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Home/The SaaS Podcast/Episode 41
SaaS Content Marketing on a $400/Month Budget
Kevin Lee, We-Care.com

SaaS Content Marketing on a $400/Month Budget

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Episode Summary

Most startups throw money at paid search and wonder why they can't compete with established brands. Kevin Lee, who has run a digital marketing agency for almost 20 years, explains why SaaS content marketing combined with retargeting is the smarter play for startups on a limited budget.

In this episode, Kevin breaks down the Quality Score disadvantage that every new company faces, reveals why a $400/month budget can still generate profitable clicks, and shares the retargeting mistake that makes brands look like stalkers.

Kevin Lee is the founder and CEO of We-Care.com, a service that allows online shoppers to donate a percentage of their purchases to nonprofits at no cost. The platform has partnered with over 2,500 merchants including Travelocity, Sears, and Apple, raising over $7.8 million for causes. Kevin is also the co-founder and CEO of Didit, an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency that has been in business for almost 20 years.

In this conversation, Kevin shares hard-won lessons about SaaS content marketing and search engine marketing from working with companies of all sizes. He explains why startups face a built-in Quality Score disadvantage against established brands, and how that translates directly into higher costs per click. When searchers see a familiar brand name in the results, they click it more often, which gives that brand a lower effective CPC.

Kevin walks through how to build a profitable SaaS content marketing and paid search strategy on a shoestring budget. His advice: start by narrowing your campaign to the highest-profit keywords, geographies, times of day, and devices. Then combine that with retargeting, but with a critical rule - always set frequency caps so you don't stalk your prospects. He also explains how content marketing, email, and social CRM can feed retargeting audiences that are far cheaper than competing on expensive auction keywords.

Topics: Content & Inbound Marketing|First Customers

Key Insight

Kevin Lee, who has run digital marketing agency Didit for almost 20 years, explains that startups face a built-in Quality Score disadvantage in paid search because established brands get higher click-through rates. Instead of competing on expensive keywords, Kevin advises narrowing campaigns to the highest-profit clicks by geography, time, and device, then combining content marketing with retargeting to reach prospects at a fraction of the cost.

Key Ideas

  • Established brands get a "brand discount" in paid search - higher click-through rates drive better Quality Scores and lower CPCs
  • A startup with $400/month should narrow campaigns to specific keywords, geographies, times of day, and devices for highest-profit clicks
  • Retargeting without frequency caps wastes budget and makes brands feel like stalkers - always cap display frequency
  • Content marketing and social CRM can feed retargeting audiences without competing in expensive keyword auctions
  • Custom audiences built from email addresses and phone numbers let startups retarget through social media without relying on cookies

Key Lessons

  • 🎯 SaaS content marketing beats expensive paid search for startups: Kevin Lee explains that startups face a built-in Quality Score disadvantage because established brands get higher click-through rates, making keyword auctions brutally expensive for newcomers.
  • 💰 Narrow your paid search to the highest-profit clicks first: With a $400/month budget competing in a $40,000/month category, Kevin Lee advises slicing campaigns by keyword, geography, time of day, and device to find the most profitable segments.
  • 🔄 Always set retargeting frequency caps to avoid stalking prospects: Kevin Lee says the biggest retargeting mistake is showing ads 20+ times daily without caps, which wastes budget and makes the brand feel creepy instead of helpful.
  • 🧠 SaaS content marketing feeds retargeting audiences at lower cost: Instead of competing on expensive search keywords, Kevin Lee recommends using content, email, and social engagement to build retargeting audiences of high-intent prospects.
  • 🚀 Landing page improvements compound your paid search results over time: Better conversion rates from landing page optimization let you bid more aggressively, creating a virtuous cycle that gradually closes the gap with established competitors.
  • 🎯 Build custom audiences from email and phone data for SaaS content marketing: Kevin Lee explains that uploading customer email addresses and phone numbers to social platforms creates retargeting audiences without relying on cookies or expensive search auctions.
  • 📉 Brand recognition drives Quality Score more than ad copy: Searchers scan domain names, not headlines, when choosing which result to click, which means a startup's biggest disadvantage is brand awareness, not ad creative quality.

Chapters

00:00Introduction
01:22Defining search marketing and search intent
02:19SEM vs SEO vs social search
02:41Time-shifted search and retargeting intent
04:30High-consideration vs low-consideration decisions
05:04Common SEM mistakes startups make
05:49The Quality Score brand advantage
07:15Why established brands pay less per click
08:00Searchers scan for brand names, not ad copy
09:19How to start paid search on a limited budget
10:05Slicing campaigns by keyword, geography, and device
11:58Retargeting strategies for startups
12:48The biggest retargeting mistake - no frequency caps
13:36Rising keyword costs and auction market dynamics
14:25Content marketing plus retargeting as an alternative
15:30Building social CRM and custom audiences
16:47Lightning round
19:44Where to find Kevin Lee

Episode Q&A

How does Quality Score give established brands an unfair advantage over startups in SaaS content marketing and paid search?

Quality Score is a normalized predicted click-through rate. Established brands get clicked more often because searchers recognize the brand name, which lowers their effective cost per click and makes it nearly impossible for startups to compete on the same keywords at the same cost.

What SaaS content marketing and retargeting strategy does Kevin Lee recommend for startups with limited budgets?

Kevin Lee advises combining content marketing with retargeting instead of relying solely on expensive paid search. Startups can retarget visitors who engage with content, email campaigns, or social media, reaching high-intent prospects at a fraction of the cost of keyword auctions.

How did Kevin Lee advise startups to optimize a $400/month paid search budget at Didit?

Start by identifying the highest-profit keywords, then narrow by geography, time of day, and device type. A startup spending $400/month against a category that costs $40,000/month nationally needs to slice the campaign down to where the most profitable clicks are concentrated.

Why does Kevin Lee say retargeting without frequency caps is the biggest SEM mistake startups make?

Showing the same ads 20 or 25 times a day to a prospect who hasn't responded wastes budget and creates a stalker-like experience. Setting frequency caps keeps campaigns efficient and makes ad appearances feel more natural and serendipitous.

What role does search intent play in SaaS content marketing according to Kevin Lee?

Kevin Lee defines search as a consumer signal of intent, not just a query. High-consideration decisions like choosing a mortgage provider keep prospects in search mode for days, which means retargeting those prospects long after the initial query can still convert effectively.

How does Kevin Lee recommend startups use social CRM for SaaS content marketing and retargeting?

Instead of relying only on cookie-based retargeting, startups can upload email addresses or phone numbers to create custom audiences on social platforms. This lets startups retarget prospects and customers through social media ecosystems at lower cost than paid search.

What landing page strategy does Kevin Lee recommend for startups running paid search campaigns?

Kevin says every efficiency gained from a better landing page compounds over time. Better conversion rates mean you can afford to bid more per click, creating a virtuous cycle that gradually lets a startup compete against larger brands in paid search.

Why does Kevin Lee say startups should not expect immediate profitability from paid search campaigns?

New companies lack brand recognition, which directly lowers their predicted click-through rate and Quality Score. This means they pay more per click for the same position. Kevin Lee says startups need to accept this disadvantage and invest in building brand familiarity across multiple channels to improve search performance over time.

How does Kevin Lee at Didit compare high-consideration versus low-consideration search behavior for SaaS content marketing?

Low-consideration purchases like flower bouquets resolve quickly, but high-consideration decisions like mortgages or vacation planning keep prospects in search mode for days. This extended intent window makes retargeting especially valuable for SaaS products, where buying decisions often involve multiple stakeholders and weeks of evaluation.

Book Recommendations

Zero to One

by Peter Thiel

Links

  • We-Care.com: Website
  • Kevin Lee: LinkedIn
  • Omer Khan: LinkedIn | X
Full Transcript

Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Okay.
Today's episode is part two of the interview with Kevin Lee.
Kevin is the founder and CEO of We Care, a service that allows online shoppers to donate a percentage of their online shopping at no cost to them to a nonprofit school or association.
It's partnered with over two and a half thousand merchants from Travelocity to Sears, 1-800-Flowers and Apple.
And to date, We Care has raised over $7.8 million.
Kevin is also the co founder and CEO of Diddit, an award winning full service online advertising and marketing services agency that's been in business for almost 20 years.
In this episode, Kevin will share some lessons to help software entrepreneurs be more successful with search engine marketing, even if you have a limited budget.
Okay, Kevin, welcome back.

Guest (01:21.310)
Thanks for having me.

Omer (01:22.270)
Today we're going to talk about search marketing.
Now let's start by getting clear about what that actually means.
How do you define search marketing in your business?

Guest (01:33.470)
The way I see it is search is a consumer signal of intent.
And so people are in an unusual state of mind when they're, when they're in search mode.
They're much more open to suggestion, they're much more open to navigating to specific sites or engagements, consumption of information around whatever it is that they have an interest in.
And so search almost like a state of mind that a consumer is in and then how you get to that consumer while they're in that state of mind is a vendor or a channel or an ad creative issue.
So that search intent is the key.

Omer (02:19.050)
So do you, do you think sort of primarily about SEM as paid search, or do you also think about it as SEO?
Or even these days, I guess even social media has a sort of a search component to it.
So is it all of those things for you?

Guest (02:41.350)
Yeah, I think it's all of those things and it's even time shifted search.
So even display media or video search is part of that equation.
So all that is changing is just what the search engine results page looks like, if there is even a search engine results page.
So the devices change.
Sometimes they're mobile, sometimes they're desktop.
The preference between textual results, image results, news results, video results may be different from the searcher at different points in time.
So it's really just what was their state of mind.
And sometimes for retargeting purposes, the person is actually in search mode for a considerable amount of time even though the search query may have occurred in the distant past.
So a lot of that has to do with whether or not the, the commercial intent that they had is for a high consideration or low consideration decision.
Right?
So deciding which flower bouquet to buy for your significant other is probably low consideration.
You'll take a look at a few pictures and price points, you'll make a decision, you'll move on.
But deciding who to use as your 30 year fixed rate mortgage provider is a long decision process.
So being able to get an ad in front of somebody even hours or days after they engaged in a search behavior with search retargeting, that's still search in my mind because the intent that the consumer had is still there or it might be a honeymoon vacation plan that you're doing.
And so that just takes days and days to really think through all the options.
And so being able to target off of that behavior or that intent using display advertising or even video advertising that can also be targeted based on cookies, that's all search.
It's just different flavors of search.
You've got pure commerce search like Amazon or ebay or the Rakuten Mall where people actually start their search behavior right within an E commerce environment.
That's search too.

Omer (05:03.840)
Now ulaunch did it almost 20 years ago and as a full service agency you, you've worked with, you know, a lot of different clients.
And so I really wanted to take this opportunity to try and pick your brain a little bit and, and really try to understand as you sort of have worked with these different companies and particularly with, you know, with startups in mind, what are some of the common mistakes that you see these companies making when it comes to SEM?
And if you were launching a new startup this year, what are some of the things that you would be doing and maybe doing a little bit differently than others?

Guest (05:48.610)
I would say the mistakes that existing, you know, brands make are often different than the mistakes that a sort of freshly minted startup would make.
But sometimes part of the mistake that the freshly minted startup makes is thinking that they can immediately have campaigns that are just as efficient and profitable as a more established brand.
And for a variety of reasons, that's really difficult to do, not the least of which that the established brands in a particular category and that could be technology or E commerce or pretty much anything, there's a familiarity that the searcher has with that established brand.
And so that established brand is more likely to get the Click all other things being equal in a search result.
So that gives them an unfair advantage, which manifests itself essentially as a discount in clicks because everything is yield managed within the search engine results page these days using Quality Score or some other score very similar to Quality Score.
And Quality Score is a normalized predicted click through rate.
So if you're a new company, you've just launched and you think, hey, Omar, I'm so glad we raised a half a billion dollars to Launch super discount shoes.com and we should be able to have a campaign that's just as efficient as Zappos.
Well, you know, Zappos is a known name and the shoe shopper may just not be quite as inclined to click on super discount shoes.com in comparison to Zappos.
So we actually have some uphill work to get done to have the same kind of a profit metric in our paid search campaigns that a Zappos might have.
Similarly, on the organic search side, right, there's a amount of momentum that you get an organic SEO that is difficult to replicate in a short amount of time because if you actually look like suddenly there are a lot of positive SEO signals pointing to your domain, you can actually have that backfire.

Omer (08:00.240)
And I think it's a great point you make about the brands.
And you know, just thinking about sort of my personal experience, you know, the other day I was searching for life insurance, right?
And what I realized was that when I get the search results page, I didn't really care what the, the headline or the text of the ad or the result said.
What I was actually doing was I was scanning the domain to see if I recognized the brand.

Guest (08:34.440)
Exactly right.

Omer (08:36.200)
And that was enough for me to click on it.

Guest (08:38.120)
Yeah.
And the fact that you chose brands probably more disproportionately higher when you were doing that is that brand discount because those brands are more likely to get the clicks that gives them a high quality score, that lets them get the position in the search results page less expensively.
And so that information in your brain about that brand is the result of all the other marketing that that brand has done, whether it's been done in search or, or it's been on a display or in social or TV advertising for that matter.
All those things influence your behavior when you look at a search results page.

Omer (09:19.210)
Okay, good.
So from a startup perspective, I hear people sometimes say, we tried doing some ppc, it didn't really work, so we moved on to something else.
The first lesson here is you got to be realistic when you start out.
You're not going to immediately get profitable campaigns running.
And you have to really consider the, the unfair advantage that brands have as well.
But assuming that, you know, somebody is still going to, you know, they accept that and they still want to stick with doing some SEM, but they have a limited budget, what can they do?

Guest (10:04.590)
To start, there's a lot of ways to try to identify the highest potential profitability clicks ahead of time.
In other words, given a small amount of budget, if you were advertising nationally 24 hours a day against every keyword you wanted, that might be $40,000 a month and you've got $400 a month.
So now you have to think about, okay, I'm going to now go through and first look at my keywords.
Then I'll look at geographies and times of day and all the other various ways of slicing and dicing.
Maybe I'll just take mobile devices because it's an app, or maybe I'll just take desktop and tablets because I think people will probably make a decision while they're at work, that kind of thing, and slice and dice your campaign down to where you think the highest profit clicks might be and get that working first.
There are all sorts of ways to sort of narrow that focus down.
Certainly on the consumer side, geography is a huge predictor, for example, of wealth or income.
So if you either are targeting lower income or higher income individuals or households, that's a great way to eliminate the waste or the less efficient portions of your campaign.
So start small and learn what works, what resonates from an ad perspective, what resonates from a landing page perspective because everything is cumulative.
Any efficiencies you gain either in a better ad or in a better landing page, really empower you to bid more for that click as you get better.

Omer (11:58.060)
Okay, let's talk a little bit about retargeting now.
When I guess retargeting sort of started being used by marketers initially, I think it felt a little bit creepy, right, that suddenly you'd go to a website and suddenly how did somebody know that when you go to another website that you were looking at a certain product on Zappos or whatever?
And I think these days consumers are getting more used to the idea of retargeting.
But again, for a startup, what advice would you, would you give people and what maybe is a common mistake that you see people still making with retargeting?

Guest (12:48.160)
So the biggest mistake I see marketers making in retargeting is not setting frequency caps on their display.
Retargeting campaigns.
And so it really feels like you're being stalked.
If a brand is following you around everywhere you go and those same ads from the same brand are showing up too often, if they're showing up just occasionally, it could be more by chance or serendipity that you're seeing the same brand again.
So it sort of feels a little bit more natural.
It's just important to set those frequency caps because it also will keep your campaigns more efficient because if the person hasn't responded to you and you're showing ads to them 20 times a day, upping that to 25 is not going to increase the chances of success.

Omer (13:35.680)
Okay, that's.
That's great advice.
Now, the other thing I wanted to ask you was, you know, these days a lot of people will say things like, you know, it was really easy with AdWords 5 years ago because I could advertise against certain keywords and, you know, for, for 10 cents.

Guest (14:00.370)
Right.

Omer (14:00.650)
And these days, it's so expensive that I just can't afford to.
To target those keywords.
Do you have any advice for people who are in that situation?
And if, if not being able to make AdWords work, what other options may there be that people should be considering where they could put their ad dollars?

Guest (14:24.890)
Well, you know, almost all the media that you buy these days digitally is in some form of auction.
And, you know, AdWords and the Bing platform and its predecessor at Overture and Yahoo.
Search, you know, they were.
Search was really the first place where media was auctioned off in real time or close to real time.
And, you know, there could be a winner's curse scenario.
So the person with the highest bids or the highest ad rank, meaning that they show at the top of the search results page, they weren't necessarily actually winning.
They could be losing money on every click.
So, yeah, I mean, auction markets for media are brutal, and search is probably the most brutal because in some cases there's such a shortage of good keywords for a particular industry category that the marketers really do beat themselves up against each other and in an attempt to get those clicks.
But you mentioned retargeting earlier.
That's being used effectively as part of a content marketing strategy for SEO and social.
Because the idea is that I don't only have to retarget search behavior.
I can retarget any behavior where the intent or interest around my product is high.
And that could have been the result of social media.
That could have been the result of an email marketing campaign.
It could have been the result of a variety of things.
And being able to then get messages in front of those individuals using retargeting can be very effective.
Similarly, building both a CRRM and social CRM strategy can be really effective.
So you don't only necessarily have to retarget based on cookies.
These days, with custom audiences and such, you can use things like email addresses and or cell phone numbers, for example, or phone numbers to create a custom audience within the social media ecosystems and retarget your prospects or customers that way.
So it's just a matter of trying to find the people at the right time with the right message.
And there are often more, more than one channel to do that.

Omer (16:47.300)
Great.
That's great advice.
Thank you, Kevin.
Okay, it's now time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Are you ready?

Guest (16:57.460)
Yep.

Omer (16:58.260)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?

Guest (17:04.260)
Best piece of business advice I ever received is probably Understand Accounting.

Omer (17:11.230)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Guest (17:15.310)
Currently, I would probably recommend zero to one.
I think that's Peter Thiel, just because he articulates the difference between ventures that make a huge difference in a marketplace and ventures that are just normal businesses.

Omer (17:30.030)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?

Guest (17:36.120)
Successful entrepreneurs stay in touch with their employees and their customers.

Omer (17:42.680)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit

Guest (17:50.120)
productivity tool?
I guess current favorite continues to be email.
I use my email inbox sometimes to even remind myself to do things.

Omer (18:00.440)
If you had to start over tomorrow, how would you go about finding that next business opportunity?

Guest (18:07.940)
I would probably not rush into it.
Every business I've invented thus far has been the result of some kind of a catalyst in my ecosystem or in my life that caused me to think, wow, there's a better way of doing this, or wow, there's a complete vacuum in this particular area.
I wonder if there'd be a way of filling that vacuum.
So I would certainly wait until the right idea comes along if you.

Omer (18:36.420)
I already asked you that one.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Guest (18:45.300)
Most people don't know.
Is actually born in Germany by mistake because my mom was visiting and I showed up 10 weeks early.

Omer (18:55.460)
So does that give you German nationality?

Guest (18:58.340)
Potentially, yes.
I have two birth certificates, one from the American embassy in Germany and one from Germany.

Omer (19:06.800)
There we go.
Okay.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?

Guest (19:13.120)
I don't know, that's a tough one.
You may have to think and you'll have to edit out my ums and ahs on this one.
Let's see, passion outside of work is probably science.
I think science and engineering education is so critical to the future of both our country and the world that I feel like it's just not getting the level of attention that it deserves.
Great.

Omer (19:43.650)
Kevin, I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights with our audience.
And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better personally as well.
Now, if folks want to find out more about We Care, they can go to wedash care.com and for did it they can go to D I d I t.com if they want to get in touch with you.
What's the best way for them to do that?

Guest (20:08.610)
They can pick their social media flavor that they like.
I'm on Twitter.
I'm heavily on LinkedIn.
You can find me on Facebook, although probably a bit more difficult given how many other Kevin Lee's there are.
But certainly Twitter.
I'm easy to find on Twitter.
I'm easy to find on LinkedIn.

Omer (20:25.810)
It awesome, Kevin.
Thanks again and I wish you continued success.

Guest (20:30.770)
Thanks YouTube.
Take care.

Omer (20:32.530)
Thank you.

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