Josh Pigford launched SaaS analytics platform Baremetrics in 2013 to scratch his own itch.

They have a somewhat open and original approach to marketing... that has to lead them to $110k MRR. Bootstrapped.

How?

This posts explains...



The law of reciprocity:

When you do something for someone else, they are more likely to want to do something for you.

... is a human psychological bias that originates from times when we existed within a tribe and exodus from this tribe meant almost certain death.

If someone in the tribe helped us and we didn't return the favor, our risk of exodus increases. Thus, those humans that were more likely to repeat favors and in turn, build stronger bonds with fellow tribesmen, were more likely to thrive.

Keep this in mind...


mission is to help startups grow.

Check out this live chat notification through Intercom:

They are offering to give free exposure to their customers through their
.

This lovely gesture costs them a grand total of $0 if requested by a customer, and aligns with their mission of helping startups grow.

This Intercom message sparks reciprocity regardless of whether the customer actually responds to the offer of Twitter exposure.

We start thinking: Baremetrics was going to give me free exposure, I'm going to be:

- More understanding with their support team after reporting this bug I found
- More likely to give exposure to their content
- More likely to refer them to my friend
- Less likely to churn

Again, all for the grand cost of $0 to Baremetrics.

And what is the impact of these understated, open offerings having on growth?

Strong.

What did we learn?

It may be useful to consider using live chat for something that isn't "use this feature" or "buy my stuff"