Excel Exercises: 15 Questions Answered From the Starter Story Interview, With Timestamps
Excel Exercises teaches spreadsheet functions and shortcuts through hands-on practice instead of videos, with a few free lessons and then a hard paywall. In the Starter Story interview, founder Jake reports $30,000 to $35,000 a month, about 2,500 paying subscribers, and growth of about five times since he went full-time two years ago. Search brought the first $10,000 a month; paid ads, team deals and a price change did the rest.
We transcribed the interview with transcribe.so and asked it the same questions we ask every episode. Each answer below is written in our own words and points to who said it and the exact second, so you can check it in the video. All figures are self-reported by the founder and we have not audited them. We are not affiliated with Starter Story, and we sell a transcription service.
| Who is speaking | Role |
|---|---|
| Jake, founder of Excel Exercises | Answers the questions |
| Starter Story host | Asks the questions and gives his own takeaway at the end |
What does Excel Exercises do and how does it make money?
It teaches Excel functions and keyboard shortcuts through exercises and simulations in the browser rather than videos (Founder, 01:32). It is freemium: a few free lessons, then a hard paywall (Founder, 02:22). He also sells to universities and companies (Founder, 08:25).
What numbers does the founder share?
$30,000 to $35,000 a month (Founder, 01:01). Over the past four weeks, a little over $30,000 in revenue (Founder, 02:38) from about 50,000 visitors (Founder, 02:42), with about 2,500 active paying subscribers (Founder, 02:46). He has grown it about five times since quitting his job two years ago (Founder, 01:12).
Who is the founder?
He studied finance, then got curious about how apps were made (Founder, 03:42), and taught himself to code from online videos in his parents' basement (Founder, 03:53), starting with a phone app for fun (Founder, 04:02). He built Excel Exercises five or six years ago as a nights-and-weekends side project next to a full-time job or grad school (Founder, 01:04).
Where did the idea come from?
From a boring corporate training. At his finance job, every new hire had to sit through a long online Excel course of videos (Founder, 04:26), and he kept zoning out and falling asleep (Founder, 04:40). A language-learning app lesson later gave him the format: that, but for Excel (Founder, 04:50). The proof came before he had promoted it at all (Founder, 05:08):
"I woke up one day and had a notification that someone had paid me fifty dollars." (Founder, 05:11)
A few more sales over the next couple of weeks were the validation he needed (Founder, 05:22).
How long did it take to build, and with what?
The first working version took months (Founder, 05:51), pieced together from tutorial videos and forum code snippets (Founder, 05:54). The hard part was tables that look and behave like a real spreadsheet (Founder, 06:00). Most of the code is still plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript (Founder, 06:24).
Who is the customer?
Anyone learning Excel, usually because of a career change: graduates looking for a first job, people switching jobs, and new hires who may have overstated their skills (Founder, 01:44). The second buyer is the employer: a learner tells the boss, and the boss asks to sign up about 50 people (Founder, 08:30).
How did it grow from zero to $10,000, then to $30,000 a month?
- Zero to $10,000: search. A couple of Reddit posts, but real growth came from SEO (Founder, 07:12). What worked was counterintuitive: a lot of text on the landing page (Founder, 07:30), about 1,500 to 2,000 words, which got the site indexed and brought the highest-intent traffic (Founder, 07:34). He kept it despite marketers telling him it was wrong, because that page made the sales (Founder, 07:51).
- $10,000 to $30,000: paid ads (Founder, 08:01), plus more university and corporate deals (Founder, 08:25).
What single thing moved the numbers most?
Paid advertising, which he calls the biggest turning point for growth and for how he thinks about the business (Founder, 08:04). With paid acquisition he had to start asking what each customer cost and what they would earn him (Founder, 08:17), which led to the price change below.
Why does such a simple website work?
It does one thing differently: practice instead of videos (Founder, 01:32). The free lessons matter because many people have never used anything like it and need a sample before paying (Founder, 02:28). The host sees it as proof that you do not need a complicated idea (Host, 02:58).
What is the start-over playbook?
Two steps for anyone looking for a simple idea:
- Pick a problem you know intimately, or you will not understand how its users think (Founder, 09:09).
- Get it into people's hands as soon as possible (Founder, 09:33).
"If you're not embarrassed by the first iteration, then you've waited too long." (Founder, 09:49)
How is it priced, and why?
Free lessons up front, then a hard paywall (Founder, 02:22), with monthly and annual plans (Founder, 11:53). The price change that mattered: he doubled the monthly price and kept the annual price the same, and growth took off (Founder, 12:05). He does not state the prices themselves.
What does it cost to run?
Hosting is usually under $100 a month (Founder, 06:36), and the email marketing tool, his only other regular expense, is $35 a month, plus payment fees (Founder, 06:44). Ad spend is not given. Before ads, he notes, every new subscription was close to pure margin (Founder, 08:04).
What went wrong?
For a long time he trusted a single blended lifetime value from his payment dashboard (Founder, 11:26). His average value-to-acquisition ratio looked healthy at about three to one, yet growth lagged (Founder, 11:37). Splitting payments into monthly and annual showed annual buyers were very profitable while monthly ones barely broke even, with a payback of four or five months (Founder, 11:53).
What is the founder's advice?
"knowing the granular unit economics of what you're selling is really important." (Founder, 11:19)
He aims it especially at anyone starting paid ads (Founder, 11:19).
What did the host take away?
How simple it is: practice Excel, hit a paywall, that is it (Host, 12:25). His lesson is to find a problem you have lived and solve it with a very simple product (Host, 12:33).
What to copy
- Write the long page. A landing page that fully explains a new kind of product can rank and convert better than short, polished copy.
- Segment before you change prices. A blended lifetime value can hide a plan that barely pays back; split monthly from annual first.
- Let learners sell the team plan. A tool people use for their own careers turns into group deals when they bring it to work.
More from this series: what customer calls teach about pricing, every Starter Story episode answered, and our free YouTube transcript tool if you want to run the same questions on any interview.