Rolex's foundational movement supply relationship with Aegler in Bienne ran on an informal handshake deal from 1905 until Rolex finally acquired Aegler in 2004.
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Hans moves to London at 22, works briefly at an unnamed British watch firm, then in 1905 teams up with investor Alfred Davis (who would later marry his sister Anna) to found Wilsdorf & Davis Limited. Rather than importing finished watches, Wilsdorf leverages his Kuno Korten connections to assemble watches himself — importing Aegler's miniature movements and combining them with best-in-class cases. Jean Aegler, a generational talent in the Swiss mountains making tiny precision movements before there was a market for them, becomes Rolex's foundational movement supplier on a simple handshake deal. This informal but binding partnership would run unbroken for 99 years until Rolex formally acquired Aegler in 2004.
Despite months of meticulous preparation, Starter Story's initial launch attracted zero users — a humbling reminder that building alone guarantees nothing.
A single Reddit link post quickly drove 100 visitors to the Starter Story website, igniting the founder's belief in social traffic.
After reformatting content as a native self-post (no direct link spam), the post exploded with hundreds of upvotes and thousands of readers.
By posting again and again with the native-content strategy, the founder's posts repeatedly hit Reddit's front page, reaching millions of readers.
Before Reddit banned his domain, the founder converted his viral traffic into an email list of tens of thousands — a self-owned audience independent of Reddit.
Redditors eventually organized a petition to ban starterstory.com posts, effectively ending the Reddit growth channel — but the email list was already built.
The Reddit attention strategy ultimately served as the foundation for a million-dollar business, proving that free distribution channels can replace paid marketing.
The key tactic was keeping content fully on-platform (no direct link spam), then adding a small link at the post's end for users who wanted more.
With a thriving email list and a self-owned audience, the founder quit his six-figure New York City salary job to go all-in on Starter Story.
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