What is the most impactful Growth Channel for bootstrapped founders?
Do you know what the top bootstrapped startups are doing to generate up to $100k in MRR?
I've analyzed over 100 growth stories and noticed that there are 3 channels that show up over and over again in their growth strategy. I'm using MRR per employee as the key indicator of success, to spot one-man show successes or really hand-picked crazy impactful team members 👇
- PR // Avg. MRR $28.5k // if your product has some virality or it's good timing (see Nomad List)
- Content Marketing // Avg. MRR $17.0k // with 3 main tactics: building in public, sharing free digital assets, being active in relevant online communities
- Leverage existing platforms // Avg. MRR $11.0k // Build apps or digital assets on platforms like Shopify, Etsy, or WordPress (as the main business or offer free tools to generate awareness)
I've started this project for my personal info, working with a couple of startups, but I'm also adding all these findings in an Airtable database.
You can check out a sample of this data at https://thebootstrappedway.com/#dashboard-free, the free version is enough to get the key insights 😀
Thanks for putting this together!
you are very welcome, @yaroslawbagriy ... feel free to share your feedback, David's comments below are crazy helpful to improve the database further
that's really nice. have you thought to split these businesses into separate employee sizes as well?
1-5
6-10
11-20
etc.
I feel there are some tactics for smaller and larger ones, and spotting the things some do very well to grow are different at various stages...
yes, indeed, @dakl you are right ... how I manage to highlight one-man show successes is also with this MRR per Employee.
I haven't noticed a huge difference between a 5 ppl company and a 20 ppl company. A true difference comes when growing from tens to hundreds of employees. :-)
ah nice. so the things a one-man vs a ten-man set up for success is basically the same?
what I am wondering about this metric is this:
does the one-man still need to perform the same amount as a ten-man would, is there a linear progression to it or does it scale by amount of people?
if we're only speaking about their growth strategy, I haven't seen a huge difference between a one-man show and a ten-man setup ... I've seen startups (mostly service-based or semi-productized services) that are doing sales-led growth from day 1, which you'd say it's an SMB/Enterprise play
then, content marketing is another growth strategy used by solopreneurs, but also by a team of 10-20-100 ppl ... the difference is in the tactics/channels and the time until they see a return/traffic/sales
// a bigger team can do webinars and tens of lead gen content
// one guy/girl can mostly Build in Public, or write content for very specific long-tail keywords
but that's interesting, although a bigger team = more power to execute growth, their main strategy isn't too different