(live chat SaaS) in 2012, they have since grown to 31k customers and $5m ARR, completely bootstrapped.
How?
This posts explains...
Humanity has evolved in small tribes of around 150 people on the plains of Africa for the majority of our history.
This has facilitated an evolutionary bias that makes it very hard for us to understand scale.
If there was more than one live chat business in your small tribe of 150, obviously there would not be enough customers to sustain them.
(Timelines are a little out there, but you get my point).
We still think as we live in small tribes, when in fact the internet has catapulted us into an economy of 7bn people.
Couple this with VC's and founders running around trying to fund and build products that have no competitors to "win big".
And you can understand why SaaS founders/marketers are afraid to enter larger markets with the well-funded competition.
But why not understand this bias and create a sustainable, profitable business?
Just like...
.
An immediate glance at their homepage will have any investor or "brainwashed" founder commenting:
"Just like Intercom?"
"These guys are like Drift?"
"No chance these guys can bootstrap growth when those two have raised a combined $347m..."
"So much competition in the space"
Well yes... these points are valid.
But if you are strategic, a bootstrapped SaaS can grow in a crowded market... with the right
:
monthly price point per user is $10-15, significantly less than Drift/Intercom and they have a less complex product... enabling them to win over-served customers.
Adopting a Disruptive
in a growing market is the most effective method of building a bootstrapped SaaS business.
- You don't need to educate customers
- Other people have invested validating the product
- You can copy their marketing tactics
And what % of the $1bn live chat market do
need to build an interesting business: approx. 1%, they are currently at 0.5%.
Maybe our biased understanding of scale is not helping us in our quest to grow SaaS businesses.