First Customers: How Free Reddit Demos Built a 7-Figure SaaS

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Cold outreach went nowhere. Product-led growth stalled. Joseph Lee had built Supademo but couldn't get his first customers to pay.

So he tried something different. He went on Reddit and offered to create free interactive demos for other founders' products - no strings attached. He replied to product update emails from companies like Airtable and Zapier with personalized Supademos showing off their new features. And he built ungated free tools that now drive over 50% of Supademo's traffic.

Today, Supademo has crossed $1M in ARR with over 1,000 paying companies and a team of just 10.

Joseph Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Supademo, an AI-powered platform that helps you create interactive demos for onboarding, sales, and product education. In 2020, Joseph was running Freshline, a B2B seafood marketplace he'd grown to $3M in revenue with a 13-person team. But when the pandemic hit, the business lost 95% of its revenue almost overnight. He and his team tried several new approaches and eventually pivoted to a white-labeled platform for food distributors that helped keep the company alive. In 2023, Joseph started exploring new ideas. He kept coming back to a problem he'd struggled with for years: product videos didn't work, and most customers didn't watch them or understand their value. But when he could get someone on a live screen-sharing session and walk them through the product, they instantly got it. The problem was, he couldn't scale that. That insight sparked the idea for Supademo. But getting his first customers to pay was tough. His first target market - early-stage founders - liked the concept, but few became paying customers. Cold outreach went nowhere. Product-led growth stalled. And for a while, nothing really worked. So Joseph went back to basics. He created free demos for strangers on Reddit, replied to product update emails with personalized Supademos, and embedded interactive demos in helpful how-to content. Joseph Lee used three core strategies to land Supademo's first customers and reach $1M ARR:

Created free interactive demos for other founders on Reddit, generating thousands of signups without spending on ads
Responded to product update emails from SaaS companies with personalized Supademos of their new features
Built ungated free tools that drive 50%+ of traffic by letting users experience the product before signing up

This episode is part of our First Customers series.

Key Insight

Joseph Lee grew Supademo from $100K to $1M ARR in 12 months by leading with free value instead of traditional sales. When cold outreach and PLG stalled, he created free demos for strangers on Reddit and replied to SaaS product update emails with personalized Supademos - converting generosity into his first customers.

Key Ideas

Created free interactive demos for strangers on Reddit, generating the first several thousand signups without ad spend
Responded to product update emails from companies like Airtable and Zapier with personalized Supademos of their new features
Built ungated free tools (screenshot editor, hotspot annotator) that drive 50%+ of traffic with 11-12% signup conversion
Shifted ICP from early-stage founders to 50+ headcount organizations for higher willingness to pay and stickier retention
Ran programmatic SEO modeled after Zapier, embedding interactive Supademos into how-to content for high-volume keywords

Key Lessons

🎯 Get first customers by leading with free value: Joseph created free demos for strangers on Reddit without expecting anything in return. This "show, don't tell" approach generated Supademo's first several thousand signups and proved the product's value.
📉 Cold outreach fails without dedicated resources: Supademo tried outbound sales and it flopped. Joseph learned that doing outbound poorly is worse than not doing it at all - it requires deliverability, messaging, and full-time focus to work.
🛠️ Turn existing features into ungated free tools: Supademo repurposed built-in features like the screenshot editor as standalone SEO-optimized free tools pages, driving 50%+ of traffic with 11-12% signup conversion without any new engineering.
🔄 Shift your ICP when first customers don't stick: Early-stage founders loved Supademo but churned quickly. Moving to organizations with 50+ employees delivered higher willingness to pay, stickier usage, and natural land-and-expand potential.
🚀 Model your SEO after proven playbooks: Joseph studied Zapier's programmatic SEO strategy and adapted it for Supademo by embedding interactive demos in how-to content for high-volume keywords in adjacent product categories.
🧠 Validate by feeling the pain yourself first: The Supademo idea came from Joseph's own frustration at Freshline where product videos failed but live screen-sharing converted immediately - proving the problem existed before writing a line of code.
💰 Grow channel by channel, not all at once: Joseph focused on establishing one predictable channel at a time. Only after each channel ran like clockwork did the team move to the next one, building to 5-8 channels over time.

Watch the Episode

Chapters

00:00Introduction

00:19What Supademo does and who it's for

02:20Revenue, team size, and growth metrics

03:41The Freshline story - a B2B seafood marketplace

04:32Driving a truck to deliver fish to restaurants

06:25Learning the seafood industry from scratch

07:27Building the product and getting first customers manually

09:26Growing to $3M revenue and then losing 95% to COVID

10:55Micro-pivots to survive the pandemic

12:36Leaving Freshline and starting fresh

13:23Where the Supademo idea came from

16:04Choosing early-stage founders as the first ICP

16:51Why the ICP shifted to larger organizations

19:31Getting first customers through free Reddit demos

22:49Responding to product update emails with Supademos

25:03SEO strategy modeled after Zapier's programmatic approach

29:00The challenge of being product-led

31:40Why "build it and they will come" doesn't work

33:07Growing channel by channel

36:21Ungated free tools driving 50%+ of traffic

39:43The state of SEO and AI-powered search

41:28Why cold outreach failed

44:37Lightning round and book recommendation

47:11Wrap-up

Episode Q&A

How did Joseph Lee get Supademo's first customers using Reddit?

Joseph posted offers to create free interactive demos for other founders' products on Reddit. He built demos, shared editable links in the comments, and let the community see Supademo in action - generating the first several thousand signups.

Why did cold outreach fail for Supademo's first customers?

Joseph found that as a lean, product-led startup, they didn't have the resources to make outbound sales a methodical machine. Inbox noise was high, and they lacked the deliverability, messaging, and staffing discipline to make it work.

How did Joseph Lee use product update emails to acquire first customers for Supademo?

Joseph subscribed to as many SaaS tools as possible and responded to every product update email with a personalized Supademo of the new feature, showing the company how an interactive demo would help their users understand the update faster.

What was Joseph Lee's previous startup before Supademo?

Joseph co-founded Freshline (originally Coastline Market), a B2B seafood marketplace that grew to $3M in revenue with a 13-person team before losing 95% of revenue during COVID. He drove a Ford F-150 to deliver fish to restaurants in the early days.

Why did Supademo shift its ICP from early-stage founders to larger organizations?

Founders were price-sensitive and used the product inconsistently because they wore too many hats. Organizations with 50+ employees had higher willingness to spend, stickier usage across multiple teams, and natural land-and-expand potential.

How does Supademo's free tools strategy drive 50% of its traffic?

Supademo ungated its existing product features - like a screenshot editor and hotspot annotator - as standalone free tools pages optimized for SEO. About 11-12% of free tool users convert to signups.

How did Joseph Lee validate the Supademo idea before building?

Joseph identified the problem from his Freshline experience where product videos failed but live screen-sharing sessions converted immediately. He then talked to potential customers about their workarounds, effort, and pain points before committing to build.

What is Supademo's programmatic SEO strategy modeled after Zapier?

Supademo creates how-to content for high-volume keywords like "how to export Figma frames as PDF" with embedded interactive demos. Users complete the task, then see Supademo as the tool that powered the experience.

How long did it take Supademo to grow from $100K to $1M ARR?

Supademo grew from $100K to $1M ARR in 12 months during 2024, achieving double-digit growth every single month with a team of just 10 people.

Book Recommendations

The Happiness Advantage

by Shawn Achor

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