NewCo

In his interview with Failory, Ben Tossell shared the "unscalable" way he started, which ironically was more effective than his later attempts at "scaling." The very first version of NewCo was just a Webflow site protected by a simple password ("positivebananas") sent manually to users who paid via a Carrd site. This "manual" approach was enough to prove that 15 people were willing to pay for his knowledge before he spent a single dollar on development. Although he made $8,000 in total sales, the Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) was only around $700 because he was primarily selling lifetime access rather than recurring memberships. This made it difficult to justify the high effort required to produce weekly videos. NewCo is a classic example of "Strategic Over-Engineering." It serves as a reminder for your website that the simplest solution is often the best for validation. After shutting down NewCo and traveling to clear his head, Ben Tossell realized that the content was the value, not the platform. He relaunched the same videos under a new brand, Makerpad, which became the leading no-code community and was eventually acquired by Zapier.