in 2016 after having a bad experience as an Oracle customer.

They have now bootstrapped to $11m in revenue with 65 employees.

How?

This posts explains…






We like:

These are great strengths to have. They allow us to build great products, find customers and grow businesses without salespeople.

But this can also be our greatest weakness, as we don’t:

Contrast this to Nicolas:

I closed the first $1m of revenues myself, mostly through in-person networking.

He went to every SaaS related conference he could and booked demos right then and there on his phone using his own product, booking up to 15 demos per event.

What’s going on here?

By using his product to book those demos, Nicolas is demonstrating the value of his product not using his words, but through action.

This immediately answers two questions every prospect has at the start of a buying cycle:

Not everyone will book a demo, but I guarantee almost everyone would be giving feedback to Nicolas on whether the product actually helps them solve a problem they would pay to solve.

Nicolas can take this feedback directly to his product team to tweak roadmap if needed.




Generating commission-free revenue (no salesperson to pay) that fuels early product development and pays founder salaries.

He is not sat in the office writing blog posts or annoying the product team, he is leading from the front, signing up the big boiz.

Getting these logos on your site drives
and adds massive authority:

Core influencers in different industries can drive more value to a new SaaS than the revenue they produce: through word of mouth exposure to other less connected players in the space.

If the guys at Square use them, then we should probably also be a customer. - Buyer at a Square competitor

What did we learn?

That may be, the best way to go and find your first few customers, is to go and find them… literally.