First, our design focuses on the end user of our product (sales reps, support reps, etc.) rather than managers/executives. We focus on making a product people will want to use even if it comes at the expense of automation and reporting which is what the higher-ups normally want. Generally, if a company is big enough that the person in charge of purchasing CRM software isn’t going to actually use it themselves, we’ll lose the sale.
Second, we invest heavily in customer support. That means customers who are older, less tech savvy, or who just don’t want to figure things out for themselves prefer working with us.
.. Throughout the entire history of the company, we’ve never had a single individual thing that resulted in a meaningful surge of new customers all at once. (And we’ve been at the top of HN a couple of times, it just didn’t actually do anything for us.)
.. . We were at 6 paying users after 6 months, 47 after a year, and 200 after a year and a half.
.. The dream is to find some marketing channel where you can buy a user at some acceptable amount. (For us, that’s $100-$150 per paying user we get.)
.. But forget everything I said above. By far the most important factors in our growth are low churn and high word-of-mouth. I really don’t know how to market and no one should take marketing advice from me, but once we get a customer, we’ve had great success in keeping them and getting them to tell their friends. Almost all of our growth is organic. There are downsides to this: it takes a long time, there’s no way to step on the gas, etc. But it’s way less fragile and more sustainable than any marketing channel I’ve ever tried
.. I’d even go so far as to say that the most important thing I do right now as CEO to help grow the business is recruit the best support people possible.
.. Thinking about money and profitability and your business model is super important if you aren’t profitable. But as soon as your business becomes profitable, then you have the freedom to decide for yourself what you care about. If “maximizing shareholder value” is your idea of an inspiring mission, then go for it. But that’s not something I care much about.
.. To me, this is one of the biggest benefits of bootstrapping. There’s nothing stopping bootstrappers from trying to make as much money as possible, but they also have the freedom to optimize for other goals instead. The second you raise money from investors, you really don’t have a choice.
.. one nice thing about slow, steady growth is that I’ve normally been able to identify and correct my mistakes before they became huge issues.
.. Unless your customers are programmers, getting a post on Hacker News won’t matter. Being known by everyone at your local startup networking events won’t matter. Winning a bunch of startup competitions won’t matter. The way I see it, only two audiences matter: your customers and (if you have them) your employees. If you spend time trying to impress anyone other than those two groups, you’re wasting time.