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Going from $0 to $2M ARR in 2 years
- Jugurtha 6y agoNicely done. We're more of a boutique shop building custom machine learning products for large enterprise in the mid six-figure range, slowly moving into abstracting many of what we learned into our internal ML platform[0]. Many good points about picking sectors and roles. We built for many sectors and roles, but repeat business is important as we end up developing a relation with our clients and they come to us with many other problems. I tweeted about what worked for us[1] and been musing on turning that and other tweets and replies in here into posts. Again, congrats. This feels nice. - [0]: https://iko.ai https://iko.ai - [1]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/1310668293305499653 https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...
- icameron 6y agoNice too peek behind the curtain and see some of the effort and thought going into the ‘cold emails’. As a recipient of several thousand in my work email over the years, as an IT contact, I often wonder who’s writing them, and if I was on a list or directly targeted. Although I can offer my anecdote as a lead about the two I have responded to- 1) sent on New Year’s Day offering basketball tickets to a suite for a meet and greet, and 2) a $50 Amazon gift card for doing a 5 minute survey.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gatsby 6y agoAuthor here, our company also went through YC in 2015. Email me with any questions: chris at laskie.co
- slickbot 6y agoLet’s talk pop up on https://laskie.co/ https://laskie.co/ takes in an empty input.
- boldslogan 6y agosurprised you never gave an example of a frigid ice cold polar bear kind of cold email. could you drop one in the comments here?
- goatherders 6y agoSure. I'll help as my company does cold email as a service. Greeting SNIP Relevance CTA Hey Bold, Saw your HN question about an example of an "ice cold polar bear kind of email." I write emails like this all day for companies like Boldslogan. Would be happy to walk your through it in 10 or 12 minutes. Zoom on Tuesday or Wed? C
- radihuq 6y agoNice! You got me to check out your website :)
- sk5t 6y agoFWIW this sort of email triggers my immediate shutdown reactions in several ways: use of "Hey" greeting from some unknown non-friend, general (albeit here not total) avoidance of first-person pronouns[1], phony-baloney specificity in time and duration for an initial meeting. [1] "Saw your email," "Would love to hear more"--no, avoiding "I" does not make the writer appear stronger.
- goatherders 6y agoIt doesn't work all the time, but it works well enough.
- herodoturtle 6y agoWell done, and thanks for sharing your insight. Small gripe, I found this line in your article's opening remarks a unnecessary - "If that doesn't ring a bell, then please ignore this and go about your life a few million poorer."
- AussieWog93 6y agoA bit of feedback on your landing page: Something about "hyperlocal incentivization" caught my eye and I was thoroughly confused. Then read the whole paragraph and actually laughed out loud. The next thing I did was actually look at the products, because you'd got me in a good mood. Brilliant piece of copy.
- ohazi 6y ago> If that doesn't ring a bell, then please ignore this and go about your life a few million poorer. This line is distasteful and detracts from the rest of what you wrote.
- Edmond 6y agoseems like dry humor :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rhizome 6y agoWhat is the joke?
- Edmond 6y agoIf one has to explain a joke then either they're bad at it, it's a bad joke or they have the wrong audience....I'll leave the conclusion as to which is it to the readers :) The article is about making money (even from the title)..the commented upon line is insinuating that if you think the article isn't for you (ie you just randomly stumbled upon it), then you obviously are not interested in making money...sarcasm :)
- walty8 6y agoThe article is actually useful, despite the annoying introduction line of `a few million poorer`. People could stop reading the article for whatever reasons. Just one typo I believe, at the end of https://laskie.co/playbooks/bootstrapping-b2b-sales/cold-emails https://laskie.co/playbooks/bootstrapping-b2b-sales/cold-ema..., should be `same for emails` instead of `same for calls`.
- jshen 6y ago“Everything about a startup is sales” Haha, nope.
- joshea 6y agoSounds like you've never done it.
- jshen 6y agoNever done what? I’ve never worked in sales if that is what you mean. Not sure how that’s relevant.
- joshea 6y agoOh, sorry. I meant ran a startup. You're right, it's not relevant.
- jshen 6y agoSo you’re saying the only thing that matters at a startup is sales?
- joshea 6y agoCertainly not. I'm just saying that sales is probably a bigger factor than you think. I'm going to assume that you're an engineer. Tech alone doesn't make a business successful. More so than not it makes a business fail. I agree that the statement "Everything about a startup is sales" is exaggerated. Although, I will say that good sales outweighs good tech the majority of the time. It baffles me that people don't recognize that.
- jshen 6y agoI’m an executive at a fortune 100 company. The article/post was sloppily written.
- avinashseth 6y agoNicely laid out! I was struggling with buyers persona, your guide helped me create the perfect personal for my buyers!
- classics2 6y agoIt’s possible to read your entire web site and still have no clue what your company does. Brilliant.
- 1234fdsazxcv 6y agoThe article is just an excuse to sell their services. But agreed it's pretty vague. Also, the tone/bitchiness of the comments for the article are truly the worst I've ever read on HN in a long while. Raise the tone or just take it somewhere else.
- DJBunnies 6y agoPot, kettle.
- woohoojoo 6y agoI agree with classics2. Also, I'd suggest adding samples of everything for which Forward offers a service-- when I click 'whitepaper' for example, I'd like to see info about past examples of whitepapers or demos of whitepaper. and, I think you're the one acting bitchy.
- jitendrac 6y agoI don't mind paying for expert advice,but I need to confirm if the person is expert or not. your website have no data/proof showing expertise related track records. I suggest you to add case studies(if any) and more free insightful content which will support your claims.if you are new find clients you may already know, and later publish your findings. for real example, I have really fair understanding of tech, grocery store management, accounts and in-corporation regulations(for india),a good knowledge about construction materials, adhesives and civil work. I want to start as an advisor for tech startups and a civil construction & adhesive consultation. I have good track of cases where my advice saved 10s thousands from my advice, I can easily start here with some good testimonials from famous clients. on other side, for tech startups I must start from scratch.
- lowdose 6y agoBut an ARR of 2 million is an order of magnitude more than the thousands you charged for saving your client 10s. This is about building a value driver instead of preventing a cost driver.
- jitendrac 6y agothat advice needed one site visit with 5 minute of inspections. and those thousands usd[10k usd=7.2Lac INR,more than average software developers pay per year in India] in Indian labour will cost 10 times if it was in USA. Every dollar saved is an asset in balance-sheet.
- eruci 6y agoWritten by AI?
- ricardobeat 6y agoWhere is the $2m story? Not even a mention of the company?
- rrivers 6y agoFinally got around to reading this. Great guide, thank you for sharing.