m3ter: From Early Sales Struggles to Finding Product Market Fit

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John Griffin is the co-founder of m3ter, a subscription management platform that helps software companies enable usage-based pricing models.

In 2020, John was working at Amazon Web Services when he and his co-founder Griffin realized many software companies struggled to implement effective usage-based pricing.

Having dealt with these challenges in their previous startup, which was acquired by Amazon, they decided to start a new company aimed at helping subscription businesses seamlessly adopt usage-based pricing.

As second-time founders, John and Griffin quickly encountered familiar roadblocks trying to drive early sales. Despite their experience and a well-thought-out product, their initial attempts at connecting with potential customers fell flat.

As their cold outreach efforts continued to stall, the founders felt increasing pressure to sign those critical first customers to validate their product offering.

And to add to their struggles, they initially made the mistake of going too broad with the types of customers they sold to. This inevitably spread them too thin, making it difficult to focus on the right features and craft a clear message.

Just when things started to feel hopeless, they got a lucky break, an investor made an introduction to a significant first buyer. Landing this major customer finally gave John and Griffin the desperately needed sales momentum.

Today, m3ter generates multiple seven figures in annual revenue and has raised over $30 million in funding.

This episode is part of our First Customers series.

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