S11E5 - Emmanuel Straschnov: How Do You Get Customers To Fund Development?
230k total users. 10k monthly active users. $1.6 million ARR. $0 in outside capital raised. These are the numbers behind SaaS startup Bubble.is, Cofounded by Emmanuel Straschnov. Oftentimes when we think of achieving scale, we jump straight to "I need to raise money to get more users!" Emmanuel took the opposite route because he realized that if Bubble raised money early, investors would have required mass user adoption at a time when the product wasn't ready to be mass adopted. Instead, he took a manageable growth approach over a 5 year time period. This approach turned into acquiring paying customers as means to fund the company's ongoing product development. At $1.6 million in revenue, I'd say they've funded it pretty well. I ask Emmanuel some tough questions and he has great answers for all of them, going into not only HOW to get customers to fund development, but WHY that makes your product better and builds a deeply loyal following. Oh and, the product itself is pretty amazing -- think Squarespace but for any web or mobile app. Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/emmanuel-straschnov-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Emmanuel where he breaks it down even further. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
