Caspar what's your backstory?

Growing up in England after moving there with my parents at age six shaped my early years. School life there led to studying Biology. The next chapter began in 2000 with a move to Germany to study Computer Science, thinking it would teach me coding—turns out, that assumption was wrong.

So, I worked as a Product Manager/Product Owner at a series of Berlin tech companies. While working full-time, evenings and weekends were spent learning to code and building side projects. Over the next 10 years, around 10 different projects emerged, most of which failed. But two gained traction—Kittysplit.com (which I eventually sold my stake in) and Keepthescore.com.

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Life followed the traditional tech career path until March 2020, when my mother unexpectedly passed away, just three years after my father had died of cancer. This led me to reassess my priorities. Having inherited enough money to fund myself for 12 months, I made the decision to quit my job in March 2021 and dedicate myself full-time to Keepthescore.com.

What is Keepscore.com and how did you come up with the idea?

KeepScore.com started completely by accident. I was walking past a whiteboard with some names and scores scribbled on it when the idea hit me—why not create a digital version? At the time, I was looking for a project to teach myself web development, so I decided to build it as a learning exercise. I used Python Flask, Bootstrap, and SQLite. You can still check out the original version I launched here: v1 Keepthescore, It’s a true MVP!

To my surprise, the app started growing organically without any marketing. People found it through Google searches and word of mouth, using it for everything from sports teams to classroom competitions. The real validation came in 2020 when I took two months off work to add basic monetization—a simple paid tier at $5.99. Even with such rudimentary features, users were willing to pay, bringing in about $500 per month.

That was my "aha!" moment. If people were willing to pay for such a basic version, there had to be real value in it. The product was solving a genuine need—making it simple to create and share live scoreboards without any technical knowledge.

What’s fascinating is how new use cases keep emerging that I never imagined. For example, I discovered a whole community of live streamers using KeepScore with OBS (streaming software) to display scores during broadcasts. This has become a significant revenue stream I stumbled into purely through user feedback. It’s a perfect example of how letting users pull you in new directions can reveal unexpected opportunities.

How did you validate the concept behind Keepthescore.com?

The validation for Keepthescore.com came organically. It grew consistently from the start, without any marketing. The numbers told the story—starting with just 34 scoreboards created in the first month, and rising to thousands per month within a year. By 2020, the site had 55,000 monthly users, all through organic growth.

The final piece of validation came in 2020, when I introduced basic monetization. Even with minimal features, users were willing to pay for the service, generating $500 in monthly revenue. That showed people found enough value to pay for the service.

My advice for validating ideas:

• Don’t rely on feedback from friends and family.
• Real validation comes from actual usage or people paying money.
• Sometimes validation happens accidentally—pay attention to what gets traction.
• Let users guide you to opportunities you hadn’t considered.
• Building and launching quickly is better than endless planning.

I ended up in the domain of scorekeeping mostly by accident, not by design. It took me 10 years to find a validated idea. If I could give advice to others, it would be: find a quicker route.

How did you get your first 20 users?

I built a very basic version of Keepthescore.com in 2016 and launched it with just essential features - you could create a scoreboard and share it via a link. No login required, making it extremely easy for new users to try.
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The initial growth was modest but steady - in September 2016, only 34 scoreboards were created. By January 2017, this grew to 1,543 scoreboards. The simple, no-friction approach meant people could find the site through Google, quickly create a scoreboard, and share it with others. These first users weren't paying anything - I didn't add monetization until 2020, about four years after the launch. The initial monetization was a simple one-time payment to unlock premium features.

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A key aspect that helped early adoption was making the product usable without requiring a login. This reduced friction and made it more likely for people to try it out. Users could create and share scoreboards with just a unique link, and the link would be stored in their browser cookies for easy access later.

This "no login required" approach had some drawbacks - users would sometimes lose their scoreboards and need support to retrieve them - but it was "good enough" to get started and grow the user base organically.

How did you acquire your first 100 paying customers, and whatmethods did you use to reach them?

I grew my initial paying customer base purely through SEO and content marketing. I wrote weekly blog posts answering specific problems, like "How to create a leaderboard using Google Sheets." The content focused on being genuinely helpful, with only brief mentions of my product.

I avoided traditional marketing methods - no paid ads or social media campaigns. Instead, I concentrated on ranking well in Google searches for terms like "online scoreboard." When people found my helpful content, they naturally explored the product.

The strategy worked because I kept the barrier to entry low - users could try the product without creating an account, and then upgrade to the paid tier if they found it valuable. Through this approach, monthly revenue grew from $460 to $1,560 within a year.

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How did you recognize SEO as a key distribution channel?

I learned SEO by watching videos and reading posts on the topic. There are thousands of different resources—don’t overthink it. I just started and didn’t stop.

Here’s an interesting story from my journey:

I noticed a competitor consistently outranking me in search results, so I decided to investigate using Ahrefs. This led to a surprising discovery—they were running a black-hat SEO operation, injecting hidden links across thousands of websites. Once I exposed this, Google penalized them, and I took the top spot. That experience really showed me the power of SEO in my product category.

My SEO strategy is simple but effective. I commit to writing one blog post every week, focusing on directly answering specific search queries. I keep the content high quality but straightforward: direct answers, short sentences, and no fluff.

Today, my website has a Domain Rating (DR) of 53, which is pretty respectable. I’ve got some inherent SEO advantages in my product, but I’m not going to reveal them here—you’ll have to work that out yourself if you’re savvy enough.

I’ve tried working with two SEO agencies with varying levels of success. Right now, my main focus is automating my content pipeline as much as possible—it’s been taking up too much of my time. I’m currently onboarding a new content writer, and it’s going well. I’m still working on refining the process.

One last thing: all my content is written in markdown and integrated into my source code. This approach has a lot of advantages, but it also comes with a drawback—the content writer can’t work on the content directly. I’m still figuring out a better solution for this.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs looking to grow their SEO traffic?

It is absolutely still worth it and will be worth it for at least 3-5 more years. Maybe less.

For me SEO means content -- and writing content for your product (especially tutorials) has a surprising number of advantages:

• It really forces you to see the product from the user's perspective
• It forces you to think about new use cases
• It gives you very interesting data: what is the content that is drawing traffic, and what is the content that gets ignored? This is a good way of testing your assumptions.

It's a mystery to me why SEO gets ignored by so many founders. It is one of the most effective tools in your toolbox. It just takes time to work.

Start now and don't overthink it.

What distribution channels did you try that didn't work?

SEO worked from the start and I doubled down on it. Focus on what works!

I tested some small PPC campaigns but had no expertise and they came to nothing.

In a blog post, you compared Keepthescore.com to a garden. What did you mean by that, and is it still your approach to growing the business?

A garden is something you tend to because you love gardening. I loved coding—tweaking the code, making it cleaner, refining it. That’s all part of the gardening process. You want your garden to look beautiful.

But when your garden is what you rely on to feed your family, you stop caring about how it looks. It just needs to work. A fallen tree or some garbage in the corner doesn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t interfere with growing the food you need.

I think a lot of people struggle with making this switch. I've been on tech teams that were all about gardening—focused solely on making things look perfect—without a real understanding of the world beyond their garden and how to grow actual, usable food.

Of course, I still want my code to be clean and tidy, but I’m much more tolerant now of quick and dirty solutions. You can always come back and fix them later.

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How can new or struggling entrepreneurs embrace this mindset and stay focused on long-term growth?

The reality is that most initiatives only give 30% of what you expect, and every second initiative won't work out at all. One founder famously called it the "long slow ramp of death."

My advice for those just starting:

• Focus on validating your idea before going all-in
• Be prepared for the long haul - sustainable growth takes time
• Get comfortable with leaving things unfinished and moving forward
• Keep iterating based on user feedback
  
• Stay focused on tasks that actually move the needle
• Don't get distracted by shiny new technologies or features

Remember: "Show up. Be helpful. Get feedback. Be reliable. Don't give up too early." These matter more than following your passion or searching for quick wins.

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What specific tools have been most helpful in growing your business?

Twitter and the community there were essential to my decision to get started. Sadly Twitter / X is slowly falling apart these days and I am no longer on it.

Ahrefs.com or SEMrush.com is absolutely essential if you are looking for organic growth.

I would say find a business that is 2-3 steps ahead of you and share their journey. Then copy that journey (not the product).

Beware of superstars like Pieter Levels and Co. You will never emulate their success and will fail to try. They are doing a lot of non-classical things that I would not recommend.

How did you make the transition from a side hustle to full-time entrepreneurship?

Initially, you need to start your venture on the side. Don’t quit your job based on a hunch or just an idea for a product.

Build a product that works and that people are actually paying for. This is absolutely achievable while working a full-time job and managing family life (within reason). If you're struggling to find the time, it could mean that there are other priorities in your life. Take a step back—what are those priorities, and why are they taking precedence?

Once you have a product that’s generating revenue, set a clear threshold for when you’ll make the jump to full-time entrepreneurship. For some, that number might be relatively low (for me, it was 500 EUR), while for others, it could be eight times their monthly salary. It really depends on your risk tolerance. There are no hard-and-fast rules—it's a personal decision.

What drives you to do what you do?

I want to be a master of my time. As someone else memorably put it: my business plan is to do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want to.

That is true freedom.

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Use the code  "FOUNDEROO" during checkout for 30% off. Only 30 discounts allowed.

Your links + socials

Caspar von Wrede Linkedin