George Stoitzev's best year in e-commerce was $10 million.
Then he sold his software company, and the combined business raised $15 million at a $75 million valuation.
So when Brett from The Brett Way asked him "if you had no money today, what would you do?", I expected the usual answer, something like start an agency or learn to code.
Nope.
His answer was digital dropshipping: selling templates and workflows that live inside software you don't own. A Notion template, a Zapier workflow, a GoHighLevel snapshot. One link you build once and sell to thousands of people.
I pulled the full interview apart, and the playbook inside it is one of the most usable "start from zero" plans I've heard on any show. Here it is, with the real numbers.
From $100 a Day to a $10 Million Year
George opened his first Shopify store in 2013 after reading The 4-Hour Workweek. Tim Ferriss was one of Shopify's first angel investors, and the book showed how he built the life he wanted with a supplement company on the platform.
George's goal at the time was embarrassingly small: $100 a day.
"If I could just learn how to make $100 online, I could live any type of life I wanted."
It took him four years to get there. His stores didn't really work until 2017. Then they worked very well: a single brand doing over $10 million in a year.
In 2020 he walked away from e-commerce to build BlueReceipt, a text marketing tool for Shopify stores. He saw the shift from email to SMS coming (new TCPA rules, SMS heading toward 20 to 30% of store revenue) and wanted to be positioned for it.
Three years of building. VC money. Then an exit in early 2023, with the combined company raising $15 million at a $75 million valuation.
Now he runs Redacted Capital and advises founders. Which makes his "start from zero" answer worth listening to, because he's played the game at every level: $100 a day, $10M a year, and venture-backed SaaS.
What Is Digital Dropshipping?
George's definition: a mini SaaS. A template or workflow inside an existing piece of software.
Examples he gives in the interview:
- A Notion template (a planner, a resource kit, a CRM)
- A Zapier workflow
- A GoHighLevel snapshot
- A Bubble template
You're selling a software product, a piece of code. But you don't control the underlying software. Notion and GoHighLevel carry the infrastructure. You just sell the layer on top.
That's why he calls it dropshipping. In physical dropshipping, you take a generic product, slap on a brand, rewrite the description, and do the marketing. Same move here, with digital goods.
And the timing argument is the interesting part. People now pay $50 for a digital product without blinking. There are sellers on Etsy moving ADHD Notion templates. There are YouTubers selling GoHighLevel snapshots for $150 each.
You make the product one time and sell it to thousands of people. Delivery is instant and your cost per sale is basically zero.
If you've read my breakdown on how to build a micro SaaS, this sits one rung below that. Less code, faster first dollar.
The $0 Playbook, Step by Step
This is the exact sequence George lays out for someone starting with nothing.
Step 1: Go see what's already selling.
Browse Etsy, TikTok, and Twitter. Find people selling Notion templates, snapshots, and workflows. Demand is already proven. You're just copying it.
Step 2: Buy one.
Spend the $50. Study how it's built, how it's positioned, what the listing promises, what reviews complain about.
Step 3: Rebuild it better, with hired hands.
Not a designer? Go on Upwork. George's filter: ask each applicant for a 5-minute Loom of themselves designing. Hire two or three of them at around $200 each, get two or three versions, then have the best one merge the strongest ideas into a single clean product.
Compare that to an agency quote for the same thing. He's seen $50,000 proposals for work you can get done for a couple hundred bucks if you're specific enough about what you want.
Step 4: Make the simplest landing page alive.
A headline, a Loom video showing the product solving the problem, and a buy button (or a "book a call" button). Nothing else. Webflow is his pick, but any landing page builder works.
Step 5: Put the link in your TikTok bio and start posting.
Make short videos showing the template solving a problem people already have. Post, check analytics, post again. "You just make a video, you post, you look at the analytics like: oh, there's 15 people that bought this today."
The target is the same one George chased in 2013: $100 a day. At a $50 product, that's two sales.
His bigger point sits under all five steps: "Distribution is more important than anything else." The product is a template. Anyone can make it. The person who wins is the one who gets eyeballs on it, positioned for one specific audience.
From Templates to a Real SaaS for Under $3,000
Once you've got reps selling mini products, George's next chapter is what he calls a "more true SaaS". Still no engineering team.
The stack:
- Design a few screens in Figma using a resource kit (he names Tailwind UI and Align UI)
- Turn it into a clickable prototype
- Hire someone on Upwork to build it on Bubble
- Front site on Framer or Webflow to drive traffic
His budget claim: all of it for under $3,000. And then the line that stuck with me: "There's no reason why any software should start with more than five grand."
This from a guy who raised venture money and spent three years building BlueReceipt the expensive way. He says if he started it over today, it would cost under $5K, because he'd validate demand before engineering anything.
Sell It Before You Build It
The validation rule is the part most first-time founders skip, and George is blunt about it: do not build until you've validated and gotten commitments. Make the Figma prototype, record a Loom walking through it like it's live, put it on a landing page, and start conversations.
Brett brings up a YouTuber who ran this play perfectly. Landing page, $75 lifetime access, product was just a Figma file that looked real. He collected $75,000 before writing a line of code, then spent three months building what people had already paid for.
George calls it the Kickstarter model. Validate with the market first, engineer second. A product is "just a moment in time" and easier to create than ever. The hard part (the valuable part) is knowing people will pay.
I wrote a full piece on how to validate a SaaS idea if you want the long version of this step.
Be the Orchestrator
The last theme of the interview is where George thinks all of this is heading.
AI tools are getting good enough to out-execute most humans. What's missing is orchestration: knowing which problem to solve, in what order, with which tools. Idea quality, distribution, branding, affiliates, and partnerships now matter far more than the product itself.
His personal plan follows the same logic. He calls it a creator stack: YouTube to newsletter to info products to a no-code SaaS. YouTube first, because "a square could be a rectangle, but a rectangle can't be a square." Long-form video can feed every other platform. The reverse doesn't work.
And his advice for anyone sitting on an idea: stop telling one friend about it. Tell the world and document the journey, then point back to it later as proof you know what you're talking about. Even a bad idea builds you up if you share the process.
FAQ
What is digital dropshipping?
Digital dropshipping is selling templates, workflows, or "mini SaaS" products built inside existing software: Notion templates, Zapier workflows, GoHighLevel snapshots, Bubble templates. You create (or buy and rebrand) the product once, then sell it to unlimited customers with instant delivery. The underlying platform handles the infrastructure.
How much money do you need to start digital dropshipping?
Almost none. George Stoitzev's playbook: buy an existing template for around $50 to study it, pay Upwork designers around $200 each to rebuild it better, and use a simple landing page builder. Total startup cost lands in the low hundreds, and the first revenue goal is $100 a day.
Is digital dropshipping the same as selling digital products?
It's a subset. The "dropshipping" part refers to the method: find a digital product that's already selling on Etsy, TikTok, or Twitter, buy it, improve and rebrand it, then out-market the original. You're competing on positioning and distribution, not on inventing something new.
Who is George Stoitzev?
George Stoitzev is an e-commerce and SaaS founder. He started on Shopify in 2013, grew a brand past $10 million a year by 2017, then founded BlueReceipt, a text marketing tool for Shopify stores. After selling it in early 2023 (the combined company raised $15 million at a $75 million valuation), he started Redacted Capital, where he invests in e-commerce, software, and info businesses.
Steal playbooks like this every week
On the Profitable Founder Podcast I interview bootstrapped founders making $100K to $10M a year and get them to hand over the exact numbers: pricing, channels, costs, mistakes.
