RB2B

Fyxer AI bootstrapped $0-$2M ARR in 6 months and closed their first $1M deal in 12 months. But what's most interesting is what they did the 6 years prior to launching. Here are the 5 reasons why I think will be a 9-figure ARR business: (This isn't a paid post, I just love their story) —— BACKGROUND: - Fyxer is an AI inbox assistant - sorts, schedules, summarizes - They have grown fast, closed a $1m ARR deal SUPER early - I had their founder Richard on “UnF*ck My Startup” last month and was blown away —— 5 REASONS FYXER WILL BE A 9-FIGURE ARR BUSINESS 1. They spent 6 years running a successful EA agency before building Fyxer Subject matter expertise, product intuition, and certain type of a wisdom come from operating in a market for many years before you launch a SaaS. Plus, you have agency profit to spend on the SaaS dev. More people should do it this way. 2. They already knew what execs would happily spend money on. My favorite example of this is sorting email into folders. Execs happily paid $60/hr for EA’s to do this, and they were all sorting email into the same 7 folders, regardless of what they were called. Fyxer knew that if they did this and nothing else at the same or higher quality, those same people would happily pay $30/mo instead of $60/hr. 3. They mapped out all of the tasks performed by their EA’s. Fyxer had reporting - by the hour - on every single task performed by an EA. They sorted the tasks by total time spent, then prioritized by what AI could do as good or better. 4. They watched an insane amount of video footage of EA’s working. This is why I think these guys will crush their competitors. To create that email sorting feature, their team watched over 120 hours of EA’s sorting email. This is an unbelievable amount of discovery, and why the product makes you feel the way it does on the initial install. 5. Their product is sticky and viral. Fyxer gives you an initial dopamine hit when it sorts your email, then continues delivering value through pre-written responses in your voice, scheduling, and thoughtful follow-ups to zoom calls. Diana says that there is a “Fyxer” image on every zoom call and she’s recommended it to every person she’s had a call with. TAKEAWAY: I am not surprised Fyxer is crushing.? Spending 120 hours watching video to create an email filtering feature is exactly the type of dedication and study of the customer required to make a great product. Great products are what is required to go $0-$3m ARR in 18mo. I also love that they are bootstrapped … And are building their product in Gmail and Outlook instead of creating a platform that people don’t want (like every other VC backed startup out there). The only thing I want to know … and I want to know oh so badly … Is how I get my churn as low as theirs is!? I’m quite envious. P.S. Want to learn the exact playbook Fyxer used to launch their SaaS and hit 7-figure ARR? Get it here: https://lnkd.in/gtbxsM6v

What is a "micro campaign", and why would we you even want one? ?? Isn't bigger, better? ????♂? Does size really matter anymore? ?? Pete Crowley ?? and Brendan Short dig into the idea on our most recent episode of Unf?ck My Startup: https://lnkd.in/gYUuzBvw

I just bootstrapped RB2B to $5m ARR in 13mo with 5 people. I also bootstrapped Retention.com to $13m ARR with 6 people. My secret? What I do is repeatable. Here’s my 7-step playbook to 7-fig ARR with tiny teams: 1. Validate demand before building ANYTHING - Retention started as a feature in my first startup, Robly. People loved the identity feature but hated Robly, so we knew the demand was there - RB2B is a B2B version of Retention. We did 300 discovery calls with marketing leaders to validate the market wanted person-level ID for ABM 2. Create a DIFFERENTIATED (albeit terrible) v1 of your product that people will talk about - Retention was originally a batch spreadsheet of site visitors. Pretty terrible user experience, but it was so different that it got tons of traction - RB2B is riddled with horrible problems to this day – but 1 year ago we were the only vendor who resolved site visitors to the person-level 3. Create MASSIVE AWARENESS… Through your HUMANITY - The best way to accelerate word-of-mouth is through social. I did a crazy FB ads campaign for 6mo when we launched Retention. It stopped working, but EVERYBODY in our TAM saw them… That + word-of-mouth + cold email - For RB2B I was able to create viral LinkedIn thought leadership to our addressable market for the 6mo prior to launch. We had a 3000 person wait list 4. Eliminate sales and onboarding friction - At Retention, we gave our customers 25 free emails, then forced them to a call with Diana. She did thousands of 5min presentations that answered key questions and got people to do a 2mo paid trail, then upgrade (or drop) - At RB2B, we did a freemium product to a PLG with a sales rep answering questions and helping with tactical onboarding for high-value users 5. Wait an unreasonably long time to hire ANYBODY - At Retention, we had the same 6 people at $13m ARR as we did at launch - At RB2B, Robb has managed to create an AI that supports 40k free users 6. Spend time and money on very few wildly positive ROI things - At Retention, we had so few people that we had to focus on what mattered. Product, onboarding, cold email, demos, and “wow-ing” our customers - At RB2B, we cut all paid marketing spend ($100k/mo) and our growth sped up 7. Keep doing steps 1-6 until you hit $10m ARR - At Retention, not only did we not burn any money, we actually distributed $5m of cash to the co-founders on our journey to $10m ARR - At RB2B, 12mo in and we are already profitable, with no plans to grow staff or spend on anything until $10m ARR TAKEAWAY Getting to profitability is the promised land for early-stage startups. Yet VCs want Founders to raise money, usually to crash and burn. I think more people should start startups my way. If you can bootstrap $10m ARR, you can do ANYTHING you want with your life. You will be making millions of dollars and playing by your own rules while enjoying total freedom. I know because I’ve done it. That IS my life. You can do it, too.

What matters more, the message, or the timing? ? It's probably not what you'd think. ?? Pete Crowley ?? digs in with GTM Engineer Brendan Short, founder of The Signal (.club), on Unf?ck My Startup: https://lnkd.in/gYUuzBvw

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One of my CEO friends raised over $100M. His startup had a $1.2B unicorn valuation in 2021. I always thought he was CRUSHING IT on every observable metric. So did he. Then last week we went jogging and he started venting... He’s 13 years in, and the last two have been excruciating. Rocketship to $50m ARR, almost no growth since 2022. He told me: “The only choice we have is to try to build literally everything, pitch tool consolidation to our biggest customers, and pray for expansion. The problem is every company in our space is doing it too”. A few minutes went by before either of us said anything. It was just depressing. Four years ago, he was running every day, eating well, looked great. Today, he’s rocking a chubby face and dad bod. He broke the silence. “We’re completely stuck. IPO is off the table, I don’t know how we could ever get back to $1.2b valuation let alone a 3x from there. Nobody ever told me this was a possibility.” This is the biggest reason I talk about bootstrapping so much. So many founders are trapped in the hype-cycle, drowning in VC money, still burning epic amounts of money trying to figure it out. But for most of them, there’s no way out. I've been stuck before. I talk about it all the time. Sometimes you get unstuck, find that killer product and before you know it you're everybody’s darling again. But most of the time you're not. You're just treading water. And then you wake-up, you're 50, dad bod, trying to internalize the idea that the likely outcome for your life’s work is selling your baby for less than the VC you raised. Maybe you took life-changing secondary, and you’re fine with the situation. But maybe you didn’t, and you’re sitting there, anxious about how you’re going to get out of this situation, and even more anxious about what’s next. My CEO friend isn’t unique. There’s a whole class of companies that raised at huge valuations, are stuck, and have no idea what to do. They’re underwater, they know their plan is terrible, yet they can’t admit it to themselves… The consequences are too just too dire. This is what no one ever thinks about when they get on the VC treadmill. And that’s why I always say… If you can bootstrap, bootstrap.

Exciting news! I was invited to be a guest on Intercom's The Ticket podcast! I had a great conversation with Ruth O'Brien, Senior Director of Automated and Proactive Support at Intercom, where we discussed how implementing Fin AI Agent helped us build a scalable support system at RB2B that now automatically resolves 65% of inquiries. You can listen to the episode at the link below or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. My heartfelt thanks to Ruth and Liam for the kind invitation to join the show!

The best way to get Adam Robinson's attention is to offer him a ??. You never know what he's going to say... Check out his recent Millionaire University appearance: https://lnkd.in/gYgdBigb

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