How Adam Robinson Grew With Provocative Ads, Cold Email and LinkedIn

This is our January P&L. We actually got to twelve million with six people. Well, I mean, I paid myself four million dollars last year. Pirate domain burning email strategy that you can do.

Alright. What do we got? Okay. So the ringer's turned off. Let's go. Okay. Question for the crowd. How many people here have ever been stuck? Come on. I mean, this is my experience as an entrepreneur. It's just getting stuck and getting unstuck. So how many people have been stuck and gotten unstuck? That's really good. And then how many people are stuck right now? I mean, when I was stuck, and and I still am, by the way. My my my, my hand is up.

I was coming to these things all the time, like, trying to figure out, what to do next. So, I've been on this entrepreneurial journey for eleven years. And and I started this company, that's now twenty two million ARR four years ago. And, before that, I was stuck at three million ARR for four years. I had a company called Robly email marketing in Ryan Allis's space, actually. It was an email newsletter app. And, couldn't get it going. There was this company called Mailchimp that was just, like, decimating everybody.

And, look, the feeling of of desperation and, reaching for any type of information that would help me grow it, was was all that I was doing. I had this weird feeling of inadequacy. Like, is this the biggest startup that I can create? Right? Am I just a three million dollar guy? And there was a lot of frustration because I don't know everybody's experience whose early stage, but, like, I was stuck at this three million number, and then somebody would show up in my life that ran Facebook ads.

And they'd be like, the solution for you is Facebook ads. I can get Facebook ads going. You know? None of it would work, no matter what. Like, Facebook, UX, UI, you know, knew this, knew that. None of it worked. And I'm gonna just tell you how I got unstuck. This company well, you you could argue whether I'm stuck again now. But, all of the lessons I learned along the way in doing so is what I'm gonna share today. So let's start.

The key pillars of this speech are gonna be getting to twenty two million ARR bootstrapped in forty eight months. And then why I am now launching a new company. It's not quite a pivot because my team is still growing in that business. And then this whole thing that everybody talks about me, this LinkedIn thing. By the way, like, five months ago, nobody would have said that about me, and I wouldn't be on stage right now. So it's a really interesting thing that I'm, like, now the LinkedIn guy.

But I'll talk to you about how I co created this product and go to market strategy that I'm doing now with this LinkedIn audience. So number one, this is the journey, and it looks good. But if you zoom in on some of the parts of this, it's not. Like, there are three stocks even in this beautiful graph of getting to twenty two million ARR bootstrapped in four years. So that sentence sounds really good.

But I'm telling you, in q three twenty, in q four twenty, in q one twenty one, that is nine months of a really early stage startup when I was, like, oscillating between two forty and two sixty MRR. It really felt terrible. Like, I'm not gonna lie. I was over it. I thought I was, like, gonna start some other SaaS and, like, I'll talk about that later. But, like, look, This is my experience of the entrepreneurial journey. And it's one of the reasons that I advocate for

bootstrapping because I think this is generally what people experience unless you have, like, the perfect product in the perfect market at the perfect time. And I don't know. If I were dependent on external funding for this journey, I don't know what I would have done a few of these times, you know? So, when you're bootstrapped and you're trying to run a profitable business, when you get stuck, you have options. And a lot of times, if you're raising VC, you just don't. So,

I just wanted to share that that little piece of the journey. And then, people always ask. It's like, man, bootstrapping twenty two million ARR in four years is incredible, but, like, how did you go zero to one? You know, like, where did you even start? So, and then when when I tell how you got zero to one, it's how did you go one to ten? So first zero to one, I think Facebook is an incredible first thing that you can do to, like, spread awareness for your startup.

I don't think it's a great later on thing for many people, but a lot of SaaS has to start and I've heard Nathan say this. You start by selling something for nine dollars a month. And then you gradually realize that you have to just move up market as quickly as possible. And that is most people's journey. When you're selling something for nine dollars a month, you can sell it on Facebook. So taking it back to two thousand nineteen, this was when, like, Snapchat was happening and, like, you know, Instagram stories were coming out.

And I just, like, saw people walking around, like, doing, you know, doing this and taking these, like, amusing videos of themselves with interesting backgrounds. I was like, you know what, like, I wasn't even on social media, but I was like, I wonder if I can make a one minute amusing video every week that answered the sales questions of this product and have an interesting background. So me and my wife, Helen, tried that. And I was like, if I can get people anticipating these

videos, then I've won the game. And like, lo and behold, somehow it worked. If you wanna see these videos, my team won't let me put them in a playlist because they're so outrageous. But that's our our YouTube page. Scroll all the way down, and there's like ten of them or fifteen of them up. That worked incredibly well. And, the interesting thing is, as I mentioned, I tried a ton of Facebook ads before. But the nature of this product and what I was saying was so

interesting to people that these actually worked, while the other face Facebook ads did not. So number one, the offer that you are making people is like the most important to making an ad work. The second thing that I learned, and you know, this is kind of a bit of an evil thing to like steal Andrew's term. Our product has this just inherent privacy thing where we're deanonymizing people who hit your website, who don't fill out a form, and resolving it to a deliverable email address.

There's like a small vocal minority who really, really hates this. So these ads were inflammatory to them, And they would just literally write, like, you are a scumbag. Like, you should die. Like, they'd be like, you should die. And then from the brand account, I'd, like, make fun of their sweater or something. And and it just it blew their mind that, like, somebody from a brand account would, like, insult you personally on Facebook, and they write back a novel. And that's what social media wants. Right?

So, like, made these ads do incredibly well, and people are like, oh, you're such an idiot for, like, you know, torching a brand. Like, lesson two is, like, you don't have a brand when you're zero MRR. Like, you can do outrageous things with zero consequence, as far as I can tell. Like, the worst thing that happens, you just start over and everyone forgot what you were doing in the first place. So that was lesson number two. And then lesson number three, I think it's a big one for using Facebook in general to get your zero revenue startup off the ground. It created an unbelievable awareness for us,

and it also had a really fast cash payback because we sold big plans and nine dollar plans. So like the dynamic was I'd run ads, you know, hundred people would sign up and basically churn twenty percent a month. And then one guy would pay us five grand and like immediately pay the ads back. So that was a dynamic. It was a great strategy to go from zero to one, but it really didn't last at all after that because, like, that wasn't the people that we were gonna, like, make a company building software for. So those are my my three lessons from from going to from zero to one on Facebook ads.

And then number two, this is like a really interesting stage for me. And I I just loved running that business. And I'm, like, trying to do the same thing now because I loved running the stage so much. We got we actually got to twelve million with six people. I mean, it's crazy. And, the core part of this was, like, the Facebook strategy had spread this awareness, and the product was good and had some some kind of inherent word-of-mouth to it in general.

And my cofounder, Diana, was just running an outbound machine with five people in the Philippines. And she had these, like, untested, unscientific beliefs that you shouldn't use emails from Apollo or ZoomInfo because everyone's spamming them. And then you shouldn't use these automation products because everyone's using them. And how could something work that everyone was doing? Right? So, like, I didn't have enough time to test that or tell her she was wrong. And like, the price of this five person Philippines team is like, you know, two thousand dollars a month or something or three thousand. So that was what we were doing.

They were spending half of their days doing lead gen, finding emails that were specifically not in ZoomInfo. So, like, we build this in ZoomInfo, and then she had these people go and find another email for these people somewhere else on the Internet. And then they were literally sending emails from you know, her name's Diana Ross, which is interesting. But like d ross at, you know, Diana r, like, whatever. They'd send a bunch of different emails from our Gmail accounts, and then when people responded, she would deal with them and get them on a demo and close them.

So that was a really interesting cold email machine. And, you know, we're we're doing something different now because the cold email landscape has changed. And there's just like pirate domain burning email strategy that you can do, which email me and I'll tell you about it. But this was literally what the org looked like. And there's a few things that I want to emphasize here. With the right product and the right team, you can get a really long way with very few people, which I think it's really helpful to just

internalize that because everyone wants you to have more employees. They just do. It's a really weird thing when you say you have six people and you think you're kind of far along at twelve million ARR, and people are like, oh, that's cute. Like, you're just getting started. It's like, well, I mean, I paid myself four million dollars last year, but I don't know. And, you know, it takes a lot of discipline to not add employees when you have traction. And, you know, kind of like what I just said, I truly believe this. It's so hard to do what we do.

If you create a successful startup, I believe that you should make millions of dollars every year and not just be waiting for this maybe exit or, like, maybe secondary that maybe will happen, but maybe will not, probably will not. That's just something that I believe. So, yeah. Everybody here. Millions for everyone. Right? And I don't think you should have to sell your equity to do it. So, you know, I kind of thought

that way at this stage, and it was such a great phase that I'm trying to recreate it for myself. But then I lost discipline. Like, why? Why would I ruin this beautiful life that I had? Because we're idiots, humans. Like, we are so dumb. What happened to me? So I'll take you back to December twenty twenty. I had two startups. I had Robly and I hadn't sold it yet. And then I had started GetEmails, which is now Retention.com. They were both three million ARR. They both had six people,

and they were both making a million and a half dollars of free cash. So I had been sharing an office with the Proof team, which started Jasper AI for two years. The CEO, Dave, was stuck at two and a half million ARR. And I was, like, showing him these companies and our P&L, and I'm, like, Dave, like, I think the answer is we need to just have five of these. Because then, eventually, you have enough three million ARR companies that are making a million and a half dollars. You're, like, living in Aspen or whatever. So,

Dave and I had this plan, and my company, GetEmails, was the leader of the three companies that we had at two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars a month. Right? So this is outrageous. This is a text from Dave on December twenty ninth twenty twenty. It says, first paying customer had the idea seven days ago. Hopefully, this is my GetEmails. Does anybody know what happened one year later?

So, like, this like, it's, like, heartbeat still gorgeous. Right? Like, I have never seen I mean, despite raising money, I would like to do without. Like, I can't even explain to you what this was like. I was sitting on Brazos Street in this loft office with these guys. There was six of them on one side of the room, and then I was in a conference room on the other. And from January one year to January of next year, they went from one hundred dollars to fifty million ARR. Unbelievable. Right?

So there's good and bad to this. You know, I'm sitting there with my one salesperson doing twelve million ARR, and I'm like, this has gotta be a unicorn. How I you know, like, I just need to try harder like these guys are because they raised a bunch of money from all the top tier investors. They started hiring these people that were, like, so inspiring to be around. And, you know, one this this guy, Shane Orlick had a meeting with me. He's like I think it was at eight million ARR at the time. He's like, we're sitting at a conference room.

He's like, what are your metrics? Like, no. No. He's like, that that is not acceptable. Like, what are you talking about? Like, we're making tons of money. He's like, you have one salesperson? Yes. Hire one more, please. You know? So what happened to me?

At thirteen million ARR, I decided that it was my turn to try to create a unicorn. And thank God I didn't go out and raise money, but, you know, as I mentioned, at that point, we had, like, you know, we had just a ton of free cash. Like, it was, you know, six or seven million in free cash that I could spend on this, what would turn into a somewhat fruitless endeavor to pursue a unicorn. And if you just look at the before and after and how quickly that occurred, and if anyone's been a part of a company that did this the

right way, you can imagine how terrible this was. Like, it was so sloppy and we didn't have processes and, you know, I'm still only learning what that meant, but it was a very, very fast sprint to something that I felt we had to do. I was so confident it was gonna happen, especially after the early indicators that we were getting from, you know, the sales we were doing and all the inbound and all the hype that I was creating,

that I decided to make a docuseries about it declaring in January that I was gonna grow this company from fifteen to fifty million ARR, and I called it billion dollar challenge. We made eighteen, ten million dollar episodes. And what happened? Not even close.

And, you know, why. Right? One thing that I just didn't get before, like, kind of a year and a half ago, is that there are product categories within SaaS that are just intrinsically higher churn than other product categories in SaaS, especially in MarTech. So golden goose in MarTech is systems of record, email service providers, CRMs. Right? If you're storing data from somebody, they're never gonna quit.

On the exact opposite end of the spectrum is when you are selling leads to people, which is effectively what we're doing, or intent data, and you're trying to get them to pay you a SaaS contract. So we also added a bunch of expensive senior people with no processes. And the biggest mistake that I made, which I really, really regret and I will never do again, please, if I do it again, just kick me in the face. I got FOMO and I started behaving like a VC backed company. What does that mean? I was, like, spending money on literally everything, losing all discipline.

I was was setting a bad example for my employees. It was horrible. So what happened after that? Oh, yeah. Public service announcement. Don't make a show, and miss by fifty percent. One or the other guys. If you're gonna make a docuseries, don't miss by fifty percent. If you're gonna miss by fifty percent, don't make a docuseries. Simple lesson. So now we're pivoting to B2B. And, like, really the reason why is and why I say I'm stuck again is this unbelievably high churn paradigm. And I'm talking like sixty percent gross per year.

And then we have so much competition now that I was modeling an expansion revenue, and it's just like a price war. So it's like the the the revenue retention is just as bad. But on the other hand, another reason I advocate for bootstrapping, this is our January P&L after the executives have paid themselves fat salaries. Right? You can make a horrible mistake if you are bootstrapping and still be in a beautiful place. Right? I'm not complaining. So, why we pivoted to B2B?

Number one, I got this guy to come work for us a year and a half ago. If you wanna look at his LinkedIn real quick, he's a g. He is like the godfather of contact data. And the entire time we were growing this e com business, he kept telling me well, Adam, you know, the leads are worth so much more to the B2B community. Right? So he was pushing like, as soon as the business got to the point where I could take my attention off it and so could he, and we could start focusing on this B2B, universe, we basically did. And then number two,

I'm not gonna go into exactly how I do LinkedIn because that just wasn't what this presentation was supposed to be about. But I pivoted my content from trying to attract Shopify store owners to trying to attract B2B revenue leaders. And it's a little hard to see, but it's pretty obvious, like, it it just ten x. And if you wanna see when that happened, that's my LinkedIn, and you can go back to Labor Day. Like, August of last year is when I literally went from trying to attract e com people to attract B2B people,

and it and and it's just the content. There was like a author, product, platform fit that just caused everything to take off. And by the way, I wanna say one thing. I'm spending a ton of effort and money on this. Like, the the consultant I use is twelve thousand five hundred dollars a month, but we're using it for four people. It's an integral part of our PLG, so I'm paying somebody who works with him fifteen grand to manage outbound communication off of my profile and set meetings and move people along their journey.

And I have a video element, and I have a filmmaker, the girl who made billion dollar challenge, and a video editor on staff. So it all adds up to like fifty grand a month and a ton of my time. But the output that what it's doing for us is just unbelievable. I'm I'm literally standing here because of it. Right? Like, it's just it's incredible. So, what is novel about this? Has anybody read this book? I think it's the best book about building startups. That's a link to it there too. It's a little hard to see. It's a QR code. But,

we pivoted our content and didn't launch this product for six months. Customer discovery is building an audience either before or while you build the product, and I believe that this mechanism allows you to do the modern day Four Steps to the Epiphany. We've had over three hundred discovery calls. There were sixteen hundred people on the wait list. And my killer closer to LinkedIn post is like, PS, if you want to identify your anonymous website visitors and push their LinkedIn to Slack in real time, DM me.

It's a hundred percent free, not kidding. So you wanna do that? There's a QR code for that too. We'll call to action.

So interestingly, because the megaphone was so strong you know, I'm, like, obsessed with trying to create a startup that's not super high churn because I haven't done that yet. I was originally thinking we'd go after the, like, mid market because I kind of had this brand from LinkedIn, and typically you can't start a startup in mid market because you have no brand. But I was like, let's go to the mid market, have a sales led motion, try to go thirty to fifty k ACV, and then that would be a lower churn buyer persona. But this LinkedIn megaphone was so prolific that I was

like, you know what? If I have an insane free offer and I'm heavily influenced by this Mailchimp situation, it's gonna help me with this megaphone a lot more than it would help someone who did not. So now my the the the offer is insane. It's like if you use it, you talk to people about it. So I'm focused on trying to make incredibly viral products and have incredibly viral content. And it's just interesting how that evolved, over time. So over the last twenty minutes, I shared how I bootstrapped twenty two million ARR in forty

eight months, told you how and why we pivoted to B2B, and how I co created, my audience with LinkedIn. And if you take nothing else from this talk, take these three things. You are not stuck. It just feels like you are. And keep throwing spaghetti against the wall. You never know how how big something's gonna get. I mean, that Jasper thing to me was just like, I will never forget being a part of that even though it wasn't my company. And, you do have what it takes to create a bigger SaaS. Like, when I was stuck at three million, I literally didn't know.

And now I'm here, and it's just, it's something we can all do. So keep building.