PLG & Growth·Jared Brown, Hubstaff

Hubstaff: Overcoming Early Struggles to Bootstrap to $22M ARR

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Jared Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Hubstaff, a time-tracking and workforce management software for remote teams.

In 2012, Jared got a message on LinkedIn from Dave, a complete stranger at the time, pitching an idea for a SaaS product.

Dave had already built a basic product that was generating some revenue, but he needed a technical co-founder to help take it to the next level.

Jared was intrigued but also cautious. It took three months of discussions before he finally agreed to join forces with Dave.

But finding traction in the early days was far from easy.

The founders were constantly torn between working on the product and trying to acquire customers. They were stuck in an endless cycle of building features, launching them, and then realizing they still weren't gaining enough traction.

On top of that, they struggled with pricing strategy, debating whether to keep prices low to attract more customers or charge more to increase revenue.

There were also constant discussions about which features to prioritize and how to allocate their limited development resources.

And despite seeing some early signs of success, they couldn't shake the nagging feeling that maybe they were kidding themselves.

Would enough people really be willing to pay for this product?

But they persevered, and today, Hubstaff generates around $22 million in ARR, serving over 16,000 customers with a team of just over 100 people.

This episode is part of our PLG & Growth series.

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