Scaling a startup is no easy feat. Paid marketing often feels like throwing money into a bottomless pit, turning into a costly gamble for inexperienced teams.

We've all heard the saying, "If you build it, they will come," and we've rightly pointed out how essential marketing is for any business.

While I fully agree with this notion, I must also admit that our marketing skills are lacking. So, how do we manage to grow? Let's dive in and explore our unique approach to growth, where you can learn from our experience, discover new strategies, or get inspired.

Before we proceed, it's crucial to understand the context of this article. The nature of a product greatly affects the economics of scaling up. In our case, we offer LifeTime deals first to our target customer, collect feedback and then switch to subscription model.

The only hurdles for user adoption are awareness and interest. Unfortunately, this means that many marketing channels with high CPA (cost per acquisition) are not cost-effective for us.

User acquisition by Antifragile Technologies. 

1. Building a Product with market demand.

The active SaaS product lineup of Antifragile Technologies and short relative story behind each product we built.

First, we developed BananaShop.ai, a plugin-free e-commerce platform with comprehensive built-in functionalities. Our goal was to reach customers using other e-commerce platforms. We started by identifying active shops in Dubai for outreach, then expanded to other cities, leveraging the data to target potential users.

To support this expansion, we created MyLeadFox, an extensive e-commerce database containing information on over 12.5 million shops. Our team utilized MyLeadFox to send proposals to potential customers for BananaShop, but we needed more data insights for our proposals.

To address this, we built Fliplink.me, enabling us to send proposals as flipbooks with white-label links. This tool provided a unique advantage, as no other tool offered white-label document tracking.

During this process, we received a request to add a simple PDF version to FlipLink.me, as some users preferred sharing pitch decks and proposals with white-label links but without the flipbook format.

In response, we developed DocLink.me, a document-sharing tool tailored for proposals and other documents. Despite having these tools, we struggled to get users to write reviews. We explored available tools in the market and discovered that while many collected reviews from various platforms, none generated reviews.

Recognizing the importance of reviews for sales, we built GUMREV. We used GUMREV to gather reviews for our tools and then began selling it to other businesses.

As our user base and Antifragile Technologies grew, we started hiring more staff. However, the hiring process was complex for me (Sumit Ghugharwal) as a hiring manager.

This challenge inspired us to create a hiring tool with AI-powered shortlisting to assist hiring managers. We developed hiDimple, which conducts asynchronous interviews and provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of candidates' answers, streamlining the hiring process.

We have more projects scheduled to launch in Q3 of 2024. GUMQR, GUMCLIP, and several other projects are currently in the internal beta stage, being used within Antifragile Technologies. Once we are satisfied with the internal use cases and have real world benefits; these projects will then be turned into products.

Our approach emphasise Utility Product Driven Development. We identify a need, study the market, create a SaaS solution that serves a specific market segment, and then start selling it. How do we sell it? Let's discuss that in the next section.

2. Partner Driven Growth

With a small team and an initial starting budget, we didn't have the luxury of spending heavily on marketing to acquire customers.

Instead, we found affiliates and partners to drive traction to our products.

AppSumo
In simple terms, AppSumo is a fantastic website that offers great software at unbeatable prices. To bring these deals to life, AppSumo collaborates with startups eager to provide their products and services at significantly reduced rates.

To ensure these deals reach a wide audience, AppSumo promotes each offer to its extensive online community, enabling a rapid and substantial volume of sales.

We first listed FlipLink on AppSumo, and not only did we gain customers, but we also received unbiased feedback that helped us improve the product over time. We now have over 200 reviews (thanks to our tool GUMREV) and have answered more than 300 questions.

Once we understood customer behaviour, we established our sales and development pipeline as follows:

1. Use the product internally.
2. Run a deal on AppSumo to get feedback and sales.
3. Switch to a subscription model once the product is mature.
4. A live example of this is MyLeadFox.
We launched MyLeadFox and DocLink.me on AppSumo, collected feedback, generated initial revenue, and now MyLeadFox is a subscription model SaaS, generating monthly revenue.

Product Hunt
We launched a version of MyLeadFox on Product Hunt to gain even more traction and early users.

The sooner we reach product maturity and other sales-related milestones, the faster we switch to the subscription model.

For instance, with DocLink.me, we were in the deal phase for only two months before transitioning to MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).

Example Doclink.me ; we were on the deal phase for only two months and then switched to MMR.

Another major factor in user acquisition is cross selling of the products, which I will talk about in detail in the next section.

3. Organic Growth

There are numerous strategies to achieve organic growth, and while we didn’t excel in every area, we made significant progress in some key aspects.

Internal Cross-Selling
Once a user is onboarded to any one of our products, we introduce them to our other offerings from Antifragile Technologies.

When users are satisfied with the quality of one product, it becomes easier to convince them to try our other products.

Since all our products are related to business utility and marketing, finding a fit for our users is not challenging. Many users who signed up for one of our products have gone on to use our other offerings as well.

SEO
Our website is optimised for speed and adheres to search engine guidelines to ensure that the content presented to users is relevant and valuable.

By following these best practices, we make sure that search engines display our site accurately, attracting users who benefit from what we offer..

This approach not only improves user experience but also enhances our visibility and credibility online.

3. 24*7 Support

For a SaaS company, having 24/7 support is absolutely vital. Unlike a physical store, software can be accessed and used from any part of the world at any time, meaning users can have questions or issues at any hour.
While we ensure clear communication on our website and design our products to be self-serving, there's always room for improvement.

That improvement often comes from user feedback, and having quick, 24/7 support helps us gather this feedback promptly and serve our customers better.
From day one, we have offered 24/7 live chat support. Additionally, users can book a 15-minute video conferencing call at any time that suits them. We have multiple team members working in shifts to support our user base around the clock.

This level of support shares confidence in our users, knowing that their queries are addressed instantly. This not only helps resolve their issues quickly but also contributes to positive word of mouth.
Many users have highlighted our exceptional support in their reviews, noting that it was a key factor in their decision to buy more from us and refer others.

In fact, 34 out of 203 reviews on FlipLink specifically mentioned how amazing our support is. This feedback underscores the importance of our commitment to providing round-the-clock assistance, which in turn helps us build strong relationships with our users and foster growth through referrals and repeat business.

Over the past two years, we've gained invaluable insights through our interactions, product development, and marketing efforts.

Our next goal is ambitious: to drive the growth of Antifragile Technologies' software solutions and reach 100,000 users within the next year. To achieve this, we'll be exploring new marketing strategies and ensuring our products are perfectly tailored to meet the needs of our users.

We plan to leverage innovative marketing techniques, expand our reach, and continuously improve our product offerings based on user feedback. By focusing on these areas, we aim to not only attract new users but also retain and engage our existing user base, creating a loyal community around our brand.

This concerted effort will propel us towards our goal and solidify our position as a leading provider of business utility and marketing solutions.

We at Antifragile technologies look forward to built software that fits right into the business utility and provide robust solutions.

Contact author at sumit[at]antifragile.ae for any information regarding Antifragile Technologies products.