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Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

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Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#41

So out of nowhere, people wanted use your product because you outstand as a way way different product? How is it much different than Jira with few plugins?

They integrate with Jira, so my thinking is that the answer may be that they are not any different to Jira with a few plugins, because their solution IS Jira with their product as the plugin.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#42
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably works in Belarus where you pay people peanuts, and everything is cheap, also lots of lots of people lie about revenue to get attention.

I can not agree. Salary of an engineer here is $3000-4000 per month (after tax calculation). Still less than in USA, but I can not call it a trifle. As for our revenue, I told the truth. If you do not believe it, well, I will not persuade you. I think a knowledgeable person can check math. BTW, in the article I attached a screenshot from our analytics platform (ProfitWell). What caused your distrust?

I can't see the original comment, but you mean $3000/month in Belarus?

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#43

Huge congratulations! I noticed there was a constant revenue at 20K MRR but then starting January 2017 it picked up in growth. How did that happen?

Not an easy question. I think I can write a separate blog post about it. But generally speaking, we completely redid the whole system. In the beginning, we did not understand correctly what customers really need, and our architecture did not allow us to make this "pivot".

The hardest thing is that we could not learn it without failing. We got it only after we showcased the product to the market and after talking to hundreds of customers.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#45
post #2

Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.

FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?

I dunno specifically about this particular instance but our CFO encourages us to select annual plans for apps that are cheap enough to not impact cashflow in a meaningful way and where we get a discount if we choose the annual plan.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#46

Browser extensions are underrated, and ideal for such use cases! More people should consider it as part of their tech arsenal. Congrats!

I agree. And once again I will note that browser extension was the crucial idea behind our growth.

But there are some difficulties. For example, sometimes our customers do not understand that the extension is needed and delete it :) Or, for example, they have several computers and on each, they need to install our extension. And they simply forget it.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#47

Huge congratulations! I noticed there was a constant revenue at 20K MRR but then starting January 2017 it picked up in growth. How did that happen?

Not an easy question. I think I can write a separate blog post about it. But generally speaking, we completely redid the whole system. In the beginning, we did not understand correctly what customers really need, and our architecture did not allow us to make this "pivot". The hardest thing is that we could not learn it without failing. We got it only after we showcased the product to the market and after talking to h…

Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I noticed that one of the books that inspired you was Traction. Which growth channel worked best for you?

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#48
post #2

Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.

Hey, congrats! We are going a similar path with https://fulfilli.com/. We haven't raised funding to this day, hence a few questions: 1) do you plan to raise money from now on? 2) Do you have any traction in the US and is your ambition to become a market leader there? 3) Do you think it's possible to get a significant traction in the US without "being local"?

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#49

So out of nowhere, people wanted use your product because you outstand as a way way different product? How is it much different than Jira with few plugins?

In truth, Jira is not our main platform. Our plugin isn't so valuable in this case, because Jira has a built-in ability to track time.

Such platforms as Asana or Trello or Basecamp converts much better. Yes, there were other solutions, but our clients decided that we are better. And objectively we offer some very unique and competitive benefits.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#50
post #34
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, the are no VC is Belarus. However, we do have some great success stories (e.g. AIMatter (was acquired by Google), MSQRD (was acquired by Facebook)). Most promising startups incorporate in US from day one and raise money there. In addition, there are number of funds in Russia or Ukraine. In other words, if you have an interesting idea, you will find money or money will find you :)

Can’t believe you didn’t mention wargaming they are actually a unicorn.

I agree. I have not listed many cool companies. It is a long and IMHO impressive list.

TargetProcess, PandaDoc, FriendlyData, Eightydays.me, Maps.me (was acquired by Mail.Ru Group), SplitMetrics etc. Plus the biggest company is Epam (Market Cap, 7.406B).

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