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🤙Aloha Rocket Networkers,
Before You Dive Into Events... A 29-Year-Old From Germany Just Made $182K Off a Website With One Button
Last Tuesday at 11:08 PM, a 29-year-old indie hacker from Germany named Jonathan Wilke (@jonathan_wilke) pushed a side project live and went to bed like it was nothing.
Four days later: 1 million+ visitors and $182,187 in revenue.
The site is outbid.lol, and the entire product is one rule. Pay more than the startup above you, and you rank #1. No ads, no API keys, no algorithm to game. The rank IS the bid.
That's it…That's the whole product!
Here's what happened since launch night:
$182,187 in revenue as of this weekend (new spots start at $5)
$15,000 is the current top bid, and #2 is sitting at $14,028, just $972 behind
Enough traffic to break his analytics provider mid-week. He had to switch tools just to keep the counter running.
Someone offered $100K to buy the site. He kept the board.
10+ copycats appeared in the first 24 hours.
And this is the part that should be framed in a museum: some of the copycats are now paying to be listed on the original board. Jonathan is charging his own clones for exposure. Clone #45 paid $501.
None of this is new, by the way. The Million Dollar Homepage pulled the same trick in 2005. Jonathan just rebuilt it for the AI-startup era, shipped it solo, and let founder egos do 100% of the marketing. Every bid war became a screenshot, every screenshot became traffic, and every visitor was a potential bidder.
He's not slowing down either. This morning he launched outbid.lol/today, a daily board that resets at midnight, so you don't need $15K to get seen. You need $5 and good timing.
The takeaway for every founder reading this at their desk: he didn't raise money, didn't build a moat, and didn't write a line of AI. He found something people would fight over in public and put a price on the fight.
Your weekend project doesn't need to be smart. It needs to be shareable.
Okay. NOW the events…
I hope to see you all next week for Luminate by LUMINO, especially at Builder Breakfast on Friday! Grab your spot here.
ALSO, we have a few seats left for the first Founders Anonymous… apply to join!
And… as always, don’t forget to check the FEATURED EVENTS AND💰 MONEY ON THE TABLE section!
cheers,
- oleg 👊
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P.S. Know a Texas company doing something insane? hit reply.
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We are using emojis to guide subscribers in our event list 📅📍
🚀 - must attend
🔥🌶️ - something hot
🤓💻 - good for developers and other technical folks
🦄💰- venture capital and investing-related
⚡- energy-related
♻️- renewable energy and sustainability-related
🏥 - health care related
🎖️🪖 - veteran or military related
🏅 - sports tech related
₿ - web3 related
HERE ARE OUR PICKS FOR HTX THIS WEEK
Monday, August 24
A facilitated table, not a panel. Emerging founders, established entrepreneurs and corporate intrapreneurs talk through what it actually takes to build and scale. Free unless you want the $20 lunch.
Jada Powell on the moment referrals and reputation stop producing new business. For owners and commercial leaders in energy, manufacturing and field services who have hit a ceiling.
Rice kicks off FIESTA week with rapid-fire talks from the Lilie community. Short, sharp and free.
Tuesday, August 25
The downtown edition of Houston’s founder coffee. Start with the why, not the job title.
Liongard takes over the Ion for three days on asset intelligence, misconfigurations and keeping a live system of record across your whole IT stack. Runs August 25 to 27.
The monthly gathering for Latino founders, operators and investors, back at The Lymbar inside the Ion District. Free appetizers and cocktails while they last. Open to everyone.
Rice’s summer cohort pitches what they built. Healthcare, AI and advanced manufacturing teams, all in one room.
Franklin Lobb holds every active AWS certification and he is walking through vector buckets, mounting object storage as a file system and querying metadata with Athena. Up to $200 in AWS credits for everyone, food and swag if you show up in person.
Harris County opens the doors for a straight networking night. No panel, no program. Meet people, see what happens next. Free, RSVP through the county form.
Wednesday, August 26
Midweek satellite for the Clear Lake and Bay Area crowd.
An unstructured work-and-hang for founders, aspiring founders and early startup employees. Bring a laptop, get something done, see what everyone else is building. Headphones on means leave me alone.
Monthly happy hour for CPG brands, retailers and the people who supply them. New venue this month.
Never pitched before? This is the low-stakes room to do it in. Grab the mic and try the idea out loud.
Lumino opens Illuminate with a red carpet, a champagne reception and a walk through immersive galleries before the founder vision talk. Cocktail attire, and registration needs host approval.
Thursday, August 27
North-side founders, this is your morning.
The big one. Three keynote acts covering past, present and future of Lumino, industry breakouts for nonprofit, hospitality, coaching, startup and payments, then a happy hour with the Ion’s first-floor restaurants.
Free coworking for the day with breakfast, snacks, tours and a 4:00 PM happy hour. A cheap way to test-drive a desk.
A full day of AI in biotech, healthcare AI ethics, hiring panels and a healthtech shark tank, plus pitches from the BiteLabs fellowship. Free, and the waitlist is already deep.
The IP firm upstairs answers the awkward question over lunch. Your code, your brand, contractor work, AI output. Bring the question you have been avoiding.
Pandora Hodges of Sharpline Sales and NBDA on handing real work to an AI assistant instead of just asking it questions. One hour, online.
Claudia Molina launches Energy Mavericks, built on her career plus interviews with 20-plus leaders driving change across the energy sector.
Houston’s Cursor crowd gets together. If you are building with AI in your editor all day, these are your people.
Houston Innovation Commons runs a participatory problem lab, not a panel. An honest look at whether the programs actually work. Food and drinks provided.
Nate Custer demos Bombadil, an open-source tool that wanders your web app on its own and finds the bugs nobody wrote a test for.
Where AI helps defenders and where it hands attackers new tools. Practitioners talking straight.
The monthly NASA slot at the Ion, this time on Rice’s new Space Humanities Initiative. Free.
Friday, August 28
Illuminate closes with breakfast, a live recording of Talks with Big Z, and tables from nonprofit partners. The Cup of Joey community is folded into this one.
Heads up: the regular Friday Cup of Joey at the Ion is canceled this week. Illuminate has the lobby.
Every other Friday, NASA Johnson experts sit down with founders on licensing NASA tech and building in commercial space. Walk up or sign up.
The weekly founder roundtable runs as usual. Bring your ask.
A filmed conversation with Houston founders, and the audience gets to ask questions. Tickets are paid this round: $25 on the couch, $10 in the audience, free to volunteer or stream.
Sunday, August 30
Low-pressure Sunday morning for coders and the code-curious. Bring a laptop and a project, or just bring yourself.
A walk in the park instead of another happy hour. Tech and SaaS folks, fresh air, real conversation. Free, and the exact meeting spot comes with registration.
⚠️Hosting a tech meetup or startup event? Submit it via the RocketNetwork Event Submission Form to boost your visibility!
MONEY ON THE TABLE
(This section doesn't exist on the web. It's for subscribers only. Feel free to forward — your friend just has to subscribe to get it weekly.)
Money Moves Summit Pitch Competition $10,000 split three ways, with $5,000 to the winner, at the Money Moves Summit in Dallas. Open to any woman-owned US business, including ideas still at the napkin stage. One catch: you have to buy a summit ticket before you apply, and post a 60-second pitch reel. Closes August 30 - APPLY |
The Amber Grant Three $10,000 grants go to women-owned businesses every single month, and past winners range from bakers to scientific inventors. Heads up: there is a $15 application fee. This round closes August 31 - APPLY |
HerRise Microgrant $1,000 every month for a business that is at least 51% women-owned with under $1M in revenue, built for under-resourced women entrepreneurs. $15 fee. Closes August 31 - APPLY |
SXSW Pitch 2027 The Austin stage where alumni have gone on to raise over $22 billion. Launched after January 2024 and raised under $10 million? You qualify. Early bird entry is $105 through September 13, then the price jumps - APPLY |
Secretsos Small Business Grant $2,500 for a US-registered business run by someone 21 or older. Applications do not roll over between quarters, so get in this one. $15 fee. Closes September 30 - APPLY |
Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation The big one: up to $300,000 in unrestricted funding over three years, plus a DRK partner who takes a board seat and roughly $500,000 worth of hands-on support. Built for early-stage organizations solving a real social problem at scale. Applications are open year-round, so there is no deadline to miss - APPLY |
Skip $1K Instant Grants Skip hands $1,000 to US entrepreneurs in drawings that run every few days. No deadline to miss. Enter once and keep rolling into the next round - APPLY |
Claude for Startups Free Claude API credits and priority rate limits for startups under four years old with institutional backing. No equity taken and no deadline. Apply any time - APPLY |
Ganas Ventures, $100K Checks Lolita Taub writes $100K pre-seed and seed checks into community-driven startups across the US and Latin America. This one is an investment, not a grant, and the pitch form is open to everyone. No warm intro needed - PITCH |
28+ VC Funds for Early-Stage Founders Raising right now? Lucas Pols put together a free list of 28+ funds writing early-stage checks, sorted by focus from AI and deeptech to CPG and climate. Bookmark it before your next outreach sprint - VIEW THE LIST |
FACTS!!!
FEATURED JOBS
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That’s a wrap for now, RocketNetworkers,
Stay tuned, and keep grinding!
Disclaimer: The content in this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by any sponsors. All opinions and information are those of the author and not of the sponsors or affiliated organizations.
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