How to Bootstrap Your SaaS Company to $1M ARR Before Raising Venture Capital - Deepstash
Ultimate Guide to Reducing Churn

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How to analyze churn data and make data-driven decisions

The importance of customer feedback

How to improve customer experience

Ultimate Guide to Reducing Churn

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Efficient Entrepreneurship

Klaviyo is a perfect example of efficient entrepreneurship — the fact that the company has sustained aggressive growth rates without relying on venture capital makes them an interesting case study. How did they do it? 

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15 reads

What You Do Is Important — How You Do It Matters Even More

Ed Hallen and his Co-Founder Andrew Bialecki spent their first nine months experimenting with ideas about how to make Email better. They quickly Honed in on an opportunity: it was possible to make Email more meaningful to the end user. Getting customer data on things like purchase history or Website behavior Synced with your marketing platform took a lot of time and money. So they focused on solving the hard engineering problems of creating reliable, real-time

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Make the Value of Your Product Really Obvious

Klaviyo decided from day one to offer reporting that went above and beyond the traditional Email Metrics everyone else was using. This meant building Attribution Algorithms into their software, which they knew people were looking for.

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You Don’t Need Eight (Or Eighty!) People to Experiment

The early days of a startup are often marked by fitful experimentation to find the right path. This should be done with as small a team as possible. One or two people should be able to figure out what the company should be doing, before hiring a team.

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Make a Million Dollars Before You Hire Employee #1

Hallen and Bialecki waited until they were on a million dollar run rate before hiring anyone else. They handled everything themselves and constantly looking for opportunities to automate. "many of our best insights came from talking or working directly with customers," says Hallen.

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Hire People That Amaze You

"our business was growing so quickly we couldn't keep up," says Hallen. "when hiring, never settle. Only hire people who will be as passionate as you," says Bialecki. "they’ll never let you down," says Hallen.

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The Bad Side of Bootstrapping

Google returns two stories on the company Klaviyo. The company raised $1.5M in seed funding in August of 2015. it's not the first time the company has raised more than $1.5 million in funding. It's also the first time a startup has had to hire dozens of employees at the same time. A Raccoon-Infested office in a Co-Working space at MIT sparked a Furry friendlier relationship with a Raccoon.

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The Bottom Line: Be Relentless in Your Focus

Hallen says if you’re not solving a real problem, for lots of customers, repeatedly, anything else is a waste of time. Focus on creating a great product that solves a real problem first, and the business will follow. We are now accepting submissions and happy to discuss advertising& Sponsorship opportunities.

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