Acuity Scheduling

Gavin Zuklinski was a self-described tech geek who did development on the side. In 2006 or 2007, while he was about 20, he saw his mom, a massage therapist, going back and forth trying to schedule, reschedule, and manage clients. He built a scheduling tool for her. He also hoped it would bring in more consulting and contracting work. As he put it, "I failed at that, by the way, but the product itself did great."

Gavin treated the product as a side project for years. From about 2007 to 2013 he worked a government job he loved, spending only a couple of hours a week on Acuity. He did no real marketing. The only thing he did was a little SEO. Within a week of launch, someone signed up and paid, which surprised him. Early revenue was small. He said his first year revenue was "probably less than $5,000," and he tied his earnings to monthly amounts: the first customer paid for his hosting, and later revenue covered dinners out and eventually a nice car.

Growth came from organic search and word of mouth. Around 2010 Gavin stopped open signups because the product was taking too much of his time. Users kept referring friends, though, so he began handing out private links so referred people could still sign up. Signups resumed in 2011 and kept growing. By 2013 he was sleeping on the floor of a townhouse he was trying to sell, answering emails from the car, and running out of time. That year he quit the government job, hired a support person at about $55,000 a year, and focused on the business full time. The company had been profitable from day one.

The biggest driver was product fit. About 80% of the roughly 20,000 weekly active users were paying, which Gavin saw as a strong sign of product-market fit. He focused on active usage rather than total signups. Customer acquisition cost averaged around $4 to $6 across the base, with most customers (about 90%) acquired at zero cost through referrals and organic results. Paid acquisition ran roughly $10 per customer. Gavin spent about $40,000 in August 2016 on marketing experiments, many of which were not profitable.

Some things were harder. Gross monthly customer churn was about 8%, though he noted this was a worst-case figure because it counted annual-plan switchers and seasonal users as churned. Growth had been around 30% month over month in the early days and slowed to about 10% by 2016. Gavin also turned down acquisition offers because the buyers were not a good cultural fit.

In September 2016, Acuity Scheduling had 11 fully remote team members spread across Scotland, Seattle, and elsewhere, most of whom also handled customer support. Plans range from free to a maximum of $34 per month, with average revenue per user around $20 per month. Gavin's goal was not an exit but a company he enjoyed running, growing deliberately and keeping the team small to protect his own time and his customers' experience.