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This first-time founder bootstrapped her company to $6m ARR in 21 months

GM! It's Thursday, January 19th - Today, we're covering the ousted Disney CEO's payday, Microsoft laying off 10,000 people, the Twitter revenue drop, 'Avatar 2' box-office results, a bootstrapped $6m ARR business, and how to set outrageous goals and actually achieve them.

- Callum

HEADLINES

Ex-Disney CEO Paid $199,505 Per Day

> Ex-CEO at Disney was paid $199,505 per day for less than 4 months of work

> Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees, representing less than 5% of the company’s total workforce. Reductions will be complete by the end of March.

> Twitter daily revenue has dropped 40% as over 500 advertisers abandon the platform.

> Netflix is hiring a flight attendant for its jet, and it pays $385,000/yr.

> 'Avatar 2' is now the top-grossing pandemic-era film, taking in $1.93b globally, surpassing 'Spider-Man' at $1.92b.

> Mortgage demand jumps nearly 28% in 1 week as interest rates drop to their lowest levels in months.

> Party Supply files for bankruptcy. As of October, the company had 761 Party City stores, 149 temporary Halloween City stores, and over 16,000 employees.

> Amazon Prime memberships have stopped growing in the US for the first time ever.

> Coinbase to halt operations in Japan due to volatile market conditions.

> Carvana adopts 'poison pill' and sells $4b of auto loans to prevent a hostile takeover.

FEATURE

This first-time founder bootstrapped her company to $6m ARR in 21 months.

This first-time founder bootstrapped her company to $6m in ARR, with a team of 5, in just 21 months (37% monthly growth).

What's the business?

GrowthAssistant embeds full-time offshore growth marketers in companies to handle manual tasks, campaign management, design, and reporting.

A full-time hire will cost anywhere from $3,000/mo for marketing operations to $4,500/mo for specialty talent (e.g., web developer, data engineer).

How do they win? 

There are a few levers to pull here:

  • Talent Arbitrage: In short, it's an arbitrage business. They source, qualify, upskill and manage talent offshore (Like the Philipines), where salaries can be up to 50%-80% cheaper for the same work. This also means they can charge clients less than a traditional full-time hire. Making it a win-win.

  • Positioning: The "offshore virtual assistant" market is saturated. What GrowthAssistant did differently is position themselves as a growth lever for marketing teams. This focus enables them to find better talent to solve marketing-specific problems and run much more targeted marketing efforts.

  • The $0 Marketing Plan: GrowthAssistant has mastered organic growth. In 2022 alone, they drove $2m in revenue from Twitter...for free. Here's their Twitter playbook.

Lessons and Opportunities

Don't optimize for being the lowest-cost provider. It's a race to the bottom ad you probably won't win. Instead, focus on increasing value for a specific type of customer.

1) Pick a customer to serve (Content marketing teams, B2B Sales, eCommerce marketers, Real estate agents, loan officers, etc).

2) Understand their value continuum - What specific outcomes is this customer willing to pay the most for?

3) Charge premium prices - Because you drive the most value for a specific type of customer, you can charge higher prices. Use this to become the market leader in your niche.

🔉 Listen to the conversation with Adriane Schwager, CEO at GrowthAssitant here.

PLAYBOOKS

How To Set Outrageous Goals And Achieve Them

Big outcomes don’t happen without a thoughtful plan. Adriane, CEO at GrowthAssistant, uses the Desired Future State (DFS) framework to achieve wild goals.

This process can be broken down into 7-steps:

1) Reflection: First, look at your goals from last quarter. Revisit what happened and ask what worked and didn’t.

2) Define The Desired Future State: List out future company objectives. Don't get too granular. Take the insights you learned in step 1 and set a direction moving forward.

For example, a few goals might be:

  • Goal 1: Increase revenue 150% by 12/15/2023.

  • Goal 2: Increase lead volume to 100/week (up from 20 per week) by 06/12/2023.

  • Goal 3: Improve margin on a per client basis from 40% to 50% by 12/01/2023

3) Define Your Current Reality: Define the frame you are working in. List factors such as market forces, counterpart risk, and overall market conditions that could impact your goals.

4) Build The Bridge: How do you get from the current to the future state? Ignore all constraints and think outside the box.

If your goal is to increase revenue by 150% by 12/15/2023, your options might be:

  • Launch a paid media campaign on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

  • Create marketing case-studies.

  • Use influencer marketing.

  • 2x your social volume.

  • Create a partnership strategy.

5) The I.C.E Method: The acronym stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease. Rank each option with a numerical score from 1 to 3.

For example, "Launch a paid media campaign on Facebook, Tiktok, and YouTube." might be level 2 for impact, level 3 for confidence, and level 1 for ease.

6) Define Action Items: With each initiative scored, you can rank them (image above) and determine which action activities to pursue.

ON TREND

Discord acquires Gas after 9 months

Discord has acquired the Gas social app.

You should know

  • Gas app is a social app that uses anonymous compliments to build someone up or "gassing someone up."

  • They became the #1 social media app in the country with over 5m downloads.

  • They generated $6m in revenue with $0 on marketing.

  • They sold 9 months after launch.

  • All this with a lean team of 4 people.

Give the CEO a thumbs up and join the conversation.