Active Track

Anton Zidler, 35, had been building SaaS products since 2003. His first startup grew to 110 employees and $2M ARR in four years; his second hit $4.6M ARR in six years. In 2009, he met his current partner who had deep expertise in Windows system-level coding and security. Together, they started reimagining employee monitoring software for small businesses.

Starting in 2011 from a Dallas Starbucks with just AWS and their laptops, Anton and his partner built Active Track from scratch. They were intentionally bootstrapped—two guys, no outside capital. Writing code began in 2011, and they shipped their first subscription customer in February 2012. Early on, they studied industry trends and planned to spend up to 30% of revenue on paid advertising. Growth was glacial at first: "it took us like a year and a half to add about 18K in MRR first that we've added last month," Anton reflected. By contrast, October 2018 alone added the same MRR they'd built in their first 18 months.

They didn't rely on ads. Instead, Anton and his team obsessively simplified the onboarding experience. They designed a full freemium product—not a trial—that let users monitor up to three workstations for free. This became their growth engine. "33% of our new visitors are actually creating an account at ActiveTrack... about 50% of those who created an account actually download and install the software... probably like 34% on average can convert to pay." The freemium model generated "hundreds and hundreds of accounts basically coming to us organically."

Paid advertising campaigns were eventually paused to test dependency. "When we started in 2012, we were reading a lot of blogs... we decided that we want to spend like up to 30% of our revenue on pay the position. At some point we realized that actually the freemium model is our major kind of growth engine." Today, they're not tracking CAC precisely because "we're at the stage when we are trying to see what really works." Churn is well-managed: 2% gross MRR churn offset by 3% expansion, yielding net negative 1% churn. Smaller customers (monthly plans, <5 employees) churn after 4-6 months; larger companies (30-50+ employees) expand and stay long-term.

As of late 2018, Active Track had 4,456 customers, 27 employees in Dallas (no remote policy), and $378k MRR—up from $245k exactly one year prior (56% annual growth). They've rejected repeated venture capital approaches and discussed venture debt with firms like Clearco. Anton credits his all-hands-on-deck mentality: 13 people in sales, marketing, and customer success; 13 developers. When asked if he'd raise capital, he said they'd never found a clear metric to improve or a silver bullet. Instead, they've focused on "1% improvements across many things." At 35, married with two kids (a third on the way), sleeping five hours a night, Anton advises his younger self: "Be more confident and kind of start things on your own as soon as possible."