First Customers·Markus Stahlberg, N.Rich

Getting First Customers When Nobody Understands Your Product

Introduction

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It took N.Rich nearly a year to get their first customers. And then most of them churned. The ones who stayed expected instant leads from a product designed for long-term account-based marketing.

Markus Stahlberg and his co-founder bootstrapped for five years, hit $1M ARR, then raised $4M and blew it on 150 SDRs in the Philippines with no management. Then his co-founder was diagnosed with cancer and died a year later. Markus rebuilt alone - hired a proper team, got serious about cash flow, and refined their ICP using "dark attributes" like LinkedIn ad library data to find high-spend prospects. Today N.Rich is profitable with $5-10M ARR and 55 people across 25 countries.

Markus Stahlberg is the co-founder and CEO of N.Rich, an ABM platform helping B2B companies target and win high-value customers more efficiently.

In 2015, Markus and his co-founder spotted an opportunity while running their B2B publishing business and started building a new marketing platform.

But finding their first customers was far from easy. It took nearly a year to get the first 10 customers, and they struggled with massive churn as buyers expected instant leads rather than understanding that ABM requires 6-18 months of relationship building.

After years of bootstrapping and slowly building their product, they hit their first million in ARR and raised a Series A round of $4 million in 2020. But a series of missteps toward rapid growth created major challenges. They hired 150 SDRs in the Philippines with no management structure, burning through most of their funding in months.

Then tragedy struck. Markus's co-founder was diagnosed with cancer and passed away a year later, leaving Markus to run the company alone with little runway left.

Rather than give up, Markus rebuilt the company from scratch. He focused on three things: building a proper in-house team, getting serious about cash flow management, and refining their ICP using "dark attributes" - proxy signals like LinkedIn ad library data that reveal which companies are high ad spenders and therefore ideal first customers for an ABM platform.

Markus Stahlberg grew N.Rich from churning first customers to a profitable business generating $5-10M ARR with a team of 55 people across 25 countries. His approach to finding the right first customers through quarterly ICP iterations and warm outbound with 220% sales commissions turned a struggling startup into a Gartner-recognized challenger.

This episode is part of our First Customers series.

Key Insight

N.Rich spent years churning first customers who expected instant leads from an ABM platform designed for long-term engagement. The breakthrough came when Markus refined the ICP using "dark attributes" - proxy data like LinkedIn ad library spend - to identify companies already investing heavily in digital ads, making the value proposition an easy budget reallocation rather than a new spend.

Key Ideas

First 10 customers took nearly a year to acquire, with high churn from mismatched expectations about ABM timelines
Refined ICP quarterly using "dark attributes" like LinkedIn ad library data as proxy signals for high ad spend
Reframed sales pitch from "buy our tool" to "reallocate 20K of your existing 50K ad budget to ABM"
Paid 220% commission (100% to marketing + 120% to sales) on warm outbound accounts to drive alignment
Rebuilt from near-zero runway after co-founder's death by focusing on cash flow management and in-house hiring

Key Lessons

🎯 Your first customers will churn if expectations are wrong: N.Rich's first customers expected instant leads from ABM, but the product requires 6-18 months of relationship building. Switching to honest education about timelines dramatically improved retention.
🔍 Use "dark attributes" to find your ideal first customers: N.Rich discovered that LinkedIn ad library data reveals which companies spend heavily on digital ads - making them perfect candidates for budget reallocation to ABM rather than new spend.
📉 Scaling headcount without management destroys capital: After raising $4M, N.Rich hired 150 SDRs in the Philippines with no managers. The "Excel multiplication" approach burned most of the funding with minimal results.
💰 Pay 220% commission to align sales and marketing: N.Rich pays 100% attribution to marketing and 120% to sales on warm outbound deals. The higher total cost is profitable because warm account conversion rates far exceed cold outreach.
🧠 Iterate your ICP quarterly, don't overhaul it: N.Rich tests one ICP hypothesis per quarter against real data. Incremental refinement based on current signals outperforms dramatic pivots every time.
🔄 Reframe your pitch as budget reallocation, not new spend: Instead of asking prospects to find new budget, N.Rich says "reallocate 20K of your 50K ad spend to ABM." This makes the buying decision dramatically easier for first customers.
💪 Cash flow management beats accounting profits: Markus discovered the P&L looked healthy while losing 200K per month in cash. Hiring a finance person and building a cash-flow-based system saved N.Rich from running out of money.

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Chapters

00:00Introduction

00:30What N.Rich does and who it serves

01:00Revenue, team size, and profitability

02:00How ABM differs from lead generation

04:19Origin story and spotting the B2B opportunity

06:19Early market landscape and positioning as ABM platform

08:21Pricing advantage over big box ABM players

09:58Building the first product version

11:27How native article ads and programmatic targeting work

14:28Getting the first 10 customers and early churn

16:00Why ABM customers expected lead gen results

18:51Getting sales teams on board with ABM

22:06The ICP realization - TAM is not ICP

24:33Discovering dark attributes and LinkedIn ad library proxy

27:45Quarterly ICP iterations and testing hypotheses

28:25Using N.Rich for their own ABM alongside LinkedIn ads

30:19Warm accounts vs MQLs - the engagement signal approach

33:24Getting to $1M ARR and the 2020 Series A

35:39Hiring 150 SDRs in the Philippines with no management

37:43Co-founder's cancer diagnosis and passing

40:33Rebuilding the company with a proper in-house team

44:13Sales and marketing alignment and the 220% commission model

48:13Expanding from Finland to US market

49:23Lightning round

Episode Q&A

How did N.Rich get its first customers in the ABM space?

Markus and his co-founder leveraged contacts from their previous B2B publishing business to secure early pilots, which served as references. It still took nearly a year to reach 10 paying customers.

Why did N.Rich's first customers keep churning?

Customers expected instant leads like traditional marketing, but ABM requires 6-18 months of relationship building. N.Rich was overpromising and underdelivering because buyers didn't understand the long-term nature of account-based marketing.

How did Markus Stahlberg refine N.Rich's ICP to find better first customers?

He introduced quarterly ICP iterations testing hypotheses against data. The breakthrough was discovering "dark attributes" - using LinkedIn ad library data as a proxy to identify companies with high digital ad spend, who were ideal candidates for budget reallocation to ABM.

What happened after N.Rich raised its $4M Series A in 2020?

They hired 150 SDRs in the Philippines with no management structure, burning through most of the funding in months. Markus describes it as a "just multiply the Excel" approach that produced no meaningful results.

How did Markus Stahlberg rebuild N.Rich after losing his co-founder?

Within four to five months of his co-founder's passing, Markus had a clear direction. He hired a proper in-house sales team starting with AEs, then added SDR leadership, customer success, and revenue operations - building gradually rather than scaling recklessly.

What is N.Rich's "dark attributes" strategy for finding first customers?

Dark attributes are data points companies don't publicly share (like ad spend) that can be discovered through proxies. N.Rich uses LinkedIn's ad library to count active ads per company - the number of ads correlates directly with total digital ad spend.

How did N.Rich solve the sales and marketing alignment problem?

They created a "warm outbound" category where marketing warms accounts through ABM and sales prioritizes those accounts. The key innovation was paying 100% commission to marketing and 120% to sales on these deals - 220% total - which was profitable because conversion rates were significantly higher.

How did Markus Stahlberg fix N.Rich's cash flow crisis after the Series A?

He discovered the company was losing 200,000 per month with only 800,000 left. He hired a finance person, built a cash-flow-based investment system, and shifted to only spending what current revenue supported rather than burning through raised capital.

What role did LinkedIn organic posting play in N.Rich's growth?

Markus started posting daily and pushed the management team to do the same. The organic content builds authority with ICP accounts over time, creating recognition and warm relationships at zero cost - the same ABM principle N.Rich sells to customers.

Book Recommendations

Presenting to Win

by Jerry Weissman

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