Product Letter

Learning and sharing how the best do product marketing.

 - Insigts from SaaS Startups under $1m MRR
- Creator + SaaS doing $$m revenues
- Proven product marketing frameworks
- What DTC can teach SaaS on growth
- PMM experts take on building great products.

Product Marketing 

KI Consulting

Consulting on out-of-box digital marketing solutions around Content, GTM, Branding and Copywriting  focused on Africa SMEs & Tech Startups

Brand/Content Marketing Consultant 

Aloware

At Aloware am tasked with the following responsibilities:

- Research industry related topics
- Write creative marketing copy for Aloware products/services
- Coordinate with Marketing and Design teams for SEO content visuals
- Conduct and detail Keyword Research
- Double-check on Content UX & Design
- Keep SEO content updated
- Repurpose the content via Social Media.

Digital + SEO Content Writing 

Xerve

Content/Brand Strategist 

 The Logistics Inbox

Writing on Technology News happening in the Logistics & Supply Chain Industry.

Researching & Creating content in the industry

Follow on Twitter: @LogisticsInbox

Get Daily Newsletter: thelogisticsinbox.substack.com

Tech Journalist / Resarcher

Product Letter | proven product marketing

Hey, I'm Okerosi Davis.

What I do >>>

- I consult for early-stage SaaS startups on product launch, positioning, and founder-led growth. 

- I write a 2x newsletter on proven product marketing insights at productletter.beehiiv.com

What I've done >>>

- I  have worked in-house as an SEO & Content Lead for a couple of SaaS companies.

- I have worked in 3 agencies over the years developing, content strategy, branding, and copywriting.

- I have written 100s of long-form SEO content (including technical) for the last 7 years.

- I have developed content strategies for several  B2B SaaS startups.

- I have developed brand strategies for startups.

- I have ghostwritten LinkedIn content for a startup CEO.

-I have designed websites using Wix, WordPress, Shopify, and Ghost and more.

- I have designed landing page copy for clients

Tim turned down a $60k offer and now the startup is doing over $40k MRR. 

( How Tim did it, and my takes)

T. LY CEO Tim Leland: Link management service URL Shortener hopped on Nathan Latka's channel to share how they grew to 450k users. 

First, as I keep saying, the Chrome extension strategy is still underrated. 

 The browser extension allows for product-led growth, creating a paywall after gaining a big user base.

Another notable revenue growth strategy is the right pricing. 
Tim admits that many people starting don't charge enough.

Now, his startup has three tiers, the highest priced at $50/mo.

My simple takes from Tim's conversations are.

- Build a Chrome extension for your SaaS startup (it depends on your category though)
- Experiment with pricing - constantly until you reach the sweet spot. 


P.S. Get a free proven product marketing newsletter. 
productletter.beehiiv.com 

Okerosi Davis

It may be easy to outpace your churn when you are doing under $10k/MRR,

 but when scaling fast, it starts to be hard to beat it. 

Here are the steps Brian took to reduce Exploding Topics to under 3%

1/Insights from customers

The team trapped a list of the longest customers from their Stripe accounts and analyzed them.

 They took their top customers, studied them, and built features specifically meant for them.

Take an example avatar - VC and Investors looking for startups they want to invest in.

 The team at Exploding Topics created specific avatar features with filters to help them succeed when they log in.

Another example is E-commerce entrepreneurs 

- specifically Amazon sellers, so they created features for them to be able to filter trending products on Amazon, reviews, and more.

2/ Improving Onboarding Sequence

From a messy trend database, they improved the onboarding flow by curating the top trends to give users the best first impression.

When users onboard, they choose the categories they want to see and get the personalized list.

Now, when they log in, they can turn on - to keep track of the category project. 

It immensely improved their experience.

3/Going Annual Only

It may sound simple, but monthly payment has a higher churn, compared to annual.

 And if they churn, you have got one year of revenue.

Brian recommends going annual, and in case you are running a promotion, give discounts for annual subscriptions only.

Lastly, the weekly newsletter report covers those users who are no longer using Exploding Topics to get value without necessarily logging into the database.


P.S: Do you like the break down. Get free weekly newsletter on proven product marketing. 

Link in the comments.

The back story begins when Lucjan and the team saw Keywords Everywhere revolting on Facebook groups about them going premium.

 Initially, it was a free tool for keyword research.

Considering they already similar database, the team at Surfer SEO built a Chrome extension in a few days and made it free.

The outcomes:

-A tone digital PR
- 500k organic traffic
-Over 65k users

The lesson:

 Keep a pulse in your space, and whenever an opportunity pops up, ride the way. It may be the growth moment you have been waiting for.

P.S: Get proven product marketing; 
productletter.beehiiv.com


A burglar walks into a street with two houses.

One has two German shepherds at the gate, grilled windows, security camera mounted on the top end of the roof and reinforced door.


The other has normal door, glass window and the second door as the back is open.

Which one are they robbing?

This how  Coro CEO Dror Liwer think about securing it's customers' cyber security.


The all-in-one cyber protection solution is hit $25m last year ( from Nathan Latka channel) using this main acquisition targets.

1/ Outbound with over 80 sales reps in Chicago.

2/ Partnership with master agents in the cyber security space.

3/ Strategic partnership ( becoming the cyber security provider for adjacent companies in the market) e.g Comply Auto.


My take.

A well-structured partnership can scale your startup faster ( Coro is growing at 300% YoY) 


P.S: Get proven product marketing.
productletter.beehiiv.com



Am constantly keeping a pulse on the build-in public wave on X (formerly Twitter), and the SaaS founders are doing it differently across social.

While most founders are sharing revenue metrics, others are nailing growth in a couple of ways.

Gren Insenberg does a podcast hosting creators while running his several tech companies.

 Also, his Twitter content is a great example of founder-led content.


Nathan Latka does it through his podcast which powers Founderpath and Latka SaaS database.

 Additionally, Nathan recently acquired SaaSOpen - an offline/online events company for Founders doing more than $5m in revenue.

The content Nathan produces gets his company Founderpath in front of potential founders to lend funds without taking equity.

As for Andrew Gazdecki - check his X handle, all about startup acquisition. 

Andrew is leading in evangelizing for his company Acquired .com.


With building in public constantly rising, the founder-led growth strategy is here to stay.

P.S: Get tomorrow's insights for free.
productletter.beehiiv.com


A few calls and emails, Fabio hit $1m in revenue for his next startup ( the back story)

The CEO of Gellify, Fabio Nalucci first had a $100m exit from his previous company.

The next one Gellify - supporting  corporate innovations was doing $50m ARR with a 100% YoY as of Nathan's interview.


One acquisition channel that stood out for me. - a network of partnerships.

Work an ACV of $300k it makes sense to build solid relationships.

Fabio mentioned their latest round of $15m was not mainly focused on the money, but the network the funders brought in to build the business.

My take - it boils down to the product you are selling, which will dictate the best acquisition channel for your startup to focus on.

P.S: Get free weekly newsletter on proven product marketing. Link in comments.

At $3m ARR, one insights from Lars stands out for me (and it's impact on 100% YoY growth)

Am listening to the latest interview by Nathan Latka and Dreamdata io co-founder  Lars Gronnegard. 

Questions back and forth with responses and one conversation keeps coming up.

Dreamdata's genius pricing.

For any SaaS pricing is an Achilles heel if not nailed down.

From $0 price tag to enterprise users paying up to $100k/yr, Lars and team have structured their pricing for growth.

At face value, the page may look like they are serving enterprise clients, but they have over 600 users underneath.

One major metric they track across the pricing tiers is MTUs (monthly tracked users)

When a client hits 30k MTUs - it's time to upgrade or upsell them on the next tier.

For future growth, Dreamdata is expanding upwards in the market.

My take, test, iterate, track your product  pricing.

P.S: Tomorrow am sharing more of this in my free weekly newsletter. Linked below. 

Andrew got this email, it may seem 'normal' for most,

 But for the sender, it was life changing.

Am constantly on the lookout on creators scaling SaaS businesses in public.

Better yet transforming lives globally.

A micro SaaS founder from Bali had just sold their company for  a couple of thousands of £$  via Acquire .com

After closing the deal, the enterprenuer shared a heart-felt  email with Andrew ( founder,CEO of Acquire) 

The message, the deal had totally transformed their life ( a decade of great lifestyle with family in Bali)

Andrew shared this on Grow with B2B SaaS pod, and I thought to highlight it here as well.

My goal though is to get in the weeds and understand how creators like Andrew Gazdecki are building SaaS companies in public - successfully.

A couple of questions am asking:

1/ What are their competitive advantages going into SaaS? 

( Greg - prev 3 startup exits, Andrew - sold 1st company for $10m)

2/ How do they do their founder-led growth?

3/ How much does there previous audience & relationships affect this next venture? 


And more...

And then do a deep dive for other SaaS creators to shadow.

Hint: social selling is a huge part of it.

P.S: Get such deep dives in your inbox when completed. Link in the comments.





Initially, it did not make sense why a SaaS company would acquire a weekly newsletter company for over $25 million.

(The Hustle by Hubspot)

 However, it looks normal today, with the latest acquisition being Robinhood taking over Chartr (Data storytelling newsletter).

I recently wrote about Brian Dean’s Exploding Topics after selling his blog Backlinko to Semrush, another software.

The play here is SaaS acquiring content platforms with one goal - as an acquisition channel.

Productized service x SaaS
However, there is a new play taking shape 

- SaaS can either acquire, launch, or partner with service companies to accelerate customer acquisition.

Syed Balkhi - Founder and CEO of Awesome Motive which owns a portfolio of software and blogs including WPBeginner, OptiMonster, and more was on the latest MFM episode where he shared on this new play.

Here is an example Syed shared on how SaaS can partner with service companies in customer acquisition and then do a revenue split.

Example company; Seahawk managing and maintaining web hosting for clients.

The company has partnered with web hosting companies like WordPress, GoDaddy, and others to help manage their clients’ sites. 

And now these companies are white-labelling Seahawk Media’s talent to help everything with website management.

Syed mentioned they are working on their own productized service focused on web development via WPBeginner.

Note: The catch for SaaS founders to offer the service component and add extra revenue, is to acquire top-tier talent offshore (LatAm, Asia, Africa, and others).


P.S: Today's proven product marketing newsletter going live in few hours.

Get insights: productletter.beehiiv.com
 

The 5 lessons this founder learned from 15 months of building an MVP and hitting $10k MRR within one year. 

Am scrolling through Reddit and came across this founder sharing theirs on building a $110k revenue startup. 

Below are the lessons, but first, their primary acquisition channels include;

- Affiliates
-Emails
-PPC (recently launched)

The five lessons shared quote & quote; 

1/

If you’re trying to build something worthwhile, it takes time. I truly don’t understand the concept of “MVP in 4 weeks and grow!”

2/
Iterate all the time. I’ve spent 60+ hours with users for direct feedback and curated a few super users.

3/
Treat your team like people. Know their spouses, their kids, and their struggles, and they’ll have ownership over the process like no other.

4/
Raising money is easy if you have built a foundation of trust; but, the majority of people will still say no. It’s crazy how little cash “investors” actually have.

5/
Competition means there is a BIG problem to solve. If there’s no competition, it’s probably because there’s no problem.

No.2 sticks out for me, you need to constantly iterate your product from the feedback you get from users.

P.S.: Get free newsletter-proven product marketing. Link on profile. 

Commonly dubbed Product-led growth, Brian decided to offer a free tool on their homepage.

 This drove thousands of traffic and still does.

The basic premise is to take a commonly used feature of your Saas product and offer it for free. 

Let the users give your solution a try before even considering premium.


If you follow me on LinkedIn, a couple of days ago, I wrote about offering Free tools, not freemium if you want to hack your product growth.

 Again, this experiment has been done by marketing experts like Neil Patel and tech giants like HubSpot.

As a SaaS founder, you don’t have to create the tool from scratch, you take the Neil and Brian path - acquire it while it’s in the early stage.  

Neil Patel  acquired UberSuggest for $120k, and now it multi-million dollar SaaS company.

P.S: Get free weekly proven product marketing. productletter.beehiiv.com

Aside getting 10x developers in your teams, Hubstaff hit $22m ARR in this way.

Am listening to Jared Brown, CEO of Hubstaff ( workforce management software) share growth insights. 

Here are my takes from the episode at The SaaS Podcast. 


1/
 Heavy investment in SEO after noticing it's was a 99% growth driver early on.

2/
Rapid iteration and testing with experimental tools like Mixpanel.

3/
Integrating product led growth into their product roadmap like giving away the product to allow customers to invite their team members and try it out.

P.S: Get weekly breakdown on proven product marketing. Link in comments.



A tale of two SaaS + the third following their footprints.

If you ask me, it's appealing to know you almost  can't loose if you are making a given ARR in your SaaS.

Adam's co-founder Diana was working for this one founder who owned 100% of their software business. 

Ross bootstrapped the business to top line $30m and bottom line $20m in ARR, and got stuck there for almost a decade.

He got stuck there for a while. but making $20m annually is great. 

In the meantime, he has been acquiring companies to convert the SaaS company into more like a platform.

The second tale is even more interesting. 

Initially called Proof, they burnt $2m raised from Y combinator and only hit $2.5m ARR.

Not as impressive in all accounts.

But when they tried Jasper AI, they went form 0 to $50m ARR in 12 months.

When Adam looked at this two tales (by they way he narrates them in Churn fm podcast) he noticed one thing.

There was an ideal custome profile that was killing it for their startup.

- they never churned
-they bought quickly 
- they always referred friends
- they never complained
- they always wanted more

Adam thought; there must be a lot of such ICP in the ecosystem.

Fast forward, Adam Robinson; founder of Retention .com  built the startup into $20.76m ARR as of the pod.

Am in the weeds of podcasts, blogs, social, video and more to give a deep dive on how Adam & team built a $20m+ ARR business in record time. 

Get the upcoming deep dive in your inbox. 
Link in the comments.


Michael and Ryan shared their story on Hampton of building Plunge - DTC cold plunge bathtub into a $80m revenue in 4 years. 

Here is how they scaled with influencer marketing.

First, they started by emailing their existing customer bases and friend networks. That sold us the first 20. 

Then they bought thecoldplunge. com for $10 on GoDaddy and shot up Google's organic search ranking to the first page in 2 months. Later won on search with the term ‘plunge’ hitting over 10k searches.

Installed the plunge for Aubrey Marcus whom they commented on his IG post and the rest is history.


After getting Aubrey on board, they requested he gift the plunge to another influencer. 

From there they scaled the influencer gifting + roadshow concept that eventually led them to the doorsteps of people like Tony Hawk, Andrew Huberman, and more. 

The Lesson for SaaS Founders 

 When partnering with B2B creators, offer a gift subscription to bring another creator on board. 

This will create a network effect and spread word of mouth about your products.

Check productletter. beehiiv. com

We often underestimate the power of these two (from $3m to $15m ARR)

... luck and timing...

Text Request continues to ride on these two even beyond the $15m revenue.

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