Ajax Union

Joe Applebaum was already a serial entrepreneur when Ajax Union began. He had run several six-figure businesses and was working as a full-time CMO at The Watchery, an online luxury watch retailer, where he helped grow revenue from $3 million to $40 million in annual sales. Ajax Union was one of seven side gigs he ran at the time. The kernel of the idea came about a year before the company's 2009 start.

Ajax Union began as a side project, and within about six months it was on pace to replace Joe's salary. When it took off in June 2009, he went to The Watchery's CEO and said his partner wanted him to leave the CMO role. The CEO gave him support and said he wanted to become Ajax Union's biggest customer. Joe quit his $100,000 job, and the agency reached $500,000 in revenue in 2009, growing to $1 million in 2010 and $2 million in 2011. Ajax Union was featured as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States.

The business then grew to $4 million in 2015 with 75 employees and 350 active accounts, serving over 1,100 companies in total. Joe later described the model as adding customers and employees without adding to the bottom line.

The agency's early anchor was the relationship with The Watchery's leadership. Ajax Union sells B2B lead generation and digital marketing services, including marketing automation, SEO, Google AdWords, and landing pages, to mid-sized companies with $5 million to $50 million in revenue. In 2011 an angel investor, a friend of the family, put in $1 million. Joe said the investor sent the company some strong leads and helped it think through strategy.

The key pivot was choosing to shrink. Around 2014, Joe decided the company would stop chasing top-line growth and focus on bottom-line profit. Ajax Union cut its client count from about 1,100 to roughly 50, with a goal of 30, and raised average revenue per client from about $1,000 to about $10,000. Staff was reduced while revenue per employee rose. Retainers that used to last about eight months now average over a year. In 2015 the agency kept roughly $500,000 on $4 million in revenue, a margin Joe considered too low. His target was 25 to 30 percent margins.

As of August 2016, Ajax Union was working with about 50 customers and 20 employees, mostly in Brooklyn, with a goal of $6 million in revenue for 2016 and a bottom-line target of $1 million to $1.5 million. Joe pays himself a salary plus quarterly bonuses tied to margin goals, and said that take-home including bonuses exceeded $200,000 in 2015. He is also building a podcast, CEO Mojo, and writing a book, while continuing to run the agency.