This is a Linkedin post by Jesse Pujji. Jessi a serial entrepreneur that lives in the US. He has:
- Bootstrapped to an 8-figure exist with his previous startup, Ampush
- Is currently building GatewayX, a venture studio that he plans to bootstrap to $1B+
- Executive Chairman & Founder of GrowthAssistant.com
- ex-McKinsey Consultant
Guest Author: Jesse Pujji
In 100 days, I bootstrapped a business to $50K MRR. 30 months later, GrowthAssistant is doing $12M in ARR with 60%+ growth.
Here’s the story and lessons (steal them):
I keep a long list of biz ideas that I’ve come up with over the years.
In Jan ‘21, I decided to stop trying to find the “perfect” biz.
Instead, I’ll start a few!
Worst case, we shut it down. But I want more shots on goal.
So here’s the story:
I’ve invested in 10+ DTC brands. I meet with their marketing teams regularly. And I am consistently surprised by how UNproductive the “in-house” teams are.
What they get done in a quarter takes an Ampush team <1 month.
I started to ask why…
Turns out in-house marketing teams don’t typically leverage “off-shore” talent.
Both McKinsey and Goldman had huge teams overseas to do all the “rote” work of consulting/finance. Formatting slides, reporting data, reach outs, simple research, etc.
I brought that strategy to Ampush pretty much from day 1.
The idea is simple: Full time, college educated growth/mktg/sales trained people to work directly on startups/DTC teams. We find, screen, train and place them with companies.
They do reporting, URL tagging, QA, video edit, creative formatting, SDR tasks, affiliate, influencer.
But this idea sat on my list for YEARS.
I was missing the right co-founder/CEO. Someone who knew HR, recruiting, people, ops and with the hunger of a first time entrepreneur…
The universe delivered. One of the best friends Adriane Schwager from middle school has run HR at a hedge fund for ~10 years.
She called and told me she was ready to be her own boss.
A crazy energy ripped through me when she called! I said I HAVE THE PERFECT IDEA!
I spent the evening pitching her on it. She would be CEO and I would be Chairman. Adriane Schwager is driving things while I help navigate.
She took a week to think and said “I’m in” – that was 2/10/2021…
I called former Ampushers, industry contacts.
“AMAZING IDEA JESSE!”
The next sales were easier: they mostly came from ex-Ampush employees.
Imagine your boss is calling you and I say “hey, would you like to try my new business?”
The conversion rate was insanely high.
Then, I decided to post about launching the company, and it ended up going viral!
We got 400+ leads from it, and we were off to the races. But very quickly we saw churn.
We found that our ideal customers were:
1) Series B startups
2) Ecom businesses with 15+ employees
3) Agencies
Once we found our ICP, we had to shift our sales strategy to accommodate.
We had to REDUCE the number of sales calls and INCREASE revenue.
It scared the shit out of us.
But we did it. And it worked.
Fast forward to today, and we count DoorDash, ClickUp, Calm, and several others as clients.
I believe this can be a big business. It’s growing fast. It is dead simple yet adding a TON of value for all the stakeholders.
Adriane is growing every day as a CEO and it’s been so fun to partner with her.
So, what are the lessons?
1) Just start – The BIAS TO ACTION is the single most important part of entrepreneurship.
