How We Bootstrapped Our Startup to 1M $ in 12 Months (And You Can Too).

I’m really upset with some people on the Internet. Too many times I hear folks from the tech scene advising other entrepreneur to ask investors for money to start… . up Don’t get me wrong, I get it. In some cases investors are the only way to kick off big projects, but I firmly believe that most startups could really make it on their own and (which, to me, is the only ). validate their ideas by making sales first REAL validation I’ve always hold myself accountable to keep the ball rolling, and guess what? I did . Or better, we did it again at , a startup that helps companies to generate more leads. again LeadsBridge LeadsBridge was born as a side project, a spin-off of another startup which . was already making money But after just 100 days, we realized that its destiny was much bigger than that. So we went all in with it. Some of our amazing team members! :) Building a startup is one thing. Scale it is something else. The scaling part is hard. . Extremely hard So I want to share our story here, to help all the brave startuppers out there who want to keep their dreams going, . even without investors Here is a list of 11 strategies we used to bootstrap LeadsBridge to , that can help your startup too. 🚀 1M $ in just 12 months 1) Intercom Sales Chat really stands out from the other chat systems. They crafted the best non-invasive chat, but still an eye-catching tool that bring leads to our sales team . Intercom Sales Chat every single day In the past, I’ve tried Zopim, which is also good because you can start chatting live with your website visitors. But we found it to be a bit spammy and less “real” than Intercom. The Sales Chat is efficient because you can just set simple rules to engage with people with a simple message and a sound notification. Intercom This brought in — just over the last year — an increase of in , and approximately a increase in . 85% generated leads 35% sales Of course, it’s not just the tool. We did tons of split tests to figure out the best messages to create engagement and make people comfortable to chat. Soon, we realized that one sentence + 1/2 emojis or an animated GIF gave us the best results. ( ) see above Different key pages have to have a different messages. The most conversions came from these pages: Homepage Pricing page Checkout page Custom integration page Right now, I cannot suggest any other chat tool besides because — having tried even too many of them — I believe it is the most features-rich platform to generate new leads. Intercom 2) Custom integrations This is HUGE and quite an unconventional thing in the SaaS World: . making custom integrations People use tons of different tools out there, and integrations between them are key for many businesses. Integrations are real revenue-driven tools, and that’s why companies keep considering adopting new tools all the time. After running LeadsBridge just for two months we realized that there are gazillion of tools, and each client asking for an integration is making a sales objection in all senses. I’m biased, I admit that. is a SaaS based on building integrations. But still, we meet tons of companies that have not understand yet how important integrations are to convert leads into customers. LeadsBridge What we did in the past year wasn’t just releasing over 200 native integrations, but also . we dismissed any objections that used to emerge when it came to integrate our customer’s tools Some of the 240+ integration our platform offers. When we offer a free custom integration to our customers, it sounds crazy to them. They often do not believe us, but when they open an account and we really activated them with that integration in a few days...well, it’s a game changer: . the value received is unprecedented for them Still today I find companies saying that they “integrate all CRMs”, when in reality they offer only Salesforce and Pipedrive. Come on… ? really Open your eyes: if your customer’s tool needs integrations to work at their best, do not turn your head around. Collect feedback and release the integrations for them (if you’d like to make more money). 3) Feedbacks + incentives Any business needs feedback to improve, but before I ask anything from anyone, I ask myself this question: Since everyone is super busy nowadays, why someone should dedicate to me 2 minutes of his precious time? Of course, you may have the best problem solving product ever but… What if you need a feedback for a new feature? What if you need a feedback before making an important decision? What if you’d like to collect feedback at scale? Well, the answer is just one: , ! 😉 offer incentives they move the world Giving incentives to gain feedback from your audience and keep optimizing your offer to become better and better, even with a small customer base. Their advice will save your business to make the wrong decision and also it will make you scale it . faster than ever 4) Partnerships Partnerships are in my opinion the most charming strategy you can use to win the market. When it comes to partnerships, the goal is always create a win-win scenario where both will have benefits. Partnerships are worth much more than a simple customer friend referral. They can bring 10, 100, 1000 times more leads and customers and expose you to a totally new audience that never knew about your startup. I would say that every founder out there should became really good at closing partnerships . even more than at closing deals 5) Retargeting I remember when Scaleo banners used to follow us on the internet. 😄 It was scaring but incredible at the same time. Right now, . retargeting is the most efficient and cheapest way to win customers If you do retargeting well, . For a startup that’s a HUGE result. it can lead to a increase in sales 30% Use , and to get started, these networks are bringing us the best results so far. Facebook Mobile Twitter Audience Network Quora 6) Content Marketing Conversions Few months ago, we realize that over 5% of our newsletter subscribers had registered for a LeadsBridge account. We were very happy about it, but we discovered that the credit didn’t belong to our email marketing efforts. The conversions came from the content we created on our blog, and the one we shared on other influencers blogs. As soon as we realized it, we started scaling our content marketing team. Knowing this changed everything for us. It’s hard to understand if doing Content Marketing is profitable or not, so try to track your content the best you can and focus in particular on trying to understand how many time your content has been involved on (e.g. with this Google Analytics): the conversion path You’ll be surprised to discover how much content marketing is key to generate new conversions. 🙂 7) Quora has been an incredible asset for us to acquire new visibility. Quora It’s a platform loved by the users because there are many professional answering to their questions. When we started understanding some best practices such as how to craft the best answer or how to acquire more views, we went from 16 to 1200 visitors per month on our website. Today we dedicate 4 people of our team to answer questions on with a Quora massive high-quality traffic generation in return. If you are a startup founder and you know your market very well, share your knowledge and help other people on Quora, it will pay off big time! 8) Demo calls After a few months running LeadsBridge, we realized that showing demos through scheduled calls is a great way to show the product and answer the customer questions in real-time. So far, it’s working really well. Right now, of total new subscription come from the Sales Team, which should be one of the first things you have to build to grow fast. 35% If you think you have a great product, prove it, and people will love to become customer, even if you are in your early stage. 9) Team motivation Scaling a company is hard, and founders can’t make it by themselves for sure. If LeadsBridge reached some great results, . it’s because of its incredible team members Proud to be #leadsbridge. : they have to be motivated with the right energy to keep the project moving forward. To build a good team though, hiring talents is not enough In LeadsBridge we wanted to create something unique, something that our team members appreciate and that motivates them everyday to grow together. What you need as a founder, is not just to find good talents, but to find talents to transform into founders. People that will give their blood for the success of the project and viceversa. : before the customers, before money, before anything. If your team is not in a good health, your startup will die soon. Your team must comes first 10) Champion support Are you kidding me? Seriously? Support is the key for customer happiness? Come on, Stefan, you can do better. Well, I am serious about this. . Full stop. Out there, customer support sucks People don’t know how to support their clients. Few weeks ago, , I received an email from a guy with a great product offer. Something that, honestly, . after our launch on Product Hunt I would have gladly paid for As soon as I landed on their website, I had the proof that the product would have been great for us, but once I opened up a chat with them to discuss the details, the answer was: “We reply to every message within 72 hours.” I didn’t want to believe it. A lot of startups put seriously at risk their entire business because of their bad customer support. A good customer support has 3 essential belief that should be a bible for your customer happiness team: Never close a ticket until the customer say “ ”. I’m good, thanks Never say: “ ”. Find a way at all costs. I’m not able to help you Be quick. Customer time is precious, you are going to lose tons of customers if you leave them alone. An example of what great customer support means. Nowadays, waiting up to 3 days to reply to a customer’s request . is an eternity I’m not saying that everyone should offer a live chat, which nonetheless is an hard commitment but, always try to do better. Observe , and learn how to do it right by reading ’s blog, . the award-winning customer support in Wpengine The Help Scout Team they are really good at it 11) Steal audience from others I already talked about how content marketing helped us in acquiring new customers and how important it is to track conversions coming from it. But there is something I didn’t say before that is really important for LeadsBridge: we don’t just publish content within our blog, . we scale it outside of our comfort zone In fact, it’s key to spread tons of content around the web, on news sites, on influencers’ blogs or wherever you think “ ”. In a way, that’s like “stealing” audience from others. 😄 This website/blog has a good audience for my product LeadsBridge is currently publishing of the content around the web which is giving us a tremendous power in acquiring new audiences and keep scaling the business without interruptions. 80% Creating good content today is expensive, it’s hard and time consuming. . But it’s worth it The best way to leverage it, is by publishing it in places that you already know there are many potential interested people in what you do. Conclusion Running a startup is extremely and it takes a lot of everyday and . hard grind hustle But it’s also incredibly . 🙌 rewarding It’s one of the best thing I could ever dream of — professionally speaking — because it’s a rich opportunity to learn, grow and expand beyond my comfort zone. It’s a journey I will never forget in my entire life. So if you are a dreamer and a hard-worker like me and our team at , and you are trying to bootstrap your project on your own, without waiting for an investors to give it steroids, I want to tell you this: LeadsBridge You can make it with your own strengths. We are a living proof of this. 🍻 Cheers! . Story by: Stefan Des — If you liked this story, give us a clap! We appreciate it. Thank you!