Customer Focused Startups Always Win 💸

There are 3 companies all based in Atlanta, GA who decided to prioritize their customers over investors.

MailChimp
Calendly
LeaseQuery

MailChimp is one of the very few tech unicorns that hasn't raised a penny from venture capitalists, generating over $700M in revenue back in 2019, and is still private to this day.

Calendly used very little resources in the early days to reach profitability early and instead of going after investors right after their early traction, they decided to double down on customers which eventually lead them to skipping a Seed round AND Series A round to go straight to a Series B raising $350M at a $3B Valuation. “Our profitable, unique, product-led growth model has led to Calendly becoming the most used, most integrated, most loved scheduling platforms for individuals and large enterprises alike,” - Tope Awotona, Founder/CEO . They just hit $85M in revenue with 20M customers.

LeaseQuery became one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the US that is profitable, was bootstrapped, and largely staffed with 100+ employees & 500+ customers back in 2019. Fast forward to today, Like Calendly, their extreme focus on the customer has led them to skip a pre-seed round and seed round raising a $40M Series A round led by Goldman-Sachs.

CUSTOMERS = CONTROL

Each of the companies listed above control their own destiny and equity all due to the fact they are/were laser focused on their customers. By focusing on generating Revenue in the early stages your company becomes more valuable because you are bypassing the "figure it out" or "product-market-fit" stage since you have a growing rate of repeat PAYING customers which allows you to use that traction as leverage to negotiate the founder-friendly terms you want with VC's when it's time to scale up and raise capital, IF that's the route you want to take.

WHAT IF YOU'RE PRE-REVENUE?

This is why we built Square One Startup School, a 10-week virtual pre-accelerator, to help pre-revenue founders around the world take control of their startup destiny by helping them gain their first paying customers to unlock more scalable opportunities.

The two things pre-seed investors look for are sales and sign-ups and over the course of 10-weeks we help you hit the necessary milestones needed to get you to the next level in your startup journey.

So if you are founder who is pre-revenue or pre-seed apply to our upcoming cohort at www.squareoneschool.com!