How Prospectify Grew SaaS Revenue from Zero to $20K MRR in 9 Months
Matt Ekstrom is the co-founder of Prospectify, a B2B prospecting platform that helps you to automate your lead generation process.
Prospectify uses data search, data enrichment, and verification systems to help you build highly targeted prospect lists.
The company was founded in January 2016 and was self-funded for the first year. At the end of 2016, the company raised $1 million in funding.
Getting to $10K MRR
Weekly coaching, proven frameworks, and a community of early-stage founders.
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Scaling to $1M ARR
Strategic guidance, direct mentorship, and a peer group of 6-figure founders.
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Show Notes (Time Stamped & Clickable):
- 00:23 Welcome and introduction
- 02:56 What gets Matt out of bed every day to work on his business
- 03:57 What makes Prospectify different from other prospecting tools
- 07:20 Why the co-founders decided to build Prospectify
- 10:08 Why build another prospecting tool, when there are already so many in the market?
- 12:37 What did the co-founders do to validate the idea e.g. customer development interviews?
- 14:36 How long did it take to build the first version of the product
- 15:29 Going from zero to $20K monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in less than 9 months
- 16:35 How was Prospectify able to grow revenue, so quickly as a bootstrapped business
- 16:54 Importance of understanding your ideal customer profile Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- 18:09 Choosing the right integration partners to help grow your SaaS business
- 19:01 Looking at one example of successful integration – Reply app
- 20:59 How does the integration with Reply work and how does it help Prospectify?
- 22:20 How do you get value from an integration beyond the technical work?
- 25:17 Specifically, what the founders did to go from zero to $20k a month recurring revenue
- 27:15 Two simple tactics for converting more free trial users into paying customers
- 29:49 How the team did outbound sales and how they used Prospectify to find leads
- 35:10 Recap of 3 growth strategies that helped Prospectify grow quickly
- 35:56 Exploring the big lessons and/or challenges the team learned
- 36:48 The difference between beta users and the right beta users
- 41:13 Some things that Matt wishes that they had done differently
- 41:36 Understanding the value you provide different customers and how to price your product
- 44:02 Getting too many customers too quickly can also be a big challenge
- 46:30 Closing their first round and how they're going to spend $1 million
- 47:57 Lightning Round
Book Recommendation
- “The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph” by Ryan Holiday