We’ve all heard stories about that guy. He has an idea. He has a little money in the bank. He decides to give it a shot. Fast forward a few years and that guy has a successful company.

Many of the stories I know that start out this way are for companies that started decades ago like Paul Orfalea’s Kinko’s or Fred De Luca’s Subway. Is it possible to replicate this “dollar and a dream” model in today’s business world? Is the $1,000 successful startup a myth?

Meet Ayal Ebert, founder of DesignPax.com

Ayal Ebert’s startup success story proves that it is possible to build a successful business with little startup money. Ebert’s company DesignPax.com, designs banner ads, landing pages, Twitter backgrounds, microsites and other basic elements of an online presence for small businesses. Their work is custom, designed in-house, set at a fixed price and guarantees a specific turnaround time that’s 72 hours at most.

Ebert started the company with only $1,200 in capital in 2010. Today DesignPax.com has 10 employees, is growing sales at 30 to 40 percent monthly and is on track to break through the all-important $1 million revenue mark this year. Ebert provided me with his blueprint for business success:

Follow the demand

Prior to co-founding DesignPax.com, Ayal worked in the online advertising sector. He noticed that there was an increasing demand for banner ads and display ads in general. Market leaders like Google were also investing heavily in selling display ads to businesses. These trends pointed to increasing demand for the design of the creative element of an ad. He didn’t have to find a market for his product; he built a product for a market that existed.

Adapt to customer preferences

Ebert’s company began designing banner ads exclusively, but soon customers were inquiring about other types of work. They expanded into the current portfolio which spans Twitter backgrounds to landing pages. Another important change was offering telephone-based customer service. Initially the company tried to avoid phone-based telephone support by crafting a highly intuitive and user-friendly online self-service platform. While they achieved the latter, customers still wanted to call someone if needed. They adapted.

Drop what doesn't work

Not all of DesignPax.com’s offerings proved successful. Ebert felt that designing custom icons would be a hit. It wasn’t. WordPress themes suffered a similar fate. So did online videos. While these services are still offered, they are not prominently marketed. They focus on what works instead of trying to convince their market to acquire these other services.

Reinvest early and often

Ebert reinvests 100 percent of the company’s profits. This policy has been in place since day one. They didn’t wait until they had a hoard of cash to start reinvesting. Every $500 or $1,000 that would come in through sales would be automatically reinvested in sales and marketing efforts.

Make clear promises to your customers and keep them

The company keeps its messaging simple. They make explicit promises about price, turnaround time, permitted changes and several other items of key concern to customers. Customers know what they are getting. DesignPax.com delivers on these promises. This establishes trust with customers who bring more business to them and refer other customers to them.

Leverage public relations

Much of DesignPax.com’s initial success was due to a mention in a popular business blog. This led to a flood of customers. The cost? Zero.

Well-trained employees pay for themselves

Given the nature of their business, it may come as a surprise to readers that the company does not outsource its work. One hundred percent of the design work is handled in house and is managed by a custom designed software system. Through experience and training, employees are able to dramatically reduce the number of iterations required to execute a client engagement. This provides a higher quality product while proving to be more cost effective.

Not every type of business lends itself to this type impressive return on capital, but the principles implemented by Ebert can be applied to our respective businesses whether we started with $1,200 or $12 million in capital.