The first users came almost entirely from a single YouTube video posted by Batista, a co-founder and established YouTube creator in the e-commerce/dropshipping niche. Before launch, the team spent 6 months building a polished product with a highly shareable onboarding funnel — animated, visually captivating, designed to make viewers think "I want to try this." The product's wow moment was a live store-building animation that showed the AI constructing a full e-commerce store in real time. When they shipped the first video with Batista, it immediately spread. The combination of a trusted creator vouching for the tool and a product that was inherently screenshot/clip-worthy drove the first wave of signups. This got them to $1K MRR within 5 days of launch. Because Loïc had a prior creator network from Minéa and Batista had an established audience, they could afford to build for 6 months before launching — knowing the launch would have guaranteed eyeballs.
Drop Magic
AI tool that creates converting e-commerce stores in 5 minutes
10 moves, in order
- Pre launch / Minéa originInfluencer cofounder partnership
Merged Influify (Instagram influencer-finder SaaS at ~$30K MRR) with a Facebook-focused competitor and brought in Yomi Denzel — France's biggest e-commerce YouTube creator — as a co-founder/equity partner, rebranding everything as Minéa.
Went from ~$30K MRR to $100K MRR virtually overnight on launch announcement aloneMRR $100k - 0 → $100K MRR (Minéa)Youtube creator audience
Yomi Denzel announced Minéa to his audience via a live stream demo. His endorsement gave Minéa an instant stamp of credibility ('this tool is made by Yomi, it must be good'). The French e-commerce market was captured almost immediately.
$0 to $100K MRR from a single creator's audienceMRR $100k - $100K → $300K MRR (Minéa)YouTube creator partnerships
Identified YouTube creators as the single highest-performing distribution channel (~80% of distribution). Signed 2–3 large US-based creators to break into the American market, translated the app, and added US-market-specific features.
$100K to $300K MRR within roughly one yearMRR $300k - $300K → $500K MRR (Minéa)Webinars with paid ads
Created a high-ticket plan (~$400/month, discounted to ~$300) and ran large webinars hosted by Yomi Denzel — one of the best salespeople Loïc had ever seen. Drove significant paid ad spend (e.g. ~$200K) into webinar registrations, then sold the premium plan with bonuses at the end of each webinar.
$300K to $500K MRR over roughly one year of webinarsMRR $500k - $500K → $750K MRR (Minéa)Productized coaching upsell
Identified that top churn reason was beginners leaving the industry — not product bugs. Created 'Minéa Coaching,' a separate entity under the same brand offering 1-on-1 e-commerce coaching at a higher price point, reducing churn and increasing revenue per customer.
$500K to $750K MRRMRR $750k - Feature launch spike (Minéa)Creator product launch
Shipped 'Magic Search,' the first AI-powered ad data aggregation feature in the dropshipping tools market. Yomi Denzel acted as the first ambassador and demoed it live. Competitors copied the feature within 2 months.
$60K MRR in 24 hours from the feature launch - Drop Magic launch (Month 1)Youtube creator cofounder video
Shipped a single YouTube video with co-founder Batista showcasing Drop Magic's animated, shareable onboarding funnel and the live store-building wow moment. Product was designed specifically to be visually captivating and clip-worthy.
$1K MRR in 5 daysMRR $1.0k - Drop Magic Month 1Youtube creator cofounder video
Continued leveraging Batista's audience and YouTube content in the first month. Used the internal economics data (conversion rates, CAC, LTV per creator video) from Batista's own channel to validate the creator distribution playbook before scaling it to external creators.
$5K MRR in 30 daysMRR $5.0k - Drop Magic $10K → $83K MRRYouTube creator partnerships
Scaled to external YouTube creators using a tiered approach: start with sub-10K creators on revenue-share (30–50% lifetime commission, no upfront cost) to validate economics, then move up to 10K–50K creators with upfront fees once the script and conversion rates are proven. Lock high-performing creators into 3–4 month ambassador deals for multiple videos.
$10K MRR plateau broken; scaled to $83K MRR (~$1M ARR) in 7 months totalMRR $83k - Parallel — Blime (new SaaS)Youtube video feature on talk to story
Built Blime (an internal creator-discovery and outreach tool) and got initial traction by being featured in a YouTube video on the 'Talk to Story' channel.
$1K MRR initial growth for BlimeMRR $1.0k
Loïc had built Minéa to $750K MRR using a YouTube-creator distribution playbook, giving him a proven framework, an existing creator network, and deep credibility in the e-commerce SaaS space. Batista, a co-founder, was an active YouTube creator with an audience in the dropshipping niche — providing both a guaranteed launch audience and real product expertise as a daily power user.
youtube_creator_partnerships
Cold Facebook/Meta ads were attempted for Minéa but were not a primary or reliable channel — retargeting worked okay but cold ads were hard to crack. For Drop Magic specifically, no failed channels were explicitly named, though Loïc implied that without the creator co-founder they would have been guessing on creator economics with no data to validate.