How Startups Grow with word of mouth

The SaaS Podcast, hosted by Omar Khan since 2014, has become a go-to resource for founders building SaaS businesses. Now at episode 300, the podcast features interviews with proven founders and industry experts sharing strategies and insights. The show has built a strong community through consistent, valuable content and genuine storytelling that resonates with early-stage founders.

Crepling is a no-code e-commerce platform founded by brothers Liam (21) and Travis (18) from Malta. After selling their own Shopify sneaker resale store and attempting to launch an agency, they discovered the real market need was for a centralized, integrated e-commerce platform. They bootstrapped to 500+ customers and $1B+ GMV across all six continents through word-of-mouth and agency partnerships, recently raising a seed round from Jason Calacanis' Launch Accelerator.

UserFlow is a no-code SaaS platform for building in-app onboarding guides and product tours, co-founded by Espen Fries Jensen and Sebastian. Started in 2018 (initially as Studio One, a video platform), it pivoted to interactive in-app guidance in 2019. With just two founders and a bootstrap approach (no VC funding), the company has grown to nearly $1M ARR by focusing on exceptional UX, product-led growth, and word-of-mouth marketing.

Atrium is a sales management SaaS platform that helps sales managers and leaders use data-driven analytics to improve team performance. Founded by Pete Kazanji in 2016 after his experience at Monster Worldwide, the product instruments key sales KPIs (win rates, pipeline, customer-facing meetings, etc.) and uses statistical anomaly detection to surface actionable insights to non-technical sales managers. Pete pioneered the product through founder-led selling starting in 2018, acquiring a dozen customers before hiring his first sales rep in 2019.

DocSend is a horizontal SaaS platform that lets users securely share documents with real-time control and analytics instead of using email attachments. Founded by Russ Hedlstone and co-founders Dave and Tony, the company grew from free to $10/month pricing in 2016, experimented unsuccessfully with enterprise outbound sales (2016-2018), then pivoted back to self-serve with repositioned pricing and messaging—converting at higher rates as they increased prices. Today DocSend has 15,000+ customers, 55 employees, $15M+ raised, and is growing 75-80% year-over-year, powered primarily by word-of-mouth and organic/SEO channels.

Taker.io is an online ordering platform and mobile app for restaurants, launched in early 2019 by Abdullah Al-Sadi. After four years and multiple failed startups (a crypto security solution, a Salesforce app, and a last-mile delivery service), Abdullah finally found product-market fit by solving a specific pain point he'd identified: restaurants needed their own branded ordering channels. By creatively pre-selling 5-year subscriptions to four anchor customers, Abdullah bootstrapped development without seeking investor funding. He then pursued an account-based marketing strategy targeting the 15 largest restaurant chains in Saudi Arabia, achieving nearly $1M ARR within a few years through word-of-mouth and social proof.

Salesflare is a sales CRM built by Yaroon Cortout and co-founder Michael Farmer that automates data capture from emails, meetings, and other sources, eliminating manual CRM updates. Starting from Yaroon's own pain point using Salesforce at a marketing agency, the product evolved from a Salesforce integration play into a standalone CRM for small B2B companies, particularly marketing and software development agencies. Through 2+ years of manual sales, PR efforts, a Product Hunt launch (200-300 trials, #1 CRM ranking), and a massive AppSumo campaign (6,000 signups in 3 weeks), the company has grown to serve over 2,000 customers and raised over $1 million.

Alex Thuma built SaaS Stock from a blog started in 2015 to a global conference business running events across five continents with up to 4,000 attendees. The first Dublin event in 2016 attracted 700 people through speaker credibility and email list conversion, generating 350k GBP in revenue. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Alex pivoted to online events within two weeks, launching SaaS Stock Remote which attracted 2,700 attendees and proved online events could be profitable.

Bonjuro is a SaaS product that helps businesses build customer relationships at scale through personalized video messages. Founder Matt Barnett initially used the system while running a market research agency, recording personalized videos on his ferry commute to convert leads across time zones. After a client requested the tool, he built a basic MVP in a weekend and charged $15/month, achieving 40,000+ users through viral product mechanics, influencer partnerships, and intense customer focus including personalized welcome videos for all signups.

CinchShare is a simplified social media scheduling tool built by Jennifer Johnson for direct sellers and network marketers. Launched in January 2014 after a 2-month development period, it grew from solving Jennifer's own pain point (reducing 2-hour daily scheduling to 20 minutes) to 10,000 customers by end of 2015, driven entirely by word-of-mouth and Facebook community engagement. The company is now bootstrapped, profitable, with $5M+ ARR and zero outside investment.

X.ai is an AI-powered personal assistant that schedules meetings via email on behalf of users. Founded by serial entrepreneur Dennis Mortensen after he sold his previous analytics company and discovered he had 1,019 meetings in a year (65% requiring rescheduling), X.ai has raised $44 million and uses a novel approach of testing market viability before building the full product—starting with a concierge MVP and only then raising seed funding to validate the technical approach through data labeling.

Concur was founded in 1993 by Mike Hilton, Steve Singh, and Raj Singh as a Windows shrink-wrap software product to automate expense reporting, initially selling for $69 directly to consumers. After a breakthrough Wall Street Journal review by Walt Mossberg that drove 2,000 sales in two days, the company pivoted from B2C to B2B, evolved through multiple technology platforms (client-server, intranet, SaaS), and despite nearly collapsing during the dot-com crash (stock price falling from $60 to $0.28), successfully transformed into a pure SaaS business that achieved 25%+ annual growth and was acquired by SAP for $8.3 billion in 2014.

Dan Fajella built Science of Skill from zero to $2M+ in annual recurring revenue over four years by leveraging a viral YouTube video of his martial arts prowess, turning it into a subscription membership business teaching self-defense techniques to 40+ year old men. He applied principles from his small-town martial arts gym (SEO, conversion optimization, email segmentation) to the internet, growing through content marketing, affiliate partnerships, and sophisticated email marketing automation—ultimately selling the business for seven figures to fund his AI research company, Tech Emergence.

Badger Maps is a SaaS routing and scheduling tool founded in 2012 by Steve Benson, a former Google enterprise sales rep. The product helps field salespeople optimize routes, integrate CRM data, and increase productivity by up to 20%. Starting at $9-35/month with a freemium bottom-up model, it grew organically through individual sales rep adoption that expanded into team and enterprise deployments, reaching 6,000 customers with $1M raised to date.

ITProTV is a subscription-based SaaS platform for IT training launched in 2012 by Tim Brume and co-founder Dom. Starting with zero capital from brick-and-mortar training center experience, they bootstrapped the business to nearly $9M ARR in four years by creating daily video content delivered by entertaining subject-matter experts in a TV-show format. Growth came primarily from an early partnership with tech influencer Leo Laporte and organic word-of-mouth as satisfied IT professionals recommended the platform to colleagues.

WildBit is a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS company founded in 1999 as a web development consultancy and evolved into a product business with three main offerings: Beanstalk (code hosting and deployment), Postmark (transactional email), and DeployBot (deployment automation). The company has 26 employees and generates multi-million dollar revenue while maintaining a unique culture emphasizing 40-hour work weeks, private offices, and customer success over growth at all costs.

CellHack is a SaaS platform that helps salespeople find targeted prospects, build email lists, and verify email addresses. Founded by Ryan O'Donnell in 2014 after his previous startup failed, it started as an internal tool before being productized and monetized with a $9/month subscription plan. Within two years of launch, the company hit over $1 million in revenue, driven primarily by word-of-mouth growth and early media coverage on TechCrunch.

Thrive Themes is a conversion-focused WordPress plugin suite founded in 2013 by Shane Milak and Paul McCarty that solves the problem of WordPress sites being bloated with dozens of conflicting plugins. By building integrated tools specifically for marketing and sales (Thrive Content Builder, Thrive Leads), they've grown to serve over 30,000 customers with a seven-figure ARR business. Their success came from leveraging an existing audience of 20,000+ people who actively requested their solutions.

Clef is a passwordless two-factor authentication service founded in 2013 by Brennan Byrne and two college friends. Starting with a friends-and-family round of $150-175K, the company grew to 124,000+ websites using their solution and raised $3.1M in funding by the time of this interview. Growth was driven primarily by word-of-mouth and community trust-building, accelerated by a New York Times feature that gave them credibility and sparked organic adoption.

Todoist is a task management and productivity tool founded by Amir Salihevnidj in 2007. Starting as a personal tool to manage his own work while being a student with two programming jobs, Amir launched it with a simple blog post link and quickly achieved profitability by adding a freemium pricing model at $3/month (later $29/month). After a 4-year detour working on a social network startup (2008-2012), Amir returned full-time to Todoist in 2012 when he found the social network work unfulfilling and realized his passion for productivity. Since then, Todoist has grown to over 4 million users including usage by Fortune 100 companies, with a distributed team of over 40 employees.