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Going from $0 to $2M ARR in 2 years

168 points| gatsby | 5 years ago |laskie.co

44 comments

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jitendrac|5 years ago

I 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|5 years ago

But 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.

icameron|5 years ago

Nice 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.

rrivers|5 years ago

Finally got around to reading this. Great guide, thank you for sharing.

classics2|5 years ago

It’s possible to read your entire web site and still have no clue what your company does.

Brilliant.

1234fdsazxcv|5 years ago

The 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.

eruci|5 years ago

Written by AI?

ricardobeat|5 years ago

Where is the $2m story? Not even a mention of the company?

gatsby|5 years ago

Author here, our company also went through YC in 2015.

Email me with any questions: chris at laskie.co

ohazi|5 years 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.

herodoturtle|5 years ago

Well 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|5 years ago

A 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.

boldslogan|5 years ago

surprised you never gave an example of a frigid ice cold polar bear kind of cold email.

could you drop one in the comments here?

avinashseth|5 years ago

Nicely laid out! I was struggling with buyers persona, your guide helped me create the perfect personal for my buyers!

Jugurtha|5 years ago

Nicely 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

- [1]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...

jshen|5 years ago

“Everything about a startup is sales”

Haha, nope.

joshea|5 years ago

Sounds like you've never done it.