A solo entrepreneur who built a 1.7 billion won annual business by collecting other people's emails for 13 years
Date
Nov 27, 2025
Classification
- Solo Freelancer / Personal Branding
Solo Business Night
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Milled serves as a tool for consumers to find only the sales information they want without spam, and for marketers to analyze competitors' email strategies. [Source: Milled.com]
"1.7 Billion Won a Year Rummaging Through Spam?" The 'Hold On' Strategy of a Developer Who Survived for 8 Years on Free
🫑 3-Line Summary
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Check out the case of 'Milled,' an email archive service that started as a side project in 2012 and operated for eight years without significant revenue, but achieved an annual revenue of 1.7 billion won on its own after introducing a paid subscription model.
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We accurately identified the marketers' need for competitor newsletter analysis and accumulated 45 million data points solely through SEO optimization and automation systems, without any separate marketing costs.
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I created the compounding effect of data through 'strategic patience' while working a regular job without worrying about my livelihood, and proved that focusing on the essence of 'search' rather than flashy features is the secret to the longevity of a one-person business.
🥦 Insight
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Eight years of 'holding out' was not recklessness, but 'compound interest'.
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In the startup scene these days, speed races like "making 10 million won a month in three months" are trending. However, Chaz Yun's 13 years deliver a heavy blow to us. It wasn't that he couldn't make money for eight years; rather, he was building a dam called "data" for those eight years.
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Early-stage entrepreneurs, are you perhaps losing sight of the essence because of next month's revenue? Chaz eliminated the threat to survival while maintaining its core business, allowing it to wait without impatience for the 'magic of time' (compound interest) as SEO and data accumulate.
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The greatest weapon of a one-person business is not 'speed,' but 'cost efficiency' and 'sustainability.' While others let disappearing email information slip away, he gathered it up and turned it into an 'asset.' Does your business also have 'assets' whose value grows naturally over time? If not, start building them today. Because in 10 years, those assets might elevate you to a position worth 1.7 billion won.
— View original —
Hello! This is Solo Business Night.
The entrepreneur I would like to introduce today is Chaz Yoon, who built a business worth $1.2 million (approximately 1.7 billion won) a year by himself by organizing other people's emails.
Milled.com , which he created , is an email newsletter search site. Milled's email data is one of the largest in the world; you can check 45 million emails from a whopping 100,000 brands!
In 2012, Chaz, a former developer, quietly started a side project on his own. There was no external investment, no team, and no grand launch plan. What he did was extremely simple: subscribe to brand email newsletters, archive all the emails, and make them searchable! That is how Milled.com was born.
For the first few years, it didn't receive much attention. The profits weren't high either. However, Chaz persevered silently. He used his after-work hours and weekends to improve the system and accumulate email data.
Eight years later, in 2020, once he had accumulated enough emails, Chaz launched a paid subscription service called Milled Pro. Marketers eager to analyze competitors' email strategies flocked to it, and Milled began to experience rapid growth. And by 2024, he was able to achieve an annual revenue of $1.2 million (approximately 1.7 billion won)! All by himself, still.
How was Chaz able to single-handedly build and run a multi-billion dollar business over the course of 13 years?
What was the secret to surviving for 8 years without a paid model?
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