Yannick Veys

Yannick Veys is a Belgian entrepreneur and co-founder of Hypefury, the Twitter growth and scheduling tool. He started making money online at 14 with MP3 download sites, quit a banking job at 22 (and got sued for it), built over 100 passive income websites, managed $50 M + ina d s p e n df or F or t u n e 500 co m p ani es, co - f o u n d e d t h e ma r k e tpl a ces t a r t u pZ oo f y (re a c hin g$ 3M in revenue), and earned his pilot license along the way. He joined Hypefury by offering to work for free for two months after finding co-founder Samy Dindane on Indie Hackers, and bootstrapped the product through two near-death platform crises.

Key Patterns

He builds assets (websites, products) rather than trading time for money (freelancing, consulting)
Traffic without buying intent is worthless; he learned this through a painful proxy site failure and applied it everywhere after
Every career stage (banking, agency, freelancing, Zoofy) deposited skills that compounded into later ventures
He survived platform dependency crises by positioning Hypefury as aligned with Twitter’s interests, not opposed
He prices with courage: raising prices caused 15% churn but 50% MRR growth, and he wished he’d done it sooner

Early Online Ventures

First Dollar Online at 14 - MP3 Sites and a Check in the Mail — At 14 in 1998, he built MP3 download sites and received a physical check from internet ads before Google existed Quit Banking, Got Sued, Paid €15,000 — He quit a banking job at 22, got taken to court, and was forced to pay back 15,000 euros in scholarship fees Gaming Server Side Hustle - Paid Back the Debt in 6 Months — A gaming server side hustle appeared immediately after quitting and paid back all the debt in 6 months The Mystery CEO Call — A mysterious CEO call led him to a digital marketing agency where side projects were encouraged and SEO was a gold rush Freelancing, Maserati, Not Happy — Freelancing at 10-15K/month with a Maserati, but managing other people’s budgets felt hollow Pilot License, Then Teaching at the Flight School — He got his pilot license during freelancing and later became a theory instructor at the same flight school

SEO and Traffic

1 in Google, Made No Money — Ranked #1 in Google for anonymous surfing but lost money because the audience had zero buying intent The Finance Website - €30K from Buying Intent — A finance website using his banking knowledge earned 30K euros over 10 years by targeting keywords with buying intent 4-Hour Websites That Made €10K+ Each — He built 100+ tiny websites, some in just 4 hours, that each earned 10K+ euros over 5 years 100K Words in 30 Days - The SEO Experiment That Broke Down — A 100K-word writing challenge that broke down by day 5 when ideas dried up, teaching him that volume without a plan leads to burnout [[ $50 M in A d Sp e n d B e f ore G o in g S o l o]] - - M ana g in g$ 50M in ad spend for Fortune 500 companies taught him exactly when NOT to use paid marketing

Hypefury and SaaS

The Indie Hackers Post - I’ll Work for Free for 2 Months — He found Samy on Indie Hackers, flew to Paris, and offered to work for free for 2 months with no backup plan Building in Public - The Competitor Betrayal That Backfired — Building in public attracted a competitor who copied their product, but the competition actually grew the market The Co-Founder Relationship - Like Marriage Therapy — He and Samy chose each other for zero skill overlap and total values alignment, like a deliberate marriage The Bad First Hire They Kept Too Long — Their first hire was their worst; they kept the wrong person too long before learning to hire from their network Tripled Revenue Without Writing a Line of Code — They tripled monthly revenue without shipping a single feature by launching a paid community around the product [[ $1 K S a l a ry a t$ 22K MRR - The Portfolio as Runway]] — At $22 K MRRt h ey t oo k o n l y$ 1K/month salary each, funded by passive income websites as runway

Platform Dependency

Surviving the Twitter API Apocalypse — Twitter banned third-party clients and charged $42 K / m o n t h f or E n t er p r i se A P I; Hy p e f u rys u r v i v e d b y p os i t i o nin g a s a cre a t i o n t oo l [[XC ha r g in g$ 1-Account - The Death of the Free Plan]] — X started charging $1 p erco nn ec t e d a cco u n t, ki ll in g Hy p e f u r y^{'} s f ree pl an g ro wt h e n g in eo v er ni g h t [[A c q u i r in g Bl a c k M a g i c f or$ 128K During the Shakeout]] — They acquired competitor Black Magic for $128K during the API shakeout when smaller tools couldn’t survive alone

Pricing and Growth

The Price Increase That Spiked Churn to 15% But Boosted MRR 50% — A price increase spiked churn to 15% but boosted MRR by 50%; the customers who left were never long-term anyway The Affiliate Stealing Their Own Traffic — An affiliate ran Google Ads on the Hypefury brand name to steal commissions on existing traffic The One-Click Affiliate Button — A single in-app button replaced multi-step affiliate signup, dramatically increasing referral participation The 101 Viral Thread Hooks Giveaway — A free “101 Viral Thread Hooks” ebook giveaway stacked engagement, social proof, DMs, and email capture in one tweet From 600 to 5,000 Followers - Eating Your Own Cooking — He grew from 600 to 5,000 Twitter followers using Hypefury himself, becoming the product’s own case study Zoofy - From Amsterdam Emergency Plumbers to €3M Revenue — Before Hypefury, he co-founded Zoofy (Uber for service pros), grew it to 3M euros revenue, then sold his shares Banned from Reddit for Being Too Clever — He got banned from Reddit for disguising a Zoofy promotion as an innocent question about hiring plumbers

Second Brain