How a Developer Turned a Failing Startup into a Profitable Business
Jay Gibb is the co-founder and CEO of CloudSponge, a product that helps businesses to acquire more users via their email referral forms.
Most referral forms ask you to type in your friend's email addresses. With CloudSponge it's possible to give users access to their contacts directly from your website.
The company was founded in 2010, is self-funded and its customers include companies such as Lyft, Yelp and AirBnB.
We discuss how Jay started out with $100K and a small team to build the ‘ideal' product. They blew most of that money and still didn't have a product in market. Jay knew that he either had to quit or pivot. They needed a ‘plan B'.
So they took ONE feature from the product they were building and turned it into a standalone product. They had a crappy website up in less than a week and started charging right away. Today, that startup has an annual run rate of over $500,000 and is profitable.
Book Recommendation
- “Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers” by Gabriel Weinberg
Links, Resources & People Mentioned
Contact Information
- Jay Gibb – @circuitfive | jay [at] cloudsponge [dot] com
- Omer Khan – @omerkhan
Recommended Podcast Episodes
- Getting Your SaaS Product Messaging Right - with Robin van Lieshout [242]
- Successfully Pivoting a SaaS Business - with Sandi Lin [245]
- Makerpad: How Ben Tossell Bootstrapped a $240K Side-Project - with Ben Tossell [238]
- What to Do When No One Will Pay for Your SaaS Product - with Ryan Born [228]
- SaaS Product-Led Growth and the New Customer Journey - with Blake Bartlett [263]
- Scratch Your Own Itch for SaaS Success - with Janna Bastow [158]
- Lessons on Marketing a SaaS App with Zero Marketing Budget - with Erik Christiansen [162]
- Loomly: How We Grew Our SaaS to Over 7000 Customers - with Thibaud Clement [280]
- Bootstrap and Sell a Profitable Micro-SaaS Company - with Tyler Tringas [207]
- How Carrd's Founder Turned a Side Project into a Profitable SaaS - with AJ [225]