How Tibo Louis-Lucas Transformed Failure into an Eight-Figure SaaS Exit with Tweet Hunter & Taplio

Turning Setbacks Into Rocket Launches: Pony Express, Tweet Hunter, and Taplio

When serial founderThibault (Tibo) Louis-Lucasset out with his partner, Thomas Jacquesson, they didn’t expect the rollercoaster ahead. Their journey included a failed app, a bankruptcy, and starting all over—proving that grit (and reading the market right) beats pedigree. This is the story of how they cracked the code with Tweet Hunter and Taplio, riding rapid iteration, bold partnerships, and a distinct growth mindset all the way to a multi-million dollar SaaS acquisition.

Trying. Failing. Learning. Again.

Most entrepreneurs don’t strike gold straight away. Tibo and Thomas’s stint began in the trenches withPistache, an app teaching kids to do chores. Neat idea, but after two years it hit a wall: scaling was impossible. They sold it off. Next up wasDreamz—a gamified coding app for kids. It had promise, funding, even a team, but still hit bankruptcy. Most would pack it in or blame luck, but Tibo and Thomas used those mistakes to guide their next moves.

A Blitz of MVPs (and Zero Blockbusters)

In 2021, tired of rolling slow and burning cycles, they challenged themselves: build and ship a new product every week. Each idea launched fast, with no commitment unless it got traction. After a grueling ten tries there was no viral hit. The best gave $400 MRR. Nine others were duds. Frustrating? Sure. But then they built Tweet Hunter, at first just for themselves.

Tweet Hunter: The First Spark

Twitter was where they launched everything. But making content that sticks takes time. Tweet Hunter sketched out as a barely-there tool to surface viral tweets by keyword, tweaked by AI for creator inspiration. Priced at just $9/month and with some strategic tweets, it hit $1,000 MRR inside a few weeks—night-and-day compared to their previous launches.

The lesson: MVP first, then validate. Don’t build more than you must until real demand smacks you in the face.

Scaling With Influencer Equity

Finding product-market fit opened the next question:how to scale and not stall. Influencers had always worked as traffic drivers, so Tibo reached out for partnerships. One response changed everything: influencer JK Molina wanted equity—more skin in the game, not a paid promo. They brought him in as a partner, which triggered a $20,000 MRR jump after the relaunch.

Building on that win, they cloned their play for LinkedIn and launchedTaplio. But this time, they went all-in and set up the "Creative Investor" board: 17 micro-influencers, each with 0.1% equity and no work expectations except to evangelize. It was almost risk-free viral marketing and community support. That board sent exposure to the moon for both products.

Free Tools Feed the Beast

Speed and creativity came next. To draw in even more users, they chunked out stripped-down tools taken from Tweet Hunter and Taplio and gave them away. Launched on Product Hunt (Tibo was Maker of the Year in 2022), these brought in waves of users who eventually upgraded. Social wasn’t just for noise—it became the primary funnel.

ARR to $3.5M: Fast, Then Faster

Their approach worked better than they could have hoped. In just 12 months, ARR hit $1M. It didn’t slow down; within two years, ARR hit $3.5M. Sounds like a founder fantasy, right? But the real secret sauce was discipline: validate hard, move fast, only keep scaling if paying users show up.

The Art of the (Early) Exit

It’d be easy to ride the momentum, but Tibo and Thomas knew their tools relied heavily on Twitter’s API (and LinkedIn’s policies for Taplio). After seeing API pricing swing from free to $42K per month and dodging random outages, they felt it was time to get out. They hired a broker with no luck, then lucked into a personal connection—Guillaume Moubeche (lempire’s founder), who happened to be a childhood classmate.

Their deal: $2M upfront and an earnout, aiming for a total of $10-$15M. They accepted a smaller upfront, gambling on lempire’s natural fit and understanding of the business.

Sticking Around—and Exploding Again

Part of the sale agreed Tibo and Thomas would stick around for two years. They worried maybe they weren’t suited for scaling. Ironically, during those two years they quadrupled results anyway. Sometimes traction trumps self-doubt—especially when you’re finally in the right market, with products people crave and partners who add real reach.

Final Takeaways for SaaS Founders

• Failure is standard. Move quickly. Pivot even faster.
• MVP isn’t a buzzword—don’t build what users haven’t proven they want.
• Influencer partnerships with equity can turbocharge word-of-mouth.
• A suite of free micro-products can funnel high-quality, low-cost leads.
• Understand your dependencies and prep for market shifts.
• Consider exit timing—sometimes, cashing out early is the shrewder move.

Tibo’s story of Tweet Hunter and Taplio is proof: start small, recruit hustlers, move at breakneck speed, and always let the market lead. The compounding effect of fast learning, transparent equity deals, and free user magnets turns what could be just another app into a SaaS rocket ship.