Krzysztof's fast track to building and launching a directory website

Meet Krzysztof Cichy.

You might remember Krzsztof from Fake Mayo back in May 2025, where he shared his journey about his first app, BoomHabits.

He built it with the help of AI, and to his surprise it reached 200 users in just three days.

That moment changed everything for him. It showed him how powerful creating can be, and since then he has kept building and launching. What started as one experiment quickly turned into a journey that he doesn’t see ending anytime soon.

This story is about Krzysztof’s most recent project - Launch Directories.

The story told by Krzysztof Cichy

The idea

The idea for Launch Directories came from something simple.

A few months ago, I posted a plain Excel sheet on Reddit with 52 directories where people could promote their products. Within a couple of days, the post had over 400 upvotes. I didn’t expect it, but the response was loud and clear: founders were hungry for this kind of resource.

When I first posted that Excel sheet on Reddit, I honestly didn’t plan anything. It was just 52 directories I had collected, I shared it, and somehow it blew up 400 upvotes in a few days. People were commenting, asking for more, thanking me. And I… did nothing. I left it. I thought: “cool, they liked it,” and moved on.

Building

Three weeks after my Reddit post, I couldn’t sleep. It was the middle of the night, around 3 a.m. I sat down at my desk and thought, okay, maybe it’s time to build something real out of this.

I started coding. No plan, no design, just raw energy. By 7 in the morning, Launch Directories was online. It was buggy, it was basic, but it was there.

I posted about it on X.

Marketing

My little “night hack” quickly started to grow.

Today Launch Directories has around 80 curated directories on the site, and in some months traffic even reached 13 thousand visitors.

People use it to check where to launch, which directories give a do-follow link (good for SEO), whether a listing is free or paid, and compare DR (Domain Rating, basically a score that shows how strong a site is in Google’s eyes).

Later on, I added something new - the ability for directories listed on my site to generate a badge showing their DR. It was a simple idea, but it became a way for them to display trust and credibility on their own websites.

What surprised me the most is how the project started to live its own life. Other directories actually use these badges to show their live DR score. Founders keep messaging me, saying this was exactly the kind of tool they had been missing. Step by step, what began as “just a list” slowly turned into a recognizable brand.

Submission service

I also introduced something new: a submission service.

Not everyone wants to spend hours clicking through each directory, creating accounts, filling out forms, and repeating the process over and over. So I decided to do it for them. Manually. With care. And with the experience I’ve built up by doing this many times myself.

Feedback

What makes me happiest is the feedback I’ve been getting. Real entrepreneurs, not just random users, wrote to say how much it helped them.

People like Nelson Ryan, CEO of an amazing tool for building job boards called Job Boardly. Or Marcin Teodoru, a serial entrepreneur and creator with over 400k followers on TikTok.

Hearing from people like that that what I built actually saves them time and brings them results that’s the kind of thing that keeps me pushing forward.

And honestly, I still feel like Launch Directories is just one stop along the way. There are so many builders out there who are more talented than me, with bigger visions and better skills. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that even a simple spreadsheet, a late-night hack, or a rough idea can grow into something meaningful.

Just build

If my story does anything, I hope it reminds someone that you don’t have to wait for the “perfect” idea or the “perfect” timing. Just build. Start small. Share it. See what happens. That’s exactly how Launch Directories was born and who knows where the next little spark might lead.

So yeah maybe Launch Directories isn’t the “big one.” But if sharing this story makes even one person think, ok, maybe I should just try building my thing too, then it was worth it.

If you wanna get in contact with Krzysztof Cichy, you can find him on X.

See you next time.

Thanks,
Jakob Jelling

I’m on X. Come out and play.