapes Google Search/Maps for business leads.
Hunter.io / Phantom Buster: Find and extract email addresses.
Zerobounce / Million Verifier: Email validation services.
Instantly.ai / Smart Lead: Cold email sending platforms.
Porkbun / Mail Reef: Domain registrars and warmed-up inbox providers for cold outreach.
Final Thoughts: Start Today, Iterate Constantly
Cody’s journey is a testament to the power of consistent action, data-driven decisions, and a willingness to experiment. His final piece of advice is simple but profound:
“Just start the thing. Literally today. Like right now. Whatever that thing is. And it can be small. Like literally just go learn something on YouTube, and then whatever you just learned, teach it and record that, like in a Loom video. That is a business. And if you do that for 180 days, you will get enough subscribers, you will get enough views, that you will make revenue off of that YouTube channel and you’ll make your first dollar online. And that’s the gateway drug to all of this.”
The opportunities are vast. Pick a wave, validate the demand, build a simple solution, and start distributing. You might be surprised how quickly you can build your own profitable online venture.
