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Live journey to $500K ARR 22.8% $9.5K $41.7K MRR 1 client · Meta Ads management last sync · today
ABOUT · MAXIME · BUILT IN PUBLIC

Hi, I'm Maxime. 10 years founder. 4 years deep in AI. 2 prior exits.

I co-run The Kreators AI, an agency running $45M of Meta Ads spend. I'm building 500k.io in public — $0 to $500K ARR in 12 months, AI as the only team. This page is the receipt.

Most founder content is one of two things: hyped tutorials that don't survive the next model release, or academic essays from people who haven't shipped in five years. 500k.io is neither.

I've been founding companies for 10 years, the last 4 deep in AI. Two of those companies were acquired before this chapter — quiet exits, more than $10M generated combined. I don't talk about them publicly. Different markets, different lessons. But they paid for the runway that lets me build the next one in the open.

Right now I co-run The Kreators AI — a performance-marketing and lead-generation agency. I personally manage $10M of Meta Ads spend; my co-founder Jack handles another $35M. Combined: $45M of spend across US bathroom remodeling, US personal injury, US SSDI, and FR senior insurance. Most of what I publish on 500k.io gets pressure-tested in production at the agency before it ships as an article. When the math doesn't survive a $10K/day campaign, it doesn't make the site.

Why 500k.io exists.

$500K ARR is the cleanest milestone for a solopreneur. Below it, you're still proving the market. Above it, you're hiring, delegating, optimizing — different problems, different content. The path from $0 to $500K with AI as the only team is the bottleneck for most founders right now, and that bottleneck is exactly what AI flattens. So that's the audience. Founder-to-founder, opinionated, grounded in numbers from real campaigns and real sites.

What I built off the keyboard.

On top of the agency, I built The Kreators AI Hub — a physical AI hub and event space in Lisbon (4A Rua Leite de Vasconcelos) where the community ships, runs workshops, and meets in person. The community itself is Synapse Circle, hosted on Skool. Free to join. We rally the builders, operators, and shippers who treat AI as leverage instead of a toy: people doing serious work with Claude Code, MCP, agents, and the production stacks behind them.

The audience that comes with this.

The best place to reach me is LinkedIn — in/maximelemorillon. That's where I post the operator stuff, share what I'm building, and answer DMs personally — partnerships, press, "this article changed how I work," all read. The agency brand also lives on X (@theKreators_ai) for daily updates. Additional reach lives on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram, but those handles are in transition — I'll relink them here once they're locked. The signal-to-noise stays high because I only post things I'm actually doing. I read everything that's not a pitch deck.

What this site is not.

It's not a course or a coaching ladder. It's not a "build in public" performance. The numbers are real, the failures are loud. The cadence is slow on purpose — written properly, not posted daily for engagement. And it's not financial advice. I might fail. The point of doing it in public is so the failure has signal too.

TRACK RECORD

Ten years of operating, condensed.

The path from first commit to here. Two of the milestones below sit on dates I haven't yet confirmed in public — flagged inline. The exits are kept anonymous on purpose. Numbers are real, names withheld.

  1. 2016

    Started first company

    First commit on the founder track. Bootstrapped, no VC. Ten years ago this month.

    TBD year — confirm with Maxime.

  2. 2019 — 2022

    Two prior exits · $10M+ generated.

    Two companies acquired. Names not disclosed publicly — different markets, different lessons. They paid for the runway that lets me build in the open today.

    TBD exact dates and acquirers — confirm with Maxime.

  3. 2022

    Went deep in AI.

    Stopped treating LLMs as a side experiment. Started using them as the main work surface. Four years in production now.

    TBD month — confirm with Maxime.

  4. 2023

    Founded The Kreators AI with Jack.

    Performance-marketing and lead-generation agency. 50/50 with Jack. US bathroom remodeling, US personal injury, US SSDI, FR senior insurance.

  5. 2024

    Running $10M of Meta Ads spend personally.

    Combined agency footprint hit $45M ($10M personal, $35M Jack). Pressure-tested every claim before it ships as content.

  6. 2025

    Founded Synapse Circle on Skool.

    The community for AI builders, operators, and shippers. Free. No upsell ladder. Founders helping founders ship faster.

  7. 2025 — 2026

    Built The Kreators AI Hub in Lisbon.

    Physical AI hub and event space at 4A Rua Leite de Vasconcelos. Workshops, founder dinners, shipping sprints.

  8. Now · 2026

    Launched 500k.io · $0 → $500K ARR in public.

    Day-by-day public log of one experiment: can a leveraged solopreneur, with AI as the only team, hit $500K ARR in 12 months? If yes, that proves the new playbook. If no, the post-mortem is the receipt.

THE THESIS
AI as leverage, not a toy.

— the line every page of 500k.io is downstream of.