What happened in the Taplio and Tweet Hunter story?
Two founders, Thibault Louis-Lucas and Thomas Jacquesson, built Tweet Hunter for Twitter (now X) in 2021, copied it for LinkedIn as Taplio, and sold both to lempire, the company behind lemlist. Louis-Lucas, who goes by Tibo online, told the story in a Starter Story interview published on 18 May 2023 and on The Bootstrapped Founder podcast on 24 January 2024. Every figure below comes from people on the selling side, so treat each one as self-reported.
| When | What happened | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early 2021 | Louis-Lucas and Jacquesson start the Pony Express studio and build a new product every week | Ten products don't take off; one reaches $400 MRR, another $200 | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| May 2021 | Tweet Hunter, the 11th product, launches behind a payment gate | First subscribers at $9 a month | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| A few weeks later | Creator JK Molina joins for equity | Tweet Hunter at $1k MRR | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| A few months after that | A planned launch on Twitter | $4k MRR to $20k MRR | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| A few months later still | The code base is copied to start Taplio for LinkedIn | No figure given | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| August 2022 | Sale to lempire, by the date in Molina's thread | $1.4M for Tweet Hunter plus $0.6M for Taplio; ARR below $2M, by Louis-Lucas's recollection | Molina on X; Louis-Lucas, podcast |
| 16 January 2023 | Molina announces the sale on X | $2M combined | Molina on X |
| May 2023 | Both products under lempire | About $3.5M ARR, growing 10% to 20% a month | Louis-Lucas, Starter Story |
| January 2024 | Both products under lempire | ARR nearing $6M to $7M, by Louis-Lucas's estimate | Louis-Lucas, podcast |
Why did Tweet Hunter charge $9 a month from day one?
Payment was the test. Louis-Lucas says the team shipped Tweet Hunter "with a payment gate as soon as we had something usable", and used payment as the single number that decided whether to kill the project or keep going (Starter Story, May 2023).
The rule came from the way the two founders worked in 2021. They had set themselves a challenge to build a new product every week until one stuck. Ten didn't. Louis-Lucas says the aim of that run was to validate ideas rather than to sell them, which changed how they judged each launch.
Tweet Hunter was the 11th product. It began in May 2021 as a simple search bar that pulled up viral tweets on a given topic. Louis-Lucas built it alone in under a week by reusing code from earlier projects. The team tweeted about it and got its first subscribers at $9 a month.
Two things in this are worth copying. The price was low enough to say yes to without a call, and it was there from the first usable version, so the founders quickly learned whether anyone would pay. Our reading is that free sign-ups would not have told them the same thing, because a sign-up costs the user nothing.
How did an equity deal pay for the Tweet Hunter launch?
The launch was paid for with ownership. A few weeks after release, with Tweet Hunter at $1k MRR, Louis-Lucas contacted some Twitter creators to ask them to promote the tool. One of them, JK Molina, asked to join the project and take equity instead. Louis-Lucas says that wasn't the plan, but the founders agreed.
Together they planned a big launch on Twitter and ran it a few months later. Louis-Lucas credits that single launch with taking Tweet Hunter from $4k MRR to $20k MRR, after which Molina kept running campaigns and promoting the product. Molina's own thread about the sale, posted on 16 January 2023, says the startup was born on Twitter and promoted mostly through organic Twitter.
Three details are missing from every source we opened: the size of Molina's stake, the exact date of the launch, and how much of the later growth came from it. What the founders do say is that it worked well enough for them to try the same partner model again for the LinkedIn product.
Why it suited a two-person team: an equity partner is paid only if the product grows, so the promotion keeps going after launch day. A one-off sponsored post stops when it scrolls out of the feed. That is our reading of the trade-off; the founders did not compare the two.
Why did the founders clone Tweet Hunter for LinkedIn?
They believed one product per network was part of why Tweet Hunter worked. Louis-Lucas says competitors were adding LinkedIn inside their Twitter tools, while the team credited a big part of its success to having a product built entirely for one network. So a few months later they copy-pasted the entire code base and started Taplio, a separate product for growing a personal brand on LinkedIn.
By May 2023, Louis-Lucas said Taplio was growing faster than Tweet Hunter. In the August 2022 deal, Molina's thread had put Taplio at $600,000 and Tweet Hunter at $1,400,000.
The split is still visible today. As of 20 October 2026, Tweet Hunter's site sells an X growth tool and Taplio's sells a LinkedIn one, each with its own plans. If you are weighing the LinkedIn side against other tools, our Taplio alternatives page compares them.
What did the free micro-tools do for Tweet Hunter and Taplio?
They were built to win search and social traffic. Louis-Lucas describes the idea as creating many small free tools that could rank well on Google or go viral on Twitter, and lists a dozen of them in the 2023 interview.
We opened every address on that list on 20 October 2026:
| Tool address listed in 2023 | Status on 20 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| besttimetotweet.io | Live, titled Best Time To Tweet, Free Tool |
| whattotweet.com and unretweet.com | Both redirect to tweethunter.io |
| tweethunter.io/trending | Live, an X trends page |
| tweethunter.io/generate-tweets | Live, an AI tweet generator |
| tweethunter.io/tweets | Live, a library of top tweets and accounts |
| taplio.com/lookup | Live, a LinkedIn profile analytics lookup |
| taplio.com/generate-posts | Redirects to Taplio's LinkedIn post generator |
| taplio.com/what-and-when-to-post | Live |
| taplio.com/trending and taplio.com/influencers | Both live: LinkedIn trends, and a list of 100 LinkedIn influencers |
| taplio.com/sponsorship | Redirects to Taplio's affiliate page |
Eight of the 12 addresses still load at the same place, and two more redirect to a current Taplio page. Taplio's free tools page now lists 12 mini-tools, including a LinkedIn headline generator, an engagement rate calculator and a LinkedIn video downloader.
The tactic didn't stop at the sale. In the January 2024 podcast, Louis-Lucas named new free mini-tools, and a yearly LinkedIn and Twitter growth challenge run from January to March, among the things still bringing in users. Louis-Lucas also said the team had bought about ten tiny products over three years to send traffic to Tweet Hunter and Taplio.
How much did Tweet Hunter and Taplio sell for?
The sellers give two kinds of number. Molina's thread of 16 January 2023 lists the deal size as $1,400,000 for Tweet Hunter and $600,000 for Taplio, $2,000,000 combined, with lempire as buyer and an acquisition date of August 2022 (full thread). Indie Hackers, reporting on 19 January 2023 after speaking to Jacquesson, described $2m in cash plus the chance of millions more in earn-outs if profitability and growth targets were met.
In May 2023, Louis-Lucas told Starter Story the acquisition "could range from $10m to $15m, depending on the growth in the next year." Starter Story's headline used the same range, and The Bootstrapped Founder titled its January 2024 episode Selling a $10M SaaS, with its host describing the sale as over $10 million. None of the sources we opened publishes the final earn-out payment. The two figures measure different things: $2M is the deal size Molina listed for August 2022, and $10m to $15m is what Louis-Lucas said in May 2023 the deal could reach, depending on growth.
On the podcast, Louis-Lucas gave three reasons for selling:
- A split decision. Jacquesson wanted to sell a little more than Louis-Lucas did.
- Platform risk. Both products depended on networks they didn't control. The risk later played out: Louis-Lucas recalled that in March 2023, after the sale, Twitter announced API pricing of $42,000 a month and cut the team's access about four days later. Access came back after about 48 hours, and Louis-Lucas puts the resulting churn at under 1%.
- Nothing banked yet. Louis-Lucas said the products were growing fast but the founders were not getting much money from them yet, and if everything collapsed they would get basically nothing.
The founders had expected a US buyer to pay more, Louis-Lucas said, but both products always had very high churn and the large American buyers were wary of it. The buyer they chose was a personal connection: lempire's co-founder, Guillaume Moubeche, went to middle school with Louis-Lucas, and Louis-Lucas says the details were settled over WhatsApp in about two weeks.
What can a 1 to 5 person B2B team copy this week?
Four of the moves cost almost nothing and fit a small team. These steps are our suggestions, sized for a week; the thresholds are examples, not numbers the founders used.
Put a price on the next thing you ship
Before you build more, add checkout to the first usable version. Write down in advance what keeps it alive, for example five paying users in 30 days, and kill it if it misses.
Build one free micro-tool around one buyer question
Pick a question your buyers type into Google, then build a page with one input and one output: a subject line grader, a headline checker, a best-time-to-post table. Link the result to your product. For a plain-text version of the same idea, see our LinkedIn hook examples.
Offer one partner upside instead of a fee
List five people your buyers already follow. Offer one of them a revenue share or affiliate commission for a joint launch. Put the terms in writing, including how long the share lasts.
Write down your platform risk
List every network or API your product or pipeline depends on, and what you would do if access stopped for a week. Louis-Lucas recalled Tweet Hunter losing Twitter API access for about 48 hours in 2023, with no warning.
If your audience lives on LinkedIn or X, post each new tool there the day you ship it. Siela's LinkedIn Presence and X Growth agents can post in your voice at the pace you set, with a choice to see every post first.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Tweet Hunter and Taplio?
Thibault Louis-Lucas, known as Tibo, and Thomas Jacquesson founded both through their studio, Pony Express, started in early 2021. Tweet Hunter came first, in May 2021, and Taplio followed as a copy of its code base built for LinkedIn. Creator JK Molina joined Tweet Hunter early for equity and worked on its launch, according to Louis-Lucas's 2023 Starter Story interview.
When was Tweet Hunter sold, and to whom?
JK Molina's thread on X, posted on 16 January 2023, gives the buyer as lempire, the company behind lemlist, and the acquisition date as August 2022, about 15 months after Tweet Hunter started. Taplio was part of the same deal. The sale became public in January 2023, when Molina posted the thread and Indie Hackers reported it.
How much did Tweet Hunter cost when it launched?
Tweet Hunter's first subscribers paid $9 a month, according to Thibault Louis-Lucas's 2023 Starter Story interview. The founders put a payment gate on the first usable version in May 2021 and treated payment as the one signal for deciding whether to continue. They found those first subscribers by tweeting about the product.
Who is JK Molina in the Tweet Hunter story?
JK Molina is a Twitter creator whom Thibault Louis-Lucas contacted to promote Tweet Hunter when it made $1k MRR. Molina asked for equity instead, joined, and worked with the founders on the launch that Louis-Lucas says took revenue from $4k to $20k MRR. Molina later announced the sale on X, listing a $2,000,000 combined deal size.
How much revenue did Tweet Hunter and Taplio make?
All figures are self-reported by Thibault Louis-Lucas. ARR was below $2 million when lempire bought both products in 2022, about $3.5 million in May 2023 with 10% to 20% monthly growth, and nearing $6 million to $7 million in January 2024. The founders' stated target was $10 million ARR by summer 2024.
Are Tweet Hunter's original free tools still online?
Most are. On 20 October 2026, besttimetotweet.io was still live as a free tool, and Tweet Hunter's trends, tweet generator and top-tweets pages loaded. whattotweet.com and unretweet.com redirect to tweethunter.io. On Taplio, the profile lookup, trends and influencer pages were live, and its free tools page listed 12 mini-tools.
Sources
- Starter Story: How We Built A $3.5M ARR LinkedIn Tool (interview with Thibault Louis-Lucas) (published 18 May 2023)
- The Bootstrapped Founder, episode 288: Thibault Louis-Lucas, transcript (published 24 Jan 2024)
- The Bootstrapped Founder, episode 288: show notes (published 24 Jan 2024)
- JK Molina on X: We sold Tweet Hunter (posted 16 Jan 2023)
- JK Molina on X: deal details (second post in the thread) (posted 16 Jan 2023)
- Thread Reader App: full JK Molina thread (thread posted 16 Jan 2023; checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Indie Hackers (Pete Codes): Tweet Hunter acquired for $2m + earn out (published 19 Jan 2023; read via Wayback Machine snapshot of 19 Jan 2023 (http://web.archive.org/web/20230119132621/https://www.indiehackers.com/post/tweet-hunter-acquired-for-2m-earn-out-0709cae13a))
- Taplio: free LinkedIn tools (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Taplio pricing (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Tweet Hunter pricing (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Best Time To Tweet (free tool) (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Tweet Hunter: X trends (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Taplio: LinkedIn profile lookup (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Taplio: top LinkedIn influencers (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- MicroConf: Guillaume Moubeche (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Siela: Taplio alternatives (checked 20 Oct 2026)