31 Powered By Templates CEOs Used to Get 2m Leads

In this article, you will learn how to leverage the “Powered By” growth tactic to acquire new users and drive revenue, supported by real-world examples from top SaaS CEOs. This strategy involves embedding a small link or badge back to your product on your customers’ public-facing assets, creating a viral loop that brings in new, highly-qualified leads. You’ll get a 4-step playbook to launch your own “Powered By” initiative, in addition to over 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples were collected directly from CEOs of companies with combined revenues in the hundreds of millions when they keynoted Founderpath events.

The 4-Step Playbook for a “Powered By” Growth Engine

This playbook breaks down how to strategically implement a “Powered By” link that drives viral growth. Readers should be able to use this section as a guide to run this play at their own company.

1. Step 1: Identify a Public-Facing Asset. The core of this strategy is to find a part of your product that your customers display to their customers. This could be a chat widget, an embedded form, a survey, a public report, or a customer-facing portal. The more visible this asset is, the more effective your “Powered By” link will be.
2. Step 2: Embed a Badge That Provides Mutual Value. Don’t just slap a link on your product. Turn the “Powered By” badge into a value proposition for your customer. Pritesh Vora of Sprinto shared that they turned their badge into an affiliate link. This incentivized their SMB and solopreneur customers to keep the badge, as they earned a commission on any new customer that signed up through their link. This simple move resulted in an 80-90% badge retention rate.
3. Step 3: Design a High-Converting Landing Page. When a potential new user clicks your “Powered By” link, don’t send them to your generic homepage. Create a specific landing page that acknowledges where they came from and immediately demonstrates the value of your product. The context is warm—they just saw your tool in action—so the landing page should capitalize on that by making it incredibly easy to sign up and experience the value for themselves.
4. Step 4: Add Strategic Friction for Badge Removal. While you want adoption to be frictionless, you can be strategic about removal. The Sprinto team required users to contact support to remove the badge. This created an opportunity for their support team to explain the benefits of the affiliate program, which helped increase their badge retention rate by another 15%. This strategic friction turned a simple badge into a powerful, self-perpetuating growth engine.

45 Examples of “Powered By” Growth Tactics

Here are over 40 examples from SaaS founders who have successfully used “Powered By” strategies, viral loops, and community-led growth to scale their companies.

• The team at Sprinto turned their “Powered By” badge into an affiliate link for their customers, solopreneurs and SMBs. This strategy led to an 80-90% badge retention rate, giving them 10x the exposure they would have otherwise gotten and helping them scale past $5M in revenue.
• Sean Ellis, who coined the term “growth hacking,” detailed how the Dropbox referral program was a prime example of a “Powered By” mechanic. By offering free storage as a currency for both the referrer and the new user, they created a powerful viral loop that was instrumental in their rapid growth to a billion-dollar revenue run rate.
• Expandi’s CEO, Stefan Smulders, leveraged other people’s communities by scraping competitor Facebook groups. He then reached out with a personalized message, mentioning the shared group, which led to booking over 40 appointments weekly and helped the bootstrapped company grow to $7M ARR in 20 months.
• Josh Aharonoff of Mighty Digits explained that repurposing content is key. The same content can be an infographic, a newsletter, and a video, creating a content engine that establishes authority and drives inbound leads, helping him grow a massive following and a successful agency.
• Guillaume Bardet from Testimonial.to shared a tactic of creating a “Wall of Love” for potential customers, scraping reviews from sites like G2 to pre-build a visually appealing asset. This demonstrated immediate value and acted as a powerful, personalized outreach tool to help grow past $1M ARR.
• Lucjan Suski of Surfer SEO detailed a brilliant tactic where they offered free product credits in exchange for users completing tasks like writing a G2 review. This gamified system dramatically increased their review volume, boosting their social proof and driving growth toward $15M in revenue.
• Marie Martens of Tally explained how she found her first users in a crowded market. She went to Product Hunt, found users who had upvoted competing form builders, and did manual cold outreach to thousands of them, which was critical in getting Tally to its first $50k in MRR.
• The CEO of Overcast HQ, Philippe, chose a white-label strategy to compete with heavily funded players like Frame.io. By becoming the “Intel Inside” for video management, his product integrates seamlessly into other tech stacks, creating a powerful distribution channel that fueled their growth to $1.2M in ARR in under 16 months.
• Rauno from Instantly.ai leveraged the customer base from his lead generation agency as the first users for his SaaS product. This provided instant feedback, case studies, and initial revenue that helped Instantly.ai grow to a $2.4M run rate in just nine months.
• Bridget Harris of YouCanBook.me explained that their viral loop is the core of their growth. With 1.3 million bookings a month, the “Powered by YouCanBook.me” branding on their scheduling pages drives immense awareness, leading to 150,000 free account creations annually and scaling them to over $5M in ARR.
• Kyle Poyar of OpenView highlighted Webflow’s community strategy as a competitive moat. They created a showcase where designers can share their work, which in turn acts as a gallery of templates and a source of organic SEO, driving new users to the platform and establishing a strong brand.
• Gil Eyal of HYPR built a crawler to find brands already running influencer campaigns and then sent them a free, data-driven report on how to improve. This value-first approach had a high conversion rate and was key to acquiring their initial enterprise customers.
• Wes Bush, author of “Product-Led Growth,” shared the story of Tettra, a knowledge base tool. They switched from a free trial to a freemium model, which allowed their product’s collaborative value to shine over time. This change dramatically increased signups, upgrades, and retention.
• Scott Brandley of ShopperApproved leveraged a partnership model by co-branding with competitors of companies that their large rival, Yotpo, acquired. This allowed them to offer a suite of tools under their brand for free, creating new income streams and helping them grow to $7.5M bootstrapped.
• Nick Caruso at Illumineto described their viral growth model which focuses on getting an initial sales rep at a large company to start using the tool. The platform’s team features then encourage that user to invite colleagues, creating an internal viral loop that helped them acquire over 1,000 users from 500 different companies.
• Vivek Khandelwal from iZooto explained their “Powered by iZooto” branding on the free publisher version of their browser notification tool drives significant brand traffic and referrals, helping them acquire a base of 400+ retailers and publishers.
• Yam Regev of Zest used a viral loop for their mobile app pre-launch campaign. Users who registered were incentivized to refer colleagues, and in exchange, the product would be free forever for them. This tactic helped them acquire 6,000 beta users before the official launch.
• Adam Baker, founder of three B2B SaaS companies, emphasized that founder-led sales is powerful but unscalable. He stressed the importance of moving from relationship-based selling to value-based selling to build a repeatable process before hiring a sales team to achieve his first $20M in revenue.
• Sri Swaminathan of Factors.ai discussed how founder-led marketing on LinkedIn, including consistent posting and hosting LinkedIn Lives, created a low-cost, high-leverage channel that generated over 100 customers and nearly $800k in revenue.
• Garrett Mehrguth of Direct Consulting explained his agency uses a “Powered By” approach for their own lead generation. They use their own shockingly memorable copy and gift card strategy in LinkedIn Convo Ads to get meetings, proving their methodology to clients and growing to a team of 135.
• Adam Sandman from Inflectra created an MVP AI feature for their product, which generated significant buzz. Even though many of their enterprise clients couldn’t use it immediately due to regulations, it signaled that Inflectra was ahead of the curve, giving them a competitive edge and driving sales to over $10M ARR.
• Sophie Buonassisi of GTMfund talked about building a growth flywheel, not just an engine. By integrating product, media, and community, each component reinforces the others, creating compounding, sustainable growth that reduces CAC in the long run.
• Armando Biondi of Breadcrumbs emphasized aligning the ICP with the go-to-market strategy and pricing. This focus allowed his previous company, AdEspresso, to scale efficiently with zero salespeople, growing from $0 to over $5M before being acquired.
• John Doherty from GetCredo highlighted the power of one great referral link. A single mention of his company on a Moz Whiteboard Friday blog post has generated over $300,000 in revenue over five years, showcasing the long-term value of relationships and authority.
• Nathan Latka of Founderpath described how programmatic SEO, by creating thousands of templated pages combining company names with the word “revenue,” generated over 1.17 million free clicks from Google, a key driver in selling millions of dollars worth of data subscriptions.
• Irina Novoselsky, CEO of Hootsuite, explained that the modern buyer journey starts on social media. She emphasized that creating authentic content and having an executive presence on social channels is crucial for building trust and influencing the 60% of the buying decision that happens before a sales call.
• The CEO of Hootsuite, Irina Novoselsky, highlighted that 65% of B2B search now starts on social media, not Google. Brands must win the research phase by creating authentic content where Gen Z buyers are, such as on Reddit and in peer communities, to influence their purchasing decisions.
• Brett Bernstein, Gatsby’s founder, explained how their tool gives brands more data on their customers, including social media handles and follower counts. This allows brands to identify their most influential customers and automate outreach to build an army of ongoing brand advocates.
• Kevin Indig, former Head of SEO at G2, explained that adding the number of reviews to the title tags in Google search results created a powerful trust signal. This simple, automated tactic increased click-through rates and was rewarded by Google with higher rankings.
• The team at Factors.ai built a free “LinkedIn Ad-visor” tool. Users could input their competitors and receive a report on their ad strategies. This lead magnet generated over 200 sign-ups and provided a valuable, low-cost way to attract their ICP.
• Isaac Pohl-Zaretsky of Pocus described how Webflow discovered a key growth signal. They realized the number of websites created, not the number of user seats, was highly correlated with enterprise expansion. Focusing on this signal helped them close a six-figure deal with an agency that had only four users.
• Brian Yam from Paragon shared their framework for LinkedIn ads, which starts with a hyper-specific ICP. By building a highly accurate account list first, they ensure their ad spend is efficient and targeted only at companies with the highest propensity to buy, a strategy that helped them 30x their ARR.
• Madhav Bhandari from Storylane outlined their “Demo-Led SEO” strategy. They created over 1,500 interactive demo pages for “how-to” keywords related to tools their ICP uses (like Salesforce and HubSpot). This resulted in an 8x traffic increase to 200k visitors/month in just three months.
• Mark Michael of DevHub runs a private-labeled platform, so his company’s success is tied to his customers’ success. Their platform allows brands and agencies to launch thousands of regionalized landing pages or microsites at scale, a powerful engine for their clients’ growth.
• Bryn Jones of GrowSumo described a viral component in their platform. When a customer launches an influencer program, they email it to their entire customer list. Competitors on that list often see it and sign up for GrowSumo themselves, creating an organic growth loop.
• Steve Pockross from Verblio, a content creation marketplace, explained they get a competitive advantage by hiring for traits like passion and curiosity rather than just experience. This approach has led to zero turnover on his leadership team and fueled their growth to over $12M in revenue.
• The team at HYPR, an influencer marketing platform, built a crawler that identifies brands running influencer campaigns. They then provide a free report analyzing the campaign’s effectiveness, a value-add that serves as a powerful inbound lead generation tool.
• Dave Bell from Gummy Cube, an App Store Optimization tool, offers a full-service option on top of their SaaS product. By helping customers make good decisions with the product, they increase retention and become an indispensable resource, a key factor in their bootstrapped growth.
• Zest CEO Yam Regev launched their mobile app on Product Hunt, where it became the #1 product of the week. This generated 3,000 clicks and over 1,300 new mobile installs, providing a significant boost of initial users for their new product.
• Paul Lynch from Assembla explained their venture equity fund’s model of acquiring mature, founder-led businesses and turning on sales and marketing engines. This playbook, focused on driving growth in stable companies, has allowed them to consistently grow 60% year-over-year.
• The founder of DocHub, a bootstrapped company, showcased a p-and-l with a net income of over $1.7 million with only five employees. This incredible efficiency and profitability made them a prime acquisition target.
• The CEO of Surfer SEO, Lucjan Suski, detailed how they gamified their G2 reviews by offering free credits for reviews. This strategy dramatically increased their review count, skyrocketed their social proof, and helped them grow to $14M in ARR.
• The founder of BlogVault shared how he leveraged the WordPress app exchange to get over 200,000 signups. By optimizing his listing title and description for search, he turned the marketplace into a significant source of free, organic traffic.
• Steve from Verblio shared that he offers quirky benefits that cost nothing but build a strong culture. For example, employees get a $200 bonus if they dye their hair one of the company’s three colors, a fun perk that makes people excited to work there.
• Brian from Paragon explained that LinkedIn ads are only too expensive if you lack a strategic framework. By nailing the ICP, mapping the funnel, and creating valuable content, they’ve achieved hyper-efficient growth with a 3:1 ARR to CAC ratio.

Conclusion

You have just learned the 4-step playbook for implementing a “Powered By” growth strategy, complete with over 40 real-world examples from top SaaS founders. By identifying a public-facing asset and embedding a value-driven link, you can create a powerful viral loop that reduces your customer acquisition costs and drives sustainable growth. To get capital to fund these kinds of growth experiments without giving up equity, get instant, non-dilutive funding at Founderpath.com.

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