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How Adam Robinson Launched RB2B With LinkedIn Posts and a Google Form

A reusable dataset keeps costs near fixed, while organic LinkedIn content and a prelaunch Google Form built the demand

Adam Robinson · Retention.com

Published September 6, 2024
About this resource
Format
SaaSOpen 2024 NYC
Length
19 min video
Inside
4 lessons, 5 funding moments and a mind map
Read the full transcript

Explore the lesson. Sign in to access the slide download.

Adam Robinson built demand for RB2B with candid LinkedIn posts: a plain Google Form collected 1,630 prelaunch signups, he and Santosh held about 10 discovery calls a day for six months, and three weeks after launch a vendor’s cease and desist became his biggest PR moment. He called Retention.com’s profit “the fuel behind everything” after a 2023 push to match a former office neighbor’s funded growth failed to fix churn, and said RB2B’s own churn, about 10% a month, was the problem he had to solve next with products for other departments.

Key takeaways

  • In 2023 Adam put all of Retention.com’s free cash into a bigger push after watching his former office neighbors at Jasper grow fast; it did not fix churn, and he said he was glad he didn’t raise money for it. 02:01
  • Retention.com’s January 2024 P&L showed an 87% gross margin, which Adam credits to a data business whose costs stay roughly fixed as it grows. 04:50
  • Adam says a vendor sent a cease and desist over his post about them; he asked his lawyer for the worst case, a few hundred thousand dollars over about three years, and used the letter as PR for a three-week-old RB2B. 05:44
  • Only about one post in 10 carried a hard call to action; Adam credited most of the results to readers clicking his “visit my website” link. 08:51
  • A Google Form link in his posts collected 1,630 prelaunch signups, and Adam and Santosh, a former Apollo and ZoomInfo executive he recruited, spoke with about 10 people a day for six months before launch. 10:19
  • About 3,000 trials from August 8 to September 6, 2024, converted to customers at almost 10%, against the 3 to 5% free-to-paid rate Nathan calls typical, while churn ran about 10% a month. 01:38

Takeaways and lessons are Founderpath’s summary of this resource, checked against the transcript. Quotes are verbatim.

Mind map

Everything in this resource on one page

Retention.com

Select any point on the map to see the quote behind it, play that moment, or jump to the full lesson.

The playbook: 4 lessons from Retention.com

Lesson 1 · Funding & capital

Fund experiments from profit, not from a funded neighbor’s pace

Adam once shared an office with Dave Rogenmoser’s team for two years before they started Jasper. As he tells it, they had been stuck where he was, then grew fast, raised money and hired. In 2023, running Retention.com with six people, Adam put all its free cash into a bigger push and a tighter ICP meant to fix churn, and the churn problem did not get solved.

From a 2023 detour back to discipline

  1. 2019Launches GetEmails, now Retention.com00:43
  2. 2023All free cash into a bigger pushMatching a former office neighbor’s funded growth; churn not solvedPulled back02:27
  3. January 2024Making a lot of money at an 87% gross marginData costs kept roughly fixed as it grows04:38
  4. March 2024Launches RB2BRetention.com’s profit is “the fuel behind everything”16:04
Source: Adam Robinson’s 2024 NYC keynote with Nathan Latka. Select a timestamp to play each moment.

  1. Watching a peer raise can pull you off a plan that works.

    “And the craziest thing, when you're sitting on the other side of an office from somebody who is stuck in the exact same place, you're like, well, I can do that too.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 02:27

    Going further: He tried, and is clear about the result: “Thank God I didn’t raise money.” The spending did not solve the churn problem it was aimed at.

  2. Staying small takes ego strength, not just discipline.

    “What do you mean you only have six employees? Oh, yeah. It's a cute company.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 04:03

    Going further: Adam says he “lost my religion” during this period, regained it, and wouldn’t be surprised to lose it again. Nathan says he feels the same pressure to show a bigger team or a bigger raise.

  3. A profitable, slower business can pay for the next one.

    “It's the fuel behind everything we're doing. Like, we continue to launch more products.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 16:54

    Going further: He said that in 2024 Retention.com was 85% of revenue and 120% of profit, yet the team found the newer, growing product more exciting, so he kept explaining to everyone why the older one mattered.

Lesson 2 · Personal brand & LinkedIn

Tell the honest story in public and let the website link sell

Adam says a vendor whose tool he used told him, six months before the contract ended, that it would triple his price. He posted about it, received a cease and desist, and treated the letter as a launch opportunity for RB2B, then three weeks old. Nathan’s slide showed the post at 1,600 likes and 913 comments, and Adam recalls several hundred thousand impressions.

How the posts turn into signups

  1. A candid post about the journey09:16
  2. Comments build relationships09:47
  3. Reader wonders what he does09:16
  4. Clicks his “visit my website” link08:51
  5. Website traffic that converts09:47

↺ LinkedIn keeps serving that reader more posts

Source: Adam Robinson’s 2024 NYC keynote. Every step is described in the talk; select a timestamp to play it.

  1. A public fight can explain a new product faster than an ad.

    “This is the single greatest PR opportunity for a company that is three weeks old that has ever existed in the history of the world.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 06:45

    Going further: He first asked his lawyer for the maximum penalty: maybe a few hundred grand, three or 400 grand over about three years. He judged it worth it, though the lawyer said he would never recommend it.

  2. Most posts sell nothing directly.

    “maybe one out of every 10 posts, I'll put some, like, hard CTA at the bottom of it.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 08:51

    Going further: The rest relies on curiosity: readers see him writing “brutally, honestly transparent” posts about the journey, wonder what he does, and click his “visit my website” link.

  3. Reach comes from relationships, not pitches.

    “I think the beauty of organic content is that you are bringing people along on this journey and, like, you are building community around these ideas, and you are forming relationships with people through commenting.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 09:47

    Going further: He believes people don’t want to be sold to on social media, and that the growing reach “begets website traffic that converts.”

Lesson 3 · Product-market fit & first customers

Collect prelaunch demand with a plain form, then call everyone

Before RB2B launched on March 1, Adam put a Google Form link in his LinkedIn posts. It collected 1,630 prelaunch signups and led to hundreds of discovery conversations.

From a form link to a launch

  1. A story post with a Google Form link10:19
  2. 1,630 prelaunch signups10:59
  3. Hundreds of discovery callsAbout 10 a day between Adam and Santosh for six months11:02
  4. Launch on March 1Knowing what to deliver11:02
Source: Adam Robinson’s 2024 NYC keynote. Select a timestamp to play each step.

  1. Capture demand before you build tracking.

    “It's a free tool. It's a Google Form link. You drop it in. You rock and roll, and there's 1,600 leads here.”

    Nathan Latka, Watch at 10:19

    Going further: Nathan’s point: the room shouted they would pay $100 to $5,000 for a lead, yet founders often think they need a perfect tech stack and tracking first. The final count on the slide was 1,630.

  2. Treat every signup as an interview slot.

    “Santosh and I were getting on the phone with, like, 10 people a day between the two of us for, like, six months. So we really had a good idea of what we wanted to deliver at launch.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 11:02

    Going further: Adam calls himself “such a student of Four Steps to the Epiphany” and says the discovery conversations were “the most incredible part of it.”

Lesson 4 · Retention & expansion

Expect churn from usage pricing, and fix it with a second user

In September 2024, RB2B converted almost 10% of trials to customers, which Adam credited to content aimed at a tight audience. Churn ran about 10% a month, roughly a nine-month lifetime value; he linked part of it to charging for leads, and said he would not get it down to 3% without a system-of-record type product.

  1. A narrow content audience converts unusually well.

    “And I believe that it's that way because the content is targeting such a tight audience of the right people on LinkedIn, and it's just leading to that.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 12:27

    Going further: Nathan’s slide covered August 8 to September 6: about 3,000 new trials and almost a 10% conversion rate to customers, against the 3 to 5% free-to-paid rate he calls typical.

  2. A useful free tier fills the funnel; credits set the price.

    “So the freemium offer is 200 leads per month, and it's like the LinkedIn URL into a Slack channel.”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 13:27

    Going further: Paid plans add integrations and email from $99 a month, about $300 a month for a thousand leads, and the average new customer pays $270 a month.

  3. Churn falls when other teams use other products.

    “They said churn was a disaster for that product, and the only thing they could do to lower churn was get other people using other products in other departments”

    Adam Robinson, Watch at 14:42

    Going further: That is what the Clearbit Reveal team told him. He said the next step would be something salespeople use, since RB2B is a marketer’s tool, and that he would build it rather than buy a company because he is “so scared of buying stuff.”

What monthly churn does to customer lifetime Our arithmetic: lifetime = 1 ÷ monthly churn, at the $270 average new customer Adam cites, ignoring expansion. The 8% and 3% rates are the later ConvertKit churn levels Adam recalls from its public dashboard.

Monthly churnAverage customer lifetimeRevenue per customer at $270 a month
10% (RB2B, Adam’s estimate)10 months (Adam says about nine)$2,700
8%12.5 months$3,375
3%About 33 monthsAbout $9,000

Funding moments

The 5 moments where the conversation turns to how a growing business pays for growth, and the idea behind each one.

  1. 02:27Self-funding from sales
    “Thank God I didn't raise money.”
    Adam Robinson
    Bootstrap financing →
  2. 02:44Self-funding from sales
    “you didn't raise. You just used your own profits.”
    Nathan Latka
    Bootstrap financing →
  3. 02:47Reinvesting profit
    “And I basically just took all the free cash and put it into trying to create what I viewed as, like, the unicorn company”
    Adam Robinson
    Bootstrap financing →
  4. 03:21Selling equity
    “why do we feel so insecure about all the other ones raising and think we need to go play that game when we're crushing it?”
    Nathan Latka
    Venture capital →
  5. 16:54Reinvesting profit
    “It's the fuel behind everything we're doing.”
    Adam Robinson
    Bootstrap financing →
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Retention.com by the numbers

FigureValueWhen said
Typical free-to-paid conversion, per Nathan3 to 5%01:38
Gross margin, January 2024 (typical SaaS: 75 to 80%)87%04:50
Lawyer’s worst case for the post$300K to $400K over ~3 years07:23
Cease and desist post1,600 likes, 913 comments08:27
Posts with a hard call to actionAbout 1 in 1008:51
Prelaunch signups from a Google Form1,63010:59
Discovery calls before launchAbout 10 a day for 6 months11:02
RB2B monthly churn, September 2024About 10%12:07
RB2B trial to customer, Aug 8 to Sep 6, 2024Almost 10% of ~3,00012:41
Free plan200 leads a month to Slack13:27
Paid plans start at$99 a month13:27
Average new customer$270 a month13:45

Where this may not work for you

This playbook rests on a large LinkedIn audience Adam had already built and a profitable older business, which he called “the fuel behind everything we’re doing.” Without either, expect slower demand and less room to experiment. A public fight with a vendor suited a three-week-old product with little to lose; with large customers or investors, it carries more risk. And RB2B’s strong free-to-paid rate came with churn of about 10% a month, so conversion alone won’t tell you a channel works.

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  • Bootstrapping, Team Growing, & Fast Changes at Retention.Com - Slide Deck

About the speaker
Adam Robinson

Adam Robinson

CEO and Founder · Retention.com

Retention.comRB2BThe RB2B NewsletterLinkedIn

Adam Robinson founded Retention.com, which launched as GetEmails in November 2019, and launched RB2B, a B2B product, on March 1, 2024. Nathan introduced him as possibly “the king of LinkedIn”, and in this talk he explains how his posts there brought RB2B its first users.

The RB2B Newsletter, where Adam wrote about building the company, describes him (as of November 2026) as founder and CEO of Retention.com and RB2B, and says he launched RB2B in March 2024 to show SaaS companies the LinkedIn profiles of anonymous website visitors in Slack. (said at 16:04, The RB2B Newsletter)

What Adam teaches here

“It's like people don't wanna be sold to on social media.”
Adam Robinson, Watch at 09:25

More from Adam

More founder interviews

Slide by slide

Each slide with a short explanation of what it shows. Open the slide text for its exact wording.

18 passages

Retention.com growth context

  1. Slide 1Open deck
    Slide text

    SaaSOpen, September 2024 Bootstrapping, Team Growing, & Fast Changes at Retention.Com Adam Robinson CEO, Retention.com

  2. Slide 2Open deck

    Retention.com ARR compounded to over $20M

    Quarterly ARR rose from near zero in Q419 to above $20,000,000 by Q423, with the steepest climb in 2022 and 2023. The final bar, Q124, dips slightly below the Q423 peak.

    Slide text

    Retention.Com ARR Growth

RB2B revenue growth

  1. Slide 3Open deck

    RB2B added about $60k MRR each month

    RB2B's new product grew from almost nothing in early 2024 to $222,988 MRR, shown as a 17,253.15% gain over the selected period. The curve steepens from spring onward, and the dashed tail suggests the trend continuing.

    Slide text

    RB2B Revenue Growth Adding $60k MRR Every Month!

  2. Slide 4Open deck

    Agenda: P&L, lawsuit, trial to paid

    The talk covers three topics in about 20 minutes: the company's profit and loss, a lawsuit that became a marketing moment, and trial-to-paid conversion. The subtitle asks whether the speaker is the King of LinkedIn, framing the thread running through all three.

    Slide text

    Over the next 20 minutes Is he the King of Linkedin? P&L LAWSUIT TRIAL TO PAID

Profit and loss and expansion lessons

  1. Slide 5Open deck

    Section opener: profit and loss

    This section opens the financial part of the talk, covering how fast expansion affected the business and what the P&L looked like afterward.

    Slide text

    Profit and Loss

  2. Slide 6Open deck

    Scaling from 6 to 50 rested on assumptions

    Between October 2022 and February 2023 the company moved from month-to-month deals to all annual, grew from 6 employees to 50, and expected churn to fall from about 38% a year to under 15%. The slide labels this reckless expansion driven by overconfidence.

    Slide text

    Reckless Expansion in 2023 = Overconfidence

  3. Slide 7Open deck

    Three mistakes from moving too fast

    Fast growth produced three errors: believing a tighter ICP had solved churn when it had not, hiring expensive senior and junior people without processes, and losing bootstrapping discipline by acting like a VC-backed company out of FOMO.

    Slide text

    Honing in on our ICP DIDN’T solve our churn problem (much to my surprise) We added a bunch of expensive senior (and junior) people with no processes Got FOMO, started behaving like a VC-backed co, lost bootstrapping roots Lessons Learned from Moving Too Fast: I screwed every THOUGHT I SOLVED CHURN HIRED TOO QUICKLY LOST DISCIPLINE

  4. Slide 8Open deck

    After the reset, January 2024 was 27% profitable

    January 2024 shows total revenue of $1,858,339 and an 87% gross margin. After sales, marketing, R&D and G&A costs, net income was $509,984, a 27% profit margin.

    Slide text

    January 2024 (Retention.com)

Lawsuit marketing and transparency

  1. Slide 9Open deck

    Section opener: lawsuit marketing and transparency

    This section covers how a legal threat was turned into marketing content. It also raises the broader question of how transparent a founder should be in public.

    Slide text

    Lawsuit Marketing … and the bigger question about Transparency

  2. Slide 10Open deck

    A cease-and-desist letter became a viral post

    The speaker posted a competitor's legal demands on LinkedIn, with his own theories on why they objected to his team's tool, and framed the dispute as a bully story. A second post showing the law firm's letter drew heavy engagement and asked others to repost.

    Slide text

    Lawsuit Marketing

LinkedIn conversion strategy

  1. Slide 11Open deck

    Section opener: converting on LinkedIn

    This section moves from attention to results, looking at how LinkedIn content turned into actual leads rather than just impressions.

    Slide text

    Actually Converting on Linkedin

  2. Slide 12Open deck

    Pivoting content to B2B multiplied LinkedIn impressions

    LinkedIn content performance shows 17,852,832 impressions over the past 365 days, up 1,462.4%. An annotation marks where content pivoted to B2B, and impressions stay well above the earlier flat baseline afterward, with frequent spikes.

    Slide text

    Content Pivot Really Worked

  3. Slide 13Open deck

    A free-tool CTA post drew 1,637 leads

    A post using a hook, a story and a call to action announced a free person-level ID tool and linked to an early-access signup. The waitlist form behind it shows 1,637 responses, and it promises outreach over the following weeks as capacity opens.

    Slide text

    Hook + Story + CTA = 1637 Leads

  4. Slide 14Open deck

    LinkedIn reach changed the go-to-market plan

    The new product turned out different from the plan: freemium and monthly instead of annual, product-led instead of sales-led, and free unlimited use instead of a $30-50k ACV. It saw 3,000 signups in month 1 with a 78% activation rate, and the G2 review goal rose from 100 to 10,000.

    Slide text

    Strategy Change Due to Linkedin Megaphone

  5. Slide 15Open deck

    10% conversion is industry leading

Revenue-growth outcomes

  1. Slide 16Open deck

    Retention.com ARR recap closes the story

    The ARR chart returns near the end of the talk, showing the same climb from near zero in Q419 to above $20,000,000 and a small dip in Q124. It anchors the lessons in the company's overall growth.

    Slide text

    Retention.Com ARR Growth

  2. Slide 17Open deck

    RB2B's revenue curve backs the new strategy

    The MRR dashboard returns, showing RB2B at $222,988 MRR and a 17,253.15% gain since the start of 2024. It ends the talk on the result of the strategy shift to a free, product-led offer.

    Slide text

    RB2B Revenue Growth

  3. Slide 18Open deck

    Thank you from Adam Robinson

    Closing slide thanking the SaaSOpen audience, with the speaker's name, title as CEO of Retention.com, and company logo. It carries no further ask or contact action.

    Slide text

    SaaSOpen, September 2024 Thank you! Adam Robinson CEO, Retention.com